Newsletter Archives
Our website and small business derived from a couple of hobbies: Jennifer's soap making and Ruben's beekeeping. Jennifer began to make soap that we feel is much better than anything you can buy in a store and we have many different types available: honey oatmeal, traditional lye soap, beeswax, castile and much more.
Ruben had thought about beekeeping for many years and dove in head first in 2006! With hundreds of pounds of honey soon to come, the planned expansion of our Apiary to 7 - 10 hives in 2007, and our amazement of how well the soaps are - we decided a website would be a good place to sell our products.
It is not our intention come across as a super-store with every product and answer. We want everyone to know this is, for now anyway, a small-time operation. In fact, if you are here, it is probably because you have already used and enjoy our soaps and honey. As we perfect things, we will have more to offer. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions.
Thank you
Ruben & Jennifer Showalter
Bee Farm Updates May / June 2007
Well I have to say that May and June have been wide open for the bees (and beekeeper) things have been booming, I started out the month of May with a beekeeper friend calling and asking me to go with him to get a swarm, we picked that swarm up with no problems then the next day one of my hives at the shop swarmed and I installed it into a new hive. The next day after lunch I looked out at the hives and there was another swarm in the trees, so while hiving that swarm another hive started to swarm. As it turned out I had two swarms in the air at the same time and I took pictures which are below. All of the dark specs in the pictures that look like dirt are bees, there were tens of thousands flying all around me. The wild part is both swarms landed in the same tree about two feet apart from each other. I was able to hive both of them so in three days I had captured four swarms. One of the swarms did not like it's new home and absconded which means the entire colony left. I gave one swarm to my friend who helps me and I now have 14 hives. As May came to the end the bees had not been making much honey I guess due to the drought, but after the hard rains we had at the end of May I checked the hives on the 4th of June and most of them were full of honey. They have kept me very busy working to make sure they have room to expand. I took my first sting to the head a few weeks ago one nailed me just above the right eye brow and my eye swelled a little but not too bad. My sting counter is climbing fast, and the venom hardly affects me anymore. Just the initial prick of the stinger feels like a thorn and some swelling for a little while and then it's gone. I also got stung 12 times one morning before work I went down over the hill and lifted the top off to put a super on at 7:00 am without smoking the bees, turns out bees don't like to be disturbed that early and I paid for it. This Saturday I am starting two bee extractions by trapping the bees out of houses like I did last year, I'll post pic's next month.
I have been working on converting half of my basement into a honey house to repair equipment, extract and bottle honey. I am wiring outlets and installing new ceilings and bright lights, pressure cleaning the floor as well. I hope to be done in another week or so. I am going to be removing supers and extracting honey next weekend I will update in July and have honey for sale soon after extracting. If the rain continues we will keep getting a good clover crop which I have tasted and this honey is even better than last years. I hope to get some buckwheat honey at the end of summer which is a very dark rich honey.
23 Stings
Ruben
Pictures:
April Bee Update April 2007
Well April got off to a booming start I checked one hive on March 20 and the upper super was empty, then I came back the next Saturday and it was full of honey. I have had to add supers to 10 of 11 hives so far and then the cold weather hit and the bees have been slow for a week or so. About the third week of March I was checking on the hives after work one day and was not using smoke to calm them down, I had been into 10 of the hive with no problems, when I opened the 11th and final hive they did not take it well and ate me alive. They chased me half way up the hill before I got them off of me and I took six stings to the my legs. Then two days later I was in a hive and one got me on the thumb which was no big deal. A few minutes later one got me under the bottom side of my wrist and WOW when I came back to reality I was fifteen feet away from where I had been standing. It hurt so bad I forgot my name and it took me five minutes to find where I threw my hive tool. Other beekeeper told me she probably got me on a nerve, they also said that was the reason Mohammad Ali said he floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee. Within an hour my wrist had swollen up big time and I could not hold a glass of water in my hand, it took two days for the swelling to go down and it itched for a week!
So far I have had no swarms but the next eight weeks is considered the swarm season. I was in all the hives yesterday and most are booming, I pulled a few frames out of six hives that were getting compacted in the brood chamber and inserted new frames for the queen to lay in. I took those six frames and inserted three each full of egg, brood and bees into two new hives and they will raise a queen and that allows me to start up two hives for free since I am putting them into the hives of the two colonies that died this winter so I am now back to 13 hives. I'm sure you have all seen the honeybee problems in the news lately called CCD Colony Collapse Disorder, they still have no idea what is causing it and congress is looking to fund the research to find out why. It seems they are figuring out how important these little creatures are. Next months report should be a busy one, until then.
10 Stings
Ruben
- Honey is either the exudation of the sky or a sort of sap of stars, or a juice released by the air.
- - Pliny the Elder
Beehive Updates March 2007
Hello again,
I hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Year. The bees are getting ready for another season. I have been working on restoring some old honey supers and equipment that was given to me. I have checked in a few times on the hives and all bees seem to be doing good so far except two colonies which have died. With the warm weather in January they were flying quit a bit. On New Years Day they were actually bringing in pollen for the first time this year, which is sooner than normal I am told.
The maple trees are budding and the bees have started collecting lots of pollen and a little maple tree nectar; this is the first sign to a queen that spring is around the corner. The bees use the pollen for raising brood (brood is young bee larva, if you forgot). It is very high in protein and also helps them build strength. All of the queens have started laying eggs. I have read that one colony can make as much as eleven pounds of honey per day if great conditions are met; i.e.: rain, temperature , colony size, health, etc.
With that said, the next three to four weeks is the time when most colonies will die. The reason is once the queen moves down to the brood chamber on the bottom and begins to lay eggs, the cluster of bees will move down around the brood to keep it warm. If there are severe cold conditions the bees will NOT leave the brood, no matter what. Often, bees are found dead in a hive because they protect the brood, the future of their colony's existence, to the death and will not leave the brood even with a full super of honey right above them. For this reason, it is very important that I make quick inspections this month and if there is no honey around the cluster of bees then I will take a few frames from the super above them and replace the empty ones beside the cluster.
Also if anyone runs across good deals on mason jars of various sizes anytime this year, please let me know. Or, if you have good jars in storage, I will buy them as well. I am getting too comfortable around the bees, as this season I will only be wearing a veil instead of the jacket and gloves like last year. I will just have to be sure I don't drop any frames like I did back in November. I accidentally dropped a frame of bees, they only fell about ten inches before they smacked the top of the hive body. I was covered in bees attacking me. As luck would have it I wore a pair of sweat pants under my pants so when they started stinging me their stingers would not go far enough to penetrate to my legs. There were over fifty venom spots in my pants where they had stung but not one got me.
Last but not least, my brother in-law, Mike Smith, who is a graphic designer, has been working on redesigning our website. Jennifer and I were talking about how we had a concept for a logo we wanted to make and Mike said "Hey, I can do that." He designed our logo from us just telling him what we wanted. So, if you know anybody who needs graphic designs or a website designed you can get in contact with Mike at grum.com. Check out our site, which is in progress and will be totally done in June. Mike is just waiting for me to send pictures and info. Unfortunately, I have to get some honey in order to send those pictures so it won't be done until June.
10 Stings
Ruben
Pictures:
Beehive Updates November 2006
Well my first year of beekeeping is winding down. September had the bees very busy getting ready for winter. In September, I went through all six hives and removed all surplus supers to get them ready for winter and about an hour after doing so, I had one hive that swarmed into a tree. I must have pulled the queen off in one of the supers by accident. I cut off the branch that they clustered in and laid it in front of a new hive and they marched right in. I went back a few days later, found which hive she was from and then combined the two colonies. The last I checked that queen was not doing to well.
A run down on what the bees are doing now is the queen stopped laying eggs and the workers bees filled the cells she would normally lay eggs in with honey. All breeding for the year is over and so the worker (female) bees have stopped feeding the drones (male) and are dragging them to the edge of the hive, pulling their wings off or stinging them and shoving them overboard. They don't let drones go through the winter so they don't have to feed them. They will make more drones next spring. So if I have learned anything from beekeeping so far it is that if your a guy you may find yourself clipped, stung and dead before winter if women are in charge! Just kidding. :)
Out of six hives, I had one colony that filled a shallow surplus super. I also had one that needed a shallow super to get through the winter. So I removed it from one and put it on the other. I also have a beekeeper friend who wanted to reduce the scale of his apiary due to health problems. So I worked out a deal with him to purchase nine colonies and equipment. One of the colonies I got was a late season swarm which did not have enough honey to make it through the winter so this morning I brought it to the shop and combined it with the hive that had the weak queen that had swarmed. By placing a newspaper on top of one hive and then place the other hive about the newspaper the two colonies will chew through the paper in 24 hours and then the two queens will battle to the death and the winner will be the accepted queen. This will make one strong colony from two weak ones. A few of them got up a hole in my bee jacket and I got nailed in the back twice before I could get them out.
There are approximately five full supers on these hives that I removed a few weeks ago, so I should have some honey in November. I am extracting and bottling honey which should be ready in early November. I will be offering the first sales to everyone who has been on my newsletter list first so if you would like to purchase some for Christmas gifts or what ever just e-mail me and I will put you down for some. The jar sizes and pricing for pure wildflower honey will be 1/2 pound nice queen line Jars for $ 3.50 or 1 pound queen line jars for $ 5.50. Also everyone that took the time to read my newsletters gets a free jar of honey for yourselves! So if you would like to buy some for Christmas gifts or what ever, let me know. For those of you that don't know, Jennifer has been making handmade lye soaps that are much better than any deodorant bars you are used to buying from stores, so we decided to start a website to feature my (honey) and her (soap) hobbies so we are working on a website which we will have up and fully running this next year it is called " Suds and Honey " www.sudsandhoney.com you can check it out but it is not done yet, you will be able to get beeswax, pollen, propolis, honey and a growing variety of handmade soaps. I will also have an archive of my news letters their along with honey recipe's and more.
My newsletter will appear at random this winter if at all because for the most part not much is going on. The hives will slowly begin to come to life in late January or February. After all combines and losses I will be going into winter with 13 colonies. Hopefully I won't loose any this winter but most beekeepers loose a few every year.
4 Stings
Ruben
August Beehive Updates August 2006
Once upon a time there was a wise man somewhere who said if you play with bees your gonna get stung. Turns out that guy new exactly what he was talking about! The inevitable finally happened back in July one got up my pants leg and stung me on the back of the leg just about my knee. The good news is I seem to have very little reaction to it. It felt like a thorn prick and swelled less than a mosquito bite, then about a week later in the first week of August another got me on the back of my hand and again it barely hurt and itched for about three hours the next day.
We went and picked up the four hives I bought about a month ago and after them settling down for a week and doing a thorough inspection three of the hives are in great shape and each have a third super on them so there is a small chance we may get a taste of honey this year! One hive was queen less and had worker bees laying eggs in it. I identified this problem by seeing four and five eggs in each cell and a queen will never lay more than one egg per cell. The problem is that worker bees can only lay drones (male) and all they will do is eat honey. Once a worker starts laying egg there is a large chance they won't accept a new queen if one is placed in the hive and may kill the new queen. After consulting other beekeepers I decided to take the hives out in the field and sweep away all of the bees and bring the equipment and frames of honey to the house, so I am down to six hives. I will take the frames of honey and put on another hive to help them get through the winter.
We sealed up the hole at the house I did the extraction and brought that hive to the house and it seems to be doing OK I just hope they make enough honey to get through the winter. As for my original two hives there has been no progress at all. It seems that they don't get much done in August I guess it's just too hot and dry.
This weekend I was taking the frames of honey out of the freezer( from the laying worker hive) to put in a super and place it on top of one of my weak hives and I dropped it and the comb broke loose from the frame so I extracted my first small amount of honey. I strained it and placed it in a jar and took a picture. It is very light amber in color and tastes great! I took a few pictures of my new hives, they are below and I also pasted some interesting bee/honey quotes I have found along the way in my bee research.
2 Stings
Bee Happy!
Ruben
Pictures:
July Beehive Update July 2006
Well a lot has happened in the last month. I got a call back in June to remove colony of bees that were in a wall of a house so I am using a cone trap method to remove them. I took some window screen and made a cone out of it with a small opening on the end for the bees to get out. I then installed the trap over the entrance with duct tape, sealing up all entrances into the house. When the bees come out of the entrance they can not find their way back in, I then set up a hive body beside the trap and put one frame of eggs and brood from one of my hives into it. This helps draw the now homeless bees into my hive and they took the eggs and made a few queen cells which have successfully hatched into a queen and I know have 90% of the bees out of the house and in my hive. Once all of the bees are out the queen in the house will die and I will then take the trap off and the bees will go into the house and bring all of the honey and pollen out and put it into my hive which is now their home. Then just seal up the hole and it's done. I have some pictures of this to show, it works fairly well. These bees have for the most part been as calm as my bees, but one day for what ever reason I experience what a hive of mad bees was like. If i went with in three feet of the hive I would get covered in bees from head to toe and I would have to turn around and walk slowly about 20 feet before they left me alone.
My strong hive is doing great, they are filling up the second deep hive body and all is well, my weak hive has made little progress although every time I inspect it there is new eggs and brood and I see the queen, the hive is just not filling up. The bees must be blaming the queen because for whatever reason it looks like they are raising a new queen. When it emerges she will do battle with the existing queen, whoever wins will be the new queen. Either that or they are going to swarm, I guess we'll see!
Other news I have is that I had planned on expanding my bee farm by ordering three colonies this fall for next spring. I ended up running upon a great deal with an existing beekeeper and I bought four established colonies today for much less than it would have cost me to start three new colonies in the spring. This way they should give me surplus honey next year instead of having to wait a year. I will be picking them up on Saturday. Counting the colony I am removing from the house I now have 7 hives.
Some of you thought that Anthony was wearing my bees suit in the pictures last month but that was his suit and I have some pictures below of him working the hives with me. He likes it but his interest level is at about five minutes, then he is picking black berries and walking back up the hill!
No stings yet!
Ruben
Pictures:
6th Hive Inspection June 2006
I went into both hives yesterday and they are both doing great! The weak hive is now looking pretty strong and will probably have the first hive body full in two weeks. The other hive is going strong and I am starting to see honey being stored from this hive. Due to the flow of things settling down I will start sending my updates out once a month instead of weekly. There is someone who has bees in a house that needs to have them removed from a wall so I may be doing my first hive removal in the next week, which will hopefully be a third colony. Also due to things being very busy on the bee farm I am happy to announce that I had to hire my first employee as an assistant. There are pictures of my new employee below and you MUST take a look at the pictures!
No stings yet!
Ruben
Pictures:
5th Hive Inspection June 2006
I could not go into the hives this weekend due to the high winds on Saturday and overcast and threat of rain on Sunday so I went into them at lunch time today. There is not much to report, everything looks good in both hives, for the first time I was able to spot and watch the queens in both hives and I got a couple good pictures finally of both of them. The one queen is marked with a white spot of paint on her thorax, this is the queen that I purchased with the package. The other queen has no mark and is the queen that super ceded my dead queen. See if you can spot them in the pictures. The bees are bringing in tons of pollen but not much nectar, I guess there is no nectar flow with the drought we have had. I did the entire inspection today on both hives with no gloves, a few times there were bees crawling all over my hands nibbling on my fingers but as of now I can still say:
No stings yet!
Ruben
Pictures:
4th Hive Inspection May 2006
Well I went into the hives yesterday with hopes of finding a newly emerged queen which I found the queen cell had been chewed through and it was empty. I then checked all ten frames close trying to find her and I found a total of five queen cells that had all been chewed through, the others were hidden well on the sides and I never saw them before yesterday. I could not spot a queen anywhere so after talking with other beekeepers on the web, they informed me that multiple queen cells is normal that what happens is the first queen that emerges will then go and seek out all other queen cells and chew through them and kill the others before they hatch. The worker bees make multiple queen cells with the existing eggs so that if one larva does bad they still will have others. They also told me that the queen does not get large until after she has been bred and is faster and more difficult to see, and to expect to see eggs in ten days.
My other hive is doing great! when I lifted the top cover off of this his the buzzing was much louder and more intimidating which got me a little nervous so I stepped back and put my gloves on. For what ever reason they were not too happy to see me, after checking the frames and removing both top hive feeders I noticed my leather gloves had taken five stings. The size of this colony has doubled since last week and there are lots off eggs and brood so there will probably be huge numbers next week. There are two pictures below notice in the first one is the queen less hive they are capping off stored honey with the bright white wax. The second picture is of my better hive that is building up brood and comb.
No stings yet!
Ruben
Pictures:
3rd Hive Inspection May 2006
Checked the hives today and my hive with a queen is doing great lots of capped brood which means this hive is getting ready to have a population explosion, they have drawn comb out on 80% of the frame space so it won't be long before I add a second hive body to this colony. I found plenty of eggs but the queen was elusive, I want to get a good picture of her but she likes to hide.
The queen less hive has gotten a little hot (which is mean) without a queen they are working less and have not built anymore comb. I read that they loose their motivation to be productive until they get a queen. The queen cell is capped and she should emerge around Monday or so, I've been told she will mate between the 6th and 10th day and then hopefully things will get back to normal. There is a picture below of the queen cell I outlined it in red so everyone would know where it is. There is also a cool picture of two bees in front of the hive coming in with the pollen sacks on the hind legs loaded with pollen. Notice in the one picture that I am getting a little more brave and no longer wearing gloves!
No stings yet!
Ruben
Pictures:
2nd Hive Inspection May 2006
Well the bad news is that in my colony that was doing good, it seems that the queen is gone-dead-see ya-bye! The eggs I saw Saturday have now turned into brood (which is the larva stage between egg and bee) but there are no new eggs and I did not see the queen. The good news is that the worker bees have taken one of the existing eggs and made a queen cell and are raising a new queen. The queen cell is large and looks like a peanut shell and is close to that size. They will feed her royal jelly which is what turns her into a queen and hopefully she will emerge and mate then begin laying eggs. Some experts I talk to on a beekeeping forum said I most likely killed or injured her on Saturday when I did the hive inspection and reinstalled the frames, they say it's a common rookie mistake!
The other hive that had troubles on Saturday is now doing awesome, there are thousands of eggs, also pollen and yes some honey. I was able to see the queen in this hive and snapped off a picture before she hid herself, there is a picture of her below she is in the lower right hand corner and you can see her back half, she looks different than the worker bees and does not have the black stripes, she is hiding her thorax and head. I will update in 4-5 days.
No stings yet!
Ruben
Pictures:
First Hive Inspection May 2006
Well I did my first hive inspection today smoked the bees and went in on the first hive and everything looked good, they are building comb and have stored up pollen and water. I looked for the queen but never saw her but did see lots of eggs in the cells which means she is in there somewhere. I refilled the feeder and put the top on.
When I opened up the second hive i found a mess. In this hive I used the full foundation and it was collapsing on most of the frames and causing them to stick together, so I switched to plan b, I came back up to the house and put starter strips into ten new frames. I then opened the hive back up and removed 9 of the ten frames one by one sweeping all of the bees off and then installed the new frames with starter strips. It set them back five days but hopefully this will be much better. The queen was the same as the first lots of eggs but she was hiding. I took pictures to show how much progress they have made in five days.
No stings yet!
Ruben
Pictures:
Bees Arrived May 2006
My packages of bees came in this morning and I am very happy to say I was able to install both colonies into their hives without getting stung! Although it was quite intimidating to have 25,000 bees flying around my head. I installed them around 1pm and went back and checked on them at 6pm and it looks like they have accepted their new homes. I have to recheck in 3-4 days to make sure the queens are OK before I can say it was a total success. Jennifer was standing 10 ft away the whole time with no protection on and none of them bothered her. There are a few picture below, as they start to build brood and comb I will send some picture!
Ruben
Pictures:
The Beekeeping Adventure! April 30 2006
For those who don't know I spent the winter putting beehives together and researching all I can about honeybee's and beekeeping. Chris and I built a hive stand down in the bottom of our land, and tomorrow is the day that 25,000 bees and two queens are supposed to arrive at the post office. I will be installing these bees into two hives and will keep everyone posted on my progress. Plus seeing how long it takes me to get stung! You can click the links below to look at some pictures I have taken so far. I will send updated info once I have it. Wish me luck, I'm going to need it.
Ruben