Beekeeping Adventures: All New Bees

A bees life lasts about six to eight weeks. All the honeybees from the Memorial Day weekend install, with the exception of the queen, are gone. The last set of bees born for the season will overwinter. They will not leave the hive and only serve to keep the queen warm and feed her. They will die soon after the winter is over. A queen's life is roughly three to five years in length.

Modern Recipe: It's Adelle's Birthday!

I asked Adelle's to share her favorite recipe with honey in honor of her birthday. It's a pretty simple recipe... Enjoy!

1) Acquire honey

2) Open jar

3) Eat honey

Period Beehives: Wood Hives, Part 2

Another period style of a wood hive is also Italian. Hive management and harvest are much clearer in these examples than other styles of wood hives. Harvesting and swarm catching can be seen in the picture above. It appears that harvesting is done from along the length of the hive. The swarm is being caught on the short side indicating an entrance on that end. Two hives can be seen behind the hive being harvested. This shows how hives are placed.

It is unclear in these images if there are hinges on either hive or if the panels are pinned in place. The hive must be closed up after inspection or harvest. The bees will only build in tight and dark spaces. The image directly above looks to be a beekeeper pulling a panel off. It also appears as though there is another hive stacked on top. This interpretation would necessitate the side panel opening. This would be possible if there were a space to slide a knife inside to separate the combs from the side panel. This could possibly do considerable damage to the combs though.

Beekeeping Adventures: First installation!

Last night I installed one of the hives. This is a video my friend Leif took. There will be more video once I get it edited.

Honey varietals did not exist in the Medieval and Renaissance times as we know them now. They were named for the area harvested and the season. This hive is in the backyard of a Victorian house. I have decided to name this bee yard "Painted Lady."

Seven more packages will be picked up and installed today. Video and pictures will be taken of that too.

First hive is set up!
Posted by Leif Erik Carlson on Friday, May 22, 2015

Beekeeping Adventures: Nucs and Packages

Honeybees come in two different styles of boxes when picked up. The first is a nucleus or nuc. The second is a package.

What are nucs? Nucs come in a Styrofoam container that looks like a cooler. They have five to eight frames inside them. There is a fertilized queen and roughly three pounds of bees. The bees have been busy building combs on the frames. This is known as “drawing out” comb. There is honey on the frames as the frames have been taken from active hives. The queen is already busy laying eggs. The honeybees are ready to go as soon as you place them in the hive. Honey production is faster as a result.

What are packages? Packages come in cages. There is wood on four sides of the cage. The other two sides have screens. There is a fertilized queen and approximately three pounds of bees. The queen is in a queen cage with a few attendants. There is a can of sugar syrup to sustain the bees while in transport.

The queen cage is placed in the empty hive once at the bee yard. The bees are then dumped into the hive. The bees will eventually chew through the candy cork of the queen cage. This takes two to three days. The bees will be busy drawing out comb in the meantime. The queen will then begin to lay eggs. The bees begin foraging for plant nectar as soon as there is wax comb to put it in.

Sugar water will be placed in feeders at the entrance of all of the hives. This will provide food so the bees can focus on building up the combs. Honey can be harvested from a hive started with a nuc in July or August. A hive started from a package can be harvested in September or October. Both harvests are weather dependant just like gardening.

My bee yard will be started with one nuc and seven packages. One hive will be a Langstroth, or Lang, hive. This is the box on a box style of hive. The other seven will be Top Bar Hives also known as TBH’s. This is a horizontal hive using bars instead of frames. Please see the archive for more information on these two styles of hives.

The Lang hive installation will be on May 21^st while the TBH’s installation will be on May 23^rd. Pictures and video will follow in a few days after that. I would love to hear your comments!

Period Hives: Wood Hives, Part 1

There is very little written about the medieval and Renaissance Italian box hives. We can tell from this picture that vertical and horizontal hives were used. It is my belief, based on the picture and beekeeping experience, the lids were removed and comb was retrieved as needed. I do not believe these were harvested in the manner of skeps. Skep harvesting involves killing the bees at the end of the season by means of drowning or sulfur smoke. I think that combs were cut out one piece at a time as needed.

Italy’s growing and beekeeping season is longer than that of Northern and Eastern Europe. Not unlike Florida, the bees would have a longer season of activity. The increased activity time would allow the bees to easily maintain their hives. This would also allow more time for the bees to recover from a harvest. There was no need to destroy the whole colony.

Period Beehives: Log Hives

A lesser known type of hive of the medieval and Renaissance time period is the log beehive. The log beehives are very common in North Eastern Europe. The log beehive is still used to this day in that region.

Bees made hives in hollow trees naturally. Early beekeepers would harvest this honey from the trees. Eventually they marked and claimed ownership of the trees and the hives contained therein. Beekeepers also started making their own cavities in hives. These types of hives were most common in the Northern Forest Zone of northeast Europe, which includes East Germany, Poland, as well as Northern Czechoslovakia and Russia. Larger logs were not usually available west of the deciduous forest zone.  There is no record of tree beekeeping found in the Scandinavian countries. It was probably too cold for hives to survive in the winter. (Crane 1999, 135)

Records of tree beekeeping exist from the 1200’s and 1300’s.  The Teutonic Order of Germany secured hereditary rights of bee trees in the 1253. Landowners started limiting the rights of tree beekeepers in the 1300’s. This included making new cavities in trees.   

Log hives were developed and hung in the trees to keep animals from foraging in them. Until 1600, forests were used for hunting and collecting honey and wax. The Thirty Years War of Germany (1618-1648) changed all that. Trees were felled and hives moved closer to the home and placed in collections called apiaries. The switch from tree cavity to log hive beekeeping was caused by a shortage of natural cavities. Trees were felled on land used for agriculture or other purposes. Landowners also prohibited new cavities from being made.

Log hives were often carved with faces and then later whole logs were carved into human form. (Crane 1999, 231) In 1568, Nikel Jacob advises to use poplar, lime, alder, and willow, but not oak wood for making the hives. In the Armbruster Collection of Germany, there are hives made from poplar, lime, oak, alder, beech, sycamore, pine, and spruce or fir. (Crane 1999 p 229) Nikel Jacob describes the hives as being 165 centimeters high by 60 centimeters in diameter. In the Armbruster Museum, examples are one-hundred fifty to two hundred centimeters high by sixty centimeters in diameter.

Two log hives have been excavated from bogs in Northern Germany. The first dates between 100-200 AD. It is one meter high and thirty-one to forty-four centimeters in diameter. There is a horizontal slit near the base for the flight hole. The flight hole is the hole or holes in a hive by which the bees come and go from the hive. The second hive dates between 400-500 AD. It is one meter high by thirty centimeters in diameter. There is a cover held on by wood pegs. The flight holes are at different levels on the hive.

Large logs might be divided into two colonies. The hives were hung from trees or kept on platforms to prevent pest infestation. Most had doors or access holes (Crane 1999, 229) Honey comb was removed from the bottom of a closed top log hive. The beekeeper would take all the honey early in the season or leave enough combs later in the season for winter. 

Period Beehives: Wicker Skeps

A skep is an inverted basket made of wicker or coiled straw used in beekeeping for housing bees. The skep is over two thousand years old and straw hives are still used today in parts of Europe today. 

There are many examples of skeps in period illustrations and woodcuts. The word skep is derived from the word skeppa. It is Norse for a container and measurement for grain. It was not until the sixteenth century that this term was used with regards to beekeeping. Before that, the word “hive” was used.

The earliest known remains of a wicker skep were from 1-200AD. The example came from a peat bog near Wilhelmshaven on the North Sea coast of Lower Saxony. Wicker and coiled straw basket techniques were known since Antiquity and could have been used as skeps then.

Wicker skeps, also referred to as an alveary, were woven on a whorl of thin branches of a spruce or fir tree. Dictionary.com defines a whorl as “a circular arrangement of like parts, such as leaves or flowers around a point on an axis.” The branches formed the main stakes. Other stakes were added for support as the diameter increased. Wicker skep size and shape is determined by the size and shape of the whorl used.

Wicker hives were daubed with cloam or cloom. Cloaming increases the weather resisting abilities of the hive. There are various recipes for cloam, but the main ingredients are sand, ashes, dung and lime. Straw skeps last longer than wicker. The cloam used to protect the hive adheres better to the straw. This led to straw hives replacing wicker hives in later years because of its ability to resist weather better.

Period Hives & Their Modern Equivalents: Cork Hives

Not much information is available written in English for the use of cork hives in medieval and Renaissance time periods. There is mostly pictorial evidence. Cork hives were cylindrical or cube shaped. These hives were used primarily in Spain and Portugal because of the abundant availability of the material. The methods of creating cork hives did not change from period through at least this time.

Evidence of cork hives has been found in France. The use of cork hives could also relate to temperature. This is true of hives of any style and material.

Cork hives are used to this day. There is a movement to increase the amount of cork used in art and for practical uses.

Georgica (BNF Lat. 7939 A, fol. 38v), 1458

Modern Recipe: It's Steve's Birthday!

I asked my friend Steve what his favorite recipe using honey is in honor of his birthday. Gulab Jamun is one of my favorites too! Enjoy!

Ingredients:
1 cup Milk Powder
1/3 cup Maida/Plain Flour
¼ tsp Baking Soda
A pinch of Salt (Optional)
1 tbsp Yogurt or 2 tbsp Full Fat Milk
1 tsp Ghee or Oil
Few slivers of Pistachio or Almonds for garnishing

For Syrup:
1¾ cups Honey
1¼ cups Water
8 Green Cardamoms, peeled and seeds crushed to fine powder
A generous pinch of Saffron
1 tsp Rose Water (Optional but recommended)
Method:
Prepare the sugar syrup:

1. Add honey and water in a wide pan and heat it on a medium flame.
2. Once the honey dissolves completely, add cardamom powder and bring it to boil by stirring every now and then. Let the honey syrup thicken slightly, about 2-3 minutes after coming to boil. You don’t need to boil it until it reaches one thread consistency.
3. Turn off the flame and run the honey syrup through fine sieve to remove any impurities.
4. Transfer the honey syrup back into the wide pan and mix in saffron and rose water if using. Let it cool down to room temperature.

Prepare the Gulab Jamuns:

1. While the honey syrup is cooling down, prepare the Gulab Jamun mixture. Sieve milk powder, plain flour, baking soda and salt into a mixing bowl.
2. Mix in yogurt or milk and ghee/oil and start to mix the ingredients lightly to make soft sticky dough. I didn’t need to add more than a tbsp of yogurt and a tsp of ghee but if you find the mixture too dry and crumbly, just add little yogurt or milk about ½ tsp at time until you get a sticky soft dough. Make sure that you don’t over mix or knead the dough as we don’t want the gluten to form. The plain flour used acts as a binding agent and if you over mix the dough then the gluten formed will make the mixture dense and the gulab jamuns will not absorb the sugar syrup well.
3. Grease your palms with ghee or oil and pinch marble sized dough and roll it into smooth round or oval shaped balls. Make sure that the balls are small as they double in size once they are fried and soaked in honey syrup.
4. Keep in mind that the dough balls should be smooth without any cracks as they will split and crumble when deep frying. Arrange the balls on a plate and cover it with a kitchen towel to prevent from drying out.

Deep frying the Gulab Jamuns:

1. Heat oil in a pan for deep frying the gulab jamuns on medium flame and then reduce the flame to low. To test if the oil is hot enough, drop one ball into the oil. The dough ball should slowly float to the surface of the oil. If the dough ball sinks to the bottom and stays there, then the oil is not hot enough. If the dough ball quickly floats to the top as well as browns quickly, then the oil is too hot.
2. Ideally the dough balls should not crack when deep frying. If you find it spliting open or breaking when deep frying, mix 1 or 2 tsp of plain flour to the dough mixture and lightly mix them well. Pinch a small ball and test if stays in shape without cracking by dropping it into heated oil. If it slowly floats to the surface of the oil without cracking and evenly browns then you have mastered the art of making Gulab Jamun. :)
3. Gently drop 3-4 dough balls into the hot oil and stir with them with a slotted spoon so that they get evenly browned from all the sides. Be careful when stirring them with slotted spoon as they are quite soft and can break if you are not gentle. Once they turn golden brown, remove them from oil with a help of a slotted spoon and transfer them to the prepared sugar syrup.
4. Prepare all the Gulab Jamuns and let them rest in the sugar syrup for at least 1 to 2 hours before serving so that they absorb the sugar syrup well and become soft and melt in mouth treats.
5. You can serve these delicious melt in mouth Gulab Jamuns warm, cold or chilled on their own, garnished with slivered almonds or pistachio and a generous spoonful of honey syrup drizzled on top. One other most enjoyable way to serve them is warm with a scoop of cold vanilla ice cream! Heaven!

Medieval Pic: Roman Amphora

AEthelmearc Crown Tournament is today! The theme is Roman. Today's picture is honor of that theme. Roman amphora were used for the transportation of food. This set was found with honey residue in them.

Medieval Recipe: Posca

This is a contribution from guest writer the Honorable Lady Desiderata Drake.

Posca is an Ancient Roman drink very similar to sekanjabin, frequently mentioned as something soldiers drank, and as an ingredient in cooking. Soldiers would carry Posca with them, and add it to water when they found it. The vinegar would act as a disinfectant, making the water safer to drink. In its most basic form, it consists of vinegar (most likely red wine vinegar), and water, though honey and herbs and spices were sometimes added.

I experimented quite a bit with the ratios of vinegar and water, but my sweet tooth was not happy until I added the honey. Lots of honey. I added the mint and coriander to make the drink even more refreshing on a hot summer day.

Ingredients (makes enough for 4-5 gallons of water)

1.5 c Honey
.5   c Vinegar (Red wine vinegar, White wine vinegar, or Apple Cider vinegar)
1 T Ground Corriander
Mint to taste

1. Put all ingredients into sauce pan, and bring to a boil.

2. Remove from heat and let cool

3. Store mixture in glass bottle or other sealed container.

4. For one glass:
    Add 1-2 T to 12-16oz of water and stir. 
   
    For 5-gallon water cooler
    Fill water cooler with 4-5 gallons of water. Pour in entire Posca mixture (2 c.).
    Make sure lid is sealed on cooler, and shake cooler to mix.

Source: Pass the Garum: Eating Like the Ancients

Medieval Pic: Hive picture from Northern Italy

Detail of a miniature of beehives with bees. Northern Italy. (Lombardy)

From the British Library

Modern Recipe: Honey Packed Peaches

It's canning season!

Honey was used in the middle ages and Renaissance as a preservative. It is still used to this day. Use honey instead of a sugar syrup to preserve your fruit.

Canned Peaches recipe found on Honey.com

Honey Packed Peaches

YIELD: 6 PINTS

Ingredients

• 2-3/4 cups - water, divided
• 1/4 cup - lemon juice
• 5 lbs. - peaches*, peeled, pitted and cut into wedges
• 1-1/4 cups - honey
• 2 Tablespoons - vanilla extract
• 6 small - strips lemon zest

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Directions

In a large bowl, mix 1/4 cup water and lemon juice. Stir fruit in gently, coating all pieces. Set aside. In a small saucepan, bring honey and remaining water to a boil. Remove from heat; stir in vanilla. Cover pan to keep contents hot. Pack fruit gently into 6 hot sterilized pint jars, filling to 1/4 inch from top of jar, and place a piece of lemon zest in each jar. Fill jars with honey mixture up to 1/4 inch from tops. Wipe rims of jars; top with lids. Screw on bands. Place jars on rack in canning kettle of hot water, adding water if necessary to bring water level to 1 inch above tops of jars. Bring water to a rolling boil; boil for 25 minutes. Remove jars carefully and cool on a wire rack. *Apricots or nectarines may be substituted.

TIP

Every honey variety has its own unique color and taste. There are approximately 300 varieties of honey in the United States - with flavors that range from delicately sweet to richly bold. In general, the lighter the color of honey, the milder the flavor. Try a light honey such as Clover or Orange Blossom in Honey Packed Peaches and Honey-Lemon Jelly. Experiment with a more robustly flavored honey such as wildflower or avocado when making Strawberry Jam or any of your favorite recipes.

A History of Honey and Its use in Period: (Part 5 of 6): Trade, Exportation, and Importation

This is the fifth part in a series of entries on the use of honey in pre-1600's history.

In Roman times, large quantities of honey were exported from Turdetania in Southern Spain. Ligurian people on the North-West coast of Italy carried their honey to Genoa. “Inhabitants of Carnic Alps exchange wax, honey, and other natural products for necessities of life” (Crane 1999, p491)

Honey and beeswax were traded out of Russia by the 900’s, along the trade route via the Neva and Volga to the Caspian Sea and then to Asia (Crane 1999, p 491) Beeswax was traded to Byzantium, Venice, and Genoa, before Christianity came to Russia in the 900’s (Galton 1971, p15) In 1555, Olaus Magnus reported that Europe exported much wax, but “honey they reserve to themselves in great supply.”

Spanish Arabs were important in the honey and sugar trades during the Muslim period (711AD-1492). In the 1500’s there were still Arab traders in Granada who specialized in buying honey from beekeepers. They would sell to merchants for use in the retail market.

Records survive of export and import of honey within Europe throughout the Middle Ages and following periods. After 989 AD, an Irish ship partially loaded with honey sailed to South Wales. ”Norse merchants maintained a brisk trade in Welsh slaves, horses, honey, malt, and wheat in exchange for Irish wines, furs,….butter, and coarse woolen cloth.” (Crane 1999, p491) Five Russian monasteries purchased several tons of honey each between the years of 1569 and 1599.

A History of Honey and Its Use in Period: (Part 3 of 6): Dues and Taxes

This is the third part in a series of entries on the use of honey in pre-1600's history.

Honey was used as payment of dues and taxes. In Medieval Wales, honey was a common payment for rent. “After Muslin Arabs conquered Spain in 711 AD, a list of dues payable in Murcia includes honey, wax and slaves paid half as much as other” (Crane 1999, 490). Around the same time in Ireland, if a bee stung a man, the owner of the bee had to give him, “a man’s full meal of honey”. (Crane 1999, p490) In England, under the law of King Ine of Wessex, the annual rent for ten hides of land was ten vats of honey. One hide of land would support a free family and its dependents.

Charlemagne refers to dues paid in mead, wax, and honey in his Capitulaire de Villis. In Poland, serfs who owned hives had to pay dues. Owners of upright log hives paid in liquid honey. Those who owned horizontal log hives paid in comb honey. The Domesday Book, compiled between 1087 and 1187, has many references to dues paid in honey, but not wax. This suggests that the dues were of a pre-Christian origin, as wax was required by the Church to make candles. (Fraser 1958, 21)

August Quote - Driving of the Bees: Charles Butler, 1609

Driving the bees is part of the medieval process of harvesting honey. Skeps do not have frames that allow for easy inspection of the hive and harvesting the honey. Charles Butler recommends driving the bees rather than smoking them out with a sulfur fire.The smoke from the sulfur fire killed the bees and left a residue on the wax and in the honey.

Below is a quote from Charles Butler's "The Feminine Monarchie: Or a Treatis Concerning Bees and the Due Ordering of Them" published in 1609. He discusses how to drive the bees in order to harvest the honey.

“Around midsummer, early in the morning, invert the skep to be driven. Cover the mouth of the full skep with an empty one. Wrap the join with a cloth to seal the opening. Clap rhythmically on the sides of the full hive. The bees will walk to the other hive. After most of the bees have walked to the empty hive, place it where the first hive was. Bees that are coming back from flight will go in there.”  - Charles Butler

History of Honey and Its use in Period: (Part 2 of 6): Honey Collection

(    This is the second in a series of entries on a brief history of honey and its use in pre-1600's history. 

Retrieving honey is the first step to its use. There were two ways to eat the honey, straight from the combs or strained. The simplest way to separate the honey from the comb is to break up the combs and squeeze each piece into a receptacle. The first honey that dripped out was referred to as “Run Honey”. Next, combs were put into a strainer, such as a bag of woven cotton or other natural fiber or a pottery vessel with holes on the sides. Pressing the combs through the strainer or bag made a second honey. This honey contained pollen and was bitter. It was kept separate from the first honey. Columella describes the process in Rome c. 50 AD[1]:

“Whatever be the number of Honey combs that are harvested, you should make the honey on the same day, while they are still warm. A wicker work basket or a bag rather loosely woven of fine withies in the shape of an inverted cone, like that through which wine is strained, is hung up in a dark place, and then the honey combs are heaped in one by one. But care must be taken that those parts of the waxen cells, which contain either young bees or dirty red matter [pollen?] are separated from them, for they have an ill flavour and corrupt the honey with their juice. Then, when the honey has been strained and has flowed down into the basin put underneath to catch it…the fragments of the honey-combs, which have remained in the bag, are handled again and the juice squeezed from them. What flows from them is honey of the second quality and is stored apart by itself by the more careful people.”

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[1] Although Columella is pre-period, he is referenced in period bee-keeping manuscripts such as Thomas Hill’s “A Profitable Instruction of the Perfect Ordering of Bees”, written in 1608.

Annotated Bib: "Small Scale Beekeeping", Curtis Gentry

Gentry, Curtis. Small Scale Beekeeping (PDF on Top Bar Hives). 1982. Found at:

https://www.k4health.org/sites/default/files/M0017_Small_Scale_Beekeeping.pdf

Published by the Peace Corps to teach the usage of Top Bar Hives in developing countries. There are other resources found on the internet, but this is a free resource with basic information on using TBH's.

Simple beauty...