Honey Update and More BEES!

Busy, busy, busy! That is life around my house lately. Now I understand what I have heard others say about springtime on a farm and the busyness of it all! Whew. I literally fall into bed every night exhausted but satisfied with all that was accomplished for the day. It is a good kind of tired!


The final count on our wildflower honey is 15 quarts. While this is not my favorite honey it will be put to many uses like baking bread and making smoothies, etc. We are very excited to get all this delicious, nutritious honey with very minimal processing. This honey was extracted and then strained...that's it! Mmmm, mmmm, good!!

While we were working outside a few days ago, Brandon spotted a swarm of bees out by the garden. The problem was where they chose to gather. Can you see them in the side of this bank of dirt? This is the dirt hill Monroe made for the boys to climb with their four-wheeler.

Here is a better shot of the swarm.

We were expecting rain later that afternoon so Brandon was anxious to get these little guys into a new home. Naturally the next thing to do was to call Ethan for advice and he, not seeing the situation, suggested putting a new box over the swarm. We just couldn't figure how to go about that so Brandon just put the empty frames close to the bees. There was a small amount of honey left on the frames so that would entice the swarm to come on in. A few of them were interested but not enough of them to persuade the rest to come along. The rains did come but it didn't seem to bother the bees. We learned that they squeeze together so tightly that the water just runs off their backs. Amazing!

The next day our hero, Ethan, once again came to the rescue. Even he said this was a tricky place to try and catch a swarm. I watched from a safe distance ;-) and every once in a while I would get brave enough to snap a picture! After working with the bees about 45 minutes Ethan was able to coax them into their new home.

You can see how the homeless little fellows are liking their new hive. It didn't take them long to move in once they got word that it was a safe place to go.

Orange blossom honey season is from March to April so I was hoping we would get another hive of orange blossom honey. We shall see. It takes them some time to establish their new hive so they may need all of this season's orange blossom to "set up house". That will be okay. We are just thanking the Lord that they chose our property to swarm to! Another blessing is they landed right beside our vegetable garden. We left the hive box right there hoping they will be busy little bees and pollinate our garden!

Have a blessed and joyful Easter Holiday!

HE IS ALIVE....HALLELUJAH!!