At the Bee Farm

Chicago Honey Co-op - Homeless

2012-01-15T11:51:00.000-06:00

Goodbye to Fillmore Apiary

2011-12-05T15:08:00.001-06:00

In 2004 when we started our co-op, we had no idea how long we might be allowed to keep bees on the property along West Fillmore St in Chicago, perhaps 2 or 3 years at best. It has been our great pleasure to have had an apiary and community farm there for 8 full years. When we started, we couldn’t have have imagined what a rich experience it would be.

An abandoned industrial remnant reverted to prairie wherever the concrete wasn’t, we found ourselves surrounded by nature in the middle of Chicago. It is easy to describe the place in terms of size and location but much harder to describe the atmosphere. What we made there was much more than honey. We made friends.

Beekeeping Class June 2011

With the help of The North Lawndale Greening Committee, we made a community farm for anyone who wanted to join. We made a gathering place. We made a place for learning about bees, about nature and about ourselves.

Sadly, our time there is almost up. The property has been sold and we must move out in late Winter of 2012. We can’t hope to find another place a large as Fillmore Apiary so we are looking for 3 or so smaller locations. We have a few possibilities lined up but nothing is certain. We really want to stay in the North Lawndale community but know this may not be possible.

We will miss the apiary on Fillmore so much but can be happy that the friends we made because of it will still be with us. In looking back on this past year, I made a list of things we did in 2011.

Conducted tours of the apiary for school groups and the public.
Gave beekeeping presentations at the Power House High School, Nature Museum, College of Dupage, University of Chicago Hillel and others.
Continued hosting a community farm at the apiary in partnership with the North Lawndale Greening Committee & others
Tended 50 hives and sold honey and products at 2 Farmer markets from July to the present
Continued to raise Illinois Honeybee queens.

Continued teaching beekeeping to Master Gardeners at the Museum of Science and Industry, Smart Home Exhibit.
Taught beekeeping to 50 people through Winter classes at the Jane Addams Hull House Museum.
Employment in beekeeping skills for neighbors and volunteers over the past 8 years.
Gave advice on beekeeping to members of the public through our website blog and email contacts.
Tended 8 hives on City of Chicago Buildings and one at the Lurie Garden, Millennium Park.
Continued the preSERVE* partnership with Slow Food Chicago, Neighborspace and the North Lawndale Greening Committee, growing Sweet Potatoes, Black-eyed and Crowder Peas on a former vacant lot. (12th Place & Central Park Ave.)
Hosted 2 events at the apiary open to the public; Sweet Summer Solstice and TomatoFest

As a community based organization, we have always operated on the slimmest of shoestrings so paying for the costs of moving and relocation will be difficult to handle. Our “rent” for the past 8 years has been 12 dollars a year thanks to the generosity of the developer, Mark Ross. We have always supported our work with sales of our honey and other products but we find ourselves needing to raise money to cover moving expenses both expected and unexpected. We will probably have to pay for fencing any property without it. That could run into thousands of dollars. So we have to raise money now. Our timeline is short.

If you have an interest in helping out financially send us a note using the “Contact Us” link at the top of this page.

If you would like to share your memories of Fillmore Apiary, leave them in the comments section of this post.

If you have pictures to share visit http://www.flickr.com/groups/fillmoreapiary/ and add your pictures or video.

Record Keeping at the Bee Farm

2011-09-05T16:11:00.000-05:00

Sweet Summer Solstice 2011

2011-06-16T19:52:00.001-05:00

Come on out and visit us on Friday June 24th for the most affordable fundraiser in Chicago. For $15 and a potluck dish to share, you get to party outdoors on one of the longest evenings of the year at our apiary on Fillmore St.

If you have never visited our apiary, this year is the year to come out to the Solstice potluck. The food is always excellent, there is plenty of beer and wine and the apiary is pretty spectacular.

Slow Food Chicago has sponsored and coordinated this event for us for the last 3 years and everyone who comes has a great time. You can buy tickets and get details on the Slow Food Chicago website.

If you take a look at the satellite map, you can see how large the space is. Plenty of room for a big party!

We will be giving tours of the beehives and community farm and will have honey, candles and more for sale.

Hope to see you there!

Live Bees Rush!

2011-05-19T19:44:00.000-05:00

5 Queens delivered from Southern Illinois today. Priority small flat rate boxes are perfect for this. The black cap on the end of the queen cage holds sugar candy for the bees to eat.

The Queen is on the right. She is marked with a white dot and shipped with four attendants who take care of her during the trip. The dot will make it a little easier to find her inside the hive.

Live bees attract attention.

Essential Equipment for Starting a Beehive Part Two

2011-03-01T14:22:00.002-06:00

After the hive is set up a beekeeper will need a few tools and bits of clothing in order to manage the hive.

1. Hive Tool: It would be impossible to inspect a beehive without a hive tool. That is the beekeeper name for a pry bar. It is used to open and inspect hives, and scrape wax and propolis out of the hive. It can be an emergency hammer, scrape bee stingers off skin and pull nails. You can’t keep bees without one.

2. Smoker: It is a misnomer to say that using smoke “calms” the bees. That isn’t what happens. The smoke distracts the bees, allowing the beekeeper to make an inspection or harvest frames of honey. It is basically a metal can with a bellows and a spout attached to it. Beekeepers get to start a fire inside it, close the lid and then use the smoke to manage the bees.

3. Gloves: Not all beekeepers use gloves but since that is where a beekeeper is most likely to get stung, it might pay to wear some. There are different kinds made with different materials but any good fitting sturdy pair of gloves will work.

4. Hat and Veil: More important than gloves is a hat and veil. A veil is just a mesh screen that keeps the bees away from your head. You may be tempted on a sunny day when the bees are busy, to work your hive without a veil. That is the day a guard bee will go right for your face.

5. Frame spacer: This tool makes it easy to properly space the frames of honey or brood inside the hive. Proper spacing is very important because if frames are placed to close together or far apart, the bees will either close the gap or build more comb in between the frames. While this is perfectly logical from a bee’s perspective, it makes working a hive more time consuming and messy for the beekeeper.

6. Bee brush: This brush has long soft bristles and is used when a beekeeper is harvesting frames of honey. A frame of honey is pulled up out of the hive and the bees are gently brushed off, back into the hive, Then the beekeeper quickly hides the frame of honey in a separate box with a lid so the bees can’t get at it again.

7. Feeder: When a new package of bees is installed, they go into an empty hive with no food. A feeder is used to supply sugar syrup until there is enough natural forage for the bees to bring back to the hive to make into honey.

8. Beekeeping book or Beekeeper: Everyone starting out in beekeeping needs a good source of information. Beekeeping is fascinating but can be very confusing almost all the time.
A good book or experienced beekeeper are invaluable.

Essential Equipment for Starting a Beehive Part One

2011-02-06T12:51:00.001-06:00

Hives with all medium boxes.
Top cover is raised for extra ventilation.

This is the time of year when beekeepers order new equipment and supplies for the coming beekeeping season. If you are just starting beekeeping this year the numbers and variety of equipment available can get pretty confusing. So here is a list of basics and why you will need them.

1. Hive boxes (also called supers): These come in three sizes - deep, medium and shallow. Traditionally, 2 deep boxes have been used as brood chambers with 3 or 4 or more boxes (medium or shallow) on top as needed for honey storage. There is actually no hard and fast rule here. Many beekeepers use all medium boxes throughout the hive. This helps reduce the weight of each box for lifting. If you have back problems you could even use shallow boxes all throughout the hive. So, 6 boxes as a minimum for deep and medium. More if you wanted to use only shallow boxes. (Top bar hives are an alternative but they deserve a blog post on their own.) You will only need two boxes to start out, adding boxes (supers) as needed for extra room and honey storage.

2. Frames and Foundation: For each box you have for your hive, you will need 10 wooden frames that fit that box and foundation for the frames. Foundation is intended to give the bees a head start on their comb building. You can buy all beeswax foundation or plastic foundation with a thin coat of beeswax applied to it. Alternatively, you can provide empty frames and let the bees build their comb from scratch but that can be a bit tricky and it takes the bees longer to get established.

3.Top Cover and Inner Cover: There are two covers for a hive that are used together. The inner cover goes directly on top of the top box of your hive and has a hole in the center. It helps to both ventilate and insulate the hive. The top cover is usually called a telescoping cover. It is like the lid of a box and is most often covered in galvanized metal which makes it waterproof, keeping the bees protected from the elements.

4. Bottom Board and Hive Stand: The last two parts of a beehive. The hive rests directly on top of the bottom board. Traditionally these are made of solid wood but screened bottom boards have become an important alternative. Screened bottom boards are a great help for ventilating the hive in Summer and for control of Varroa mites. The hive stand can be made of anything solid enough to support the weight of a full beehive. Wooden hive stands are available for sale but bricks, concrete blocks or found lumber are just as good. What is important to remember is that the hive needs to be at least 6 inches off the ground.

5. Entrance Reducer: There is a space between the bottom board and the bottom box of the hive where the bees enter and leave. Depending on the time of year, a small piece of wood with different sized holes cut out of it is used to enlarge or reduce the size of the hive entrance.

So, that is part one of the basic list of necessary equipment for starting a beehive.

Bird's Eye View of Chicago Honey Co-op

2010-11-20T13:05:00.005-06:00

Apiary 2010 overhead shot
Originally uploaded by chicagohoneycoop

Courtesy of Google, a satellite shot of our apiary. Notice the extent of the community farm to the left of the concrete. We opened the space up to neighbors and friends for growing food. Our Friends at the North Lawndale Greening Committee help to manage the growing space .

For reference - the concrete squares are 20 feet by 20 feet. The image was most likely taken any time from late June to mid August 2010.

Click on the picture to see a larger version.

The Queen is Dead, Long Live the Queen

2010-08-08T12:54:00.002-05:00

Courtesy of University of Illinois Extension

Every beekeeper runs into a testy hive once in awhile. Bees can get defensive for a lot of reasons. Most often, it is the beekeepers fault, dropping something, bumping the hive, moving too quickly, disturbing a frame of bees.

The weather can make bees cranky too. If the weather is cool and cloudy, a lot more bees will be at home that day with nothing else to do but defend the hive. This is why it isn’t a good idea to open up a hive when rain is threatening. A poor nectar flow can can have the same effect.

On a sunny day during a good nectar flow, when a hive is opened, the bees should be so absorbed by their work that they barely notice you. That is why, when a beekeeper has a hive that is consistently defensive no matter how good the weather is, something must be done.

In a case like this, the queen has passed down a trait of excessive defensiveness to her young and since all the bees in the hive have hatched from her eggs, they all are defensive. This means a hive that is difficult to work with and potentially hazardous.

So how does a beekeeper change the behavior of this problem hive? By changing the genetics and introducing a new queen. Easier said than done.

The hive in question is on a rooftop in downtown Chicago. It is an extremely successful hive with lots of bees storing lots of honey. Just what a beekeeper likes to see, but very difficult to work on.

In order to introduce the new queen, the hive must be opened up and the old queen must be found and killed. Harsh, yes but necessary.

It is never easy to find a queen in a hive that is many boxes tall and full of bees. The task is extra difficult when there are angry bees flying all around. Lots of smoke is required to confuse and distract them while the search goes on for the soon to be ex-queen. Eventually she was found and executed.

As quickly as possible, the new queen, inside a small screened box called a queen cage, was placed inside the hive. Doing this allows the bees to get used to her pheromone scents and accept her as their new queen. If all goes well, they will release her and she will begin laying eggs.

Worker bees with her genetics will begin to hatch out of their cells 21 days from the day they were laid. At the rate of 1000 to 2000 eggs per day, her takeover will be complete in a matter of weeks.

Can we be certain the hive will be as successful or productive or even less defensive? Not completely.

2010-05-22T18:39:00.000-05:00

Every year around this time we start to get emails from people who have a swarm of honey bees in their yard or on their fence or in a tree. In the past they may have just called an exterminator. Now, because of the publicity about Colony Collapse Disorder, they want to avoid killing the bees and just want to find them a new home.

Even so, many people are still under the impression that a swarm of bees is a dangerous thing, ready to sting at the drop of a hat. The opposite is true. Honey bees clustered together in a swarm are surrounding their queen who has left the hive to find a new home, leaving behind a new queen and the remaining bees. This is the way honey bees propagate new colonies and in this day and age, is a very good thing.

A clustered swarm of honey bees is in a holding pattern. They aren't aggressive because they have no honey or young brood to defend. They are waiting for scout bees to come back from searching for a new home.

Before they left the hive with the queen, they all ate a lot of honey to get them through the few days it might take to find new a place to take up residence. They will use the energy from the honey to keep themselves and the queen warm while they wait.

When the scout bees come back, they will transmit the location of the new digs to the rest of the colony and they will all take off, fly around to get their bearings and go on to move in. When the first bees arrive, they will release a pheromone to help the rest of the bees find the new location.

Admittedly, a swarm of flying bees is pretty scary looking but you could stand in the middle of one as I have and not get stung unless you started swatting at them. Sure they will bump into you but they are very purposeful insects and are concentrating on the task at hand.

So, if you see a swarm of honey bees, you can call your local beekeeper to take them away or just let them find their own way in the world.

Why We are starting a CSA

2010-03-21T18:44:00.001-05:00

Like a lot of farmers who rely on farmers markets for most of our income, Chicago Honey Co-op gets the great majority of it's sales in the Summer and Fall. From about July to October every year for the past six years we have gone to market on Saturday and Sunday to sell our honey, beeswax candles and bath products. Of course with income concentrated in such a short time period, that leaves a big part of the year with reduced income. Having online stores helps somewhat but doesn't provide the infusion of cash we need in the first half of the year.

This is identical to the situation that farmers face and it is why the CSA was invented. For those of you who don't know CSA stands for community supported agriculture. Community Supported Agriculture started in the early 1980's in New England as a means of connecting communities with their local farmers. Members pay up-front to provide the farmer with much-needed capital at the beginning of the season and collect produce (in our case, honey, candles etc.) in a CSA box later in the year.

We have talked among ourselves for a couple of years about starting a CSA but because of the nature of our products, felt a little guilty about making people buy bath products or candles along with the honey in a CSA box if all they really wanted was honey. An article in the magazine Growing for Market helped us solve that problem. In short, the farmers who wrote the article switched their CSA from a weekly produce box to a debit style system. CSA customers pay for a share like any other CSA but instead of receiving a box they get to pick out what they want at the market stand and what they choose is subtracted from their credit balance.

We think this approach will work much better for both us and our customers. A share will cost $48.00 and can be used at either the 2 farmers markets we will be selling at this year. In addition CSA members will be able to choose from other products from the bee farm that we usually don't sell at the markets and will get discounted admission to events and tours we have at the apiary.

So, here we go!

You can find details about our CSA and sign up on our CSA page.

Hope to see you all at market!

Want to be a Beekeeper this Year? You'd better get started NOW

2010-01-10T10:06:00.001-06:00

It's January and you want to keep bees this "Summer". Well, don't wait until May to get started because you will be out of luck. Your beekeeping year begins now.

"Why so early? It's just past the New Year!" you say. There are several reasons why. If you live in the Northern United States your beekeeping window of opportunity closes pretty quickly by the middle of April.

That is when beekeepers who produce package bees for sale are most likely already sold out. They are located in the Southern states and California and are offering bees for sale now for delivery in April and May. A small number of beekeeping companies offer nucleus hives for sale but they can't be shipped and you may have to travel pretty far to go get them. They are usually ready for purchase in late May or early June.

That is why you should be using this time not just to find a source of honeybees but also to prepare yourself and your bee yard (and possibly your neighbors) for the coming beekeeping year. Here is what you need to do.

By a good beekeeping book or two and read them at least twice all the way through. The Winter before I began serious beekeeping I read one basic beekeeping book, 2 books on beekeeping history and a book about nectar and pollen source plants. That was in addition to the charming beekeeping story books that inspire a lot of people to keep bees. I got to them after I got hooked.

Figure out whether you even have a decent location to put your bees. A small backyard with a couple of kids and a dog or two is not a good location for a bee hive. You need to place your hive where the activities of people won't interfere with the flight pattern of the bees. Also, be considerate and ask your neighbor's permission first.

Use the time of cold weather to figure out what supplies and equipment you will need, order it and assemble it. Yes, unless you want to pay a lot more, it is wise to assemble your own bee hives. You will also learn more about the parts of a hive that way.

Take a class and/or join a beekeeping group. You will benefit greatly from the experience of others and will have someone to ask when you encounter a situation that confounds you, which will happen regularly.

Lastly, wrap your mind around the fact that you must now care for these insect animals with as much attention as you would give a family pet. These are living creatures and it is your job to make sure they stay healthy and happy. Trust me, they give back much more in enjoyment alone.

Winter beehive photo courtesy of www.ChiotsRun.com

If You Want to Help the Honeybees.... Plant a Tree

2009-12-06T14:19:00.007-06:00

There are so many articles and comments on the internet about beekeeping and efforts to "save the honeybees". Some of these involve buying a product with the assurance that a portion of the proceeds will go to honeybee research. That's a good enough thing but I tend to see it as more of a marketing tool for the businesses that do it rather than as a serious source of much needed funds.

Another kind of article encourages well meaning homeowners and gardeners to plant "bee friendly" plants in their backyards. While this is an admirable and kind thing to do, it goes much further toward providing habitat and forage for native pollinators; a just as important and not much recognized area of concern.

Planting "bee friendly" plants in the backyard won't do that much to directly help the honeybees. It's because of the way they search out nectar sources, report back to the other bees in the hive and focus on the most abundant source that is blooming at any given time.

Because of their numbers, forty to eighty thousand bees in the Spring and Summer, they need to produce a lot of food. That's why a backyard garden is nothing for a honeybee to write home about. Honeybees have evolved into very efficient foragers over the eons they have been on the Earth. Flying from flower to flower, backyard to backyard is energy inefficient. It requires too much flying for the nectar collected.

This is where trees come in. Nearly all kinds of trees produce flowers. Most of us don't see them, either because the flowers are not very prominent or because we just don't raise our heads up from the sidewalk or take a serious look out of the car window. Flowering trees are one of the most concentrated nectar sources available to honeybees. There are thousands of blooms on a mature tree. When the bees find a blooming tree they will work that tree until every flower has been visited several times. The distance from flower to flower is minimal, providing maximum foraging efficiency.

So, if you want to help the honeybees, you know what to do.

Here is a Wikipedia list of trees important for honeybees in the North of the U.S.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_nectar_sources_for_honey_bees

The above list left out one of the best tree types for nectar (and honey by the way) Linden trees also known as Basswood. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilia#Uses

Yes Virginia, Beekeeping is Real Agriculture

2009-11-11T17:13:00.004-06:00

We don't just turn on a faucet to fill our honey jars. There is a lot more to it than that. Not just the back breaking, sweaty physical work of maintaining beehives or the struggle to keep them healthy. Just like any farmer, beekeepers must always be aware of the weather. The unpredictable, uncontrollable weather.

The activity of a hive is guided by the weather. Bees go foraging for nectar and pollen on the warm sunny days of spring and summer. Beekeepers know that more of those foragers will stay in the hive on days that threaten rain. That's why we stay out of the hives then. More bees at home with nothing to do but defend the hive equals more potential for stings.

The weather can also throw off our best laid plans. Farmers can lose a crop to drought and so can beekeepers. The same conditions limit or eliminate available nectar and pollen sources so reduced nectar means less honey.

Cooler weather also has it's effect. No one from Chicago reading this has failed to notice the lateness of the tomato crop. A rainy and cooler June followed by the coolest July ever has also caused a dearth of honey. Here is the reason why.

Honeybees are extremely good at regulating the interior temperature of the hive. A constant 93 degrees is the optimum temperature for egg laying by the Queen and brood rearing by the workers. In the average Summer when the nights are very warm many bees will move outside to open up space for ventilating the hive and keep it from getting too hot. If you visit an apiary on a hot evening you will see “beards” of bees hanging out on the outside of the hive. During the even hotter days every bee that is of foraging age goes out to collect nectar. They aren't needed inside because the external and internal temperatures are very similar.

The opposite has happened this year. Cool mornings and evenings meant that more bees were needed inside to keep the temperature up during those times. Fewer foragers = less nectar = less honey. And our visions of buckets and buckets of extra honey faded.

I'll admit because we've never seen weather like this, it took us awhile to figure out exactly what the problem was. Now that we've figured it out, just like any other farmer, we have to hope the weather changes in our favor.

Sweet Summer Solstice Follow-up

2009-06-28T06:34:00.002-05:00

Last week I had been checking the weather forecast for Friday the 19th every day. By Wednesday it started looking like we might be OK but when Friday rolled around, it looked like we would get rain. Since we didn't have a rain date, I was pretty sure the turnout would be low.

More people signed up in advance this year than ever before and although I don't have the actual attendance number, more people came out for the Solstice at the apiary than we have ever seen. We were very happy to see so many people take a chance on the weather to come out and support us.

And of course, it rained. And the wind blew. We had several canopies set up, weighted and strapped to each other and when they started to lift off the ground we all scrambled to clear off the tables and take them down. With 2 protected canopies left, and some space inside our storage container, a sizable crowd remained. Still eating and drinking and having a great time while they held on to the canopy struts, just in case. Did I mention everyone was soaked?

Before we knew it, the storm and rain cleared off. We could see the sun setting over the trees to the west. The wind was replaced with a cool slight breeze.

The potluck dishes were wonderful as was the Salmon from Plitt Seafood. The extra tables we set up were nearly full. The wine and Goose Island beer certainly helped keep everybody calm.

The only thing that didn't work out so well was the raffle. Plenty of people bought tickets but with all the excitement over the weather, we never got around to picking the winning numbers.
We'll do that this week and call the winners. I'll post the results when we do.

Sweet Summer Solstice - June 19, 2009

2009-06-04T10:32:00.012-05:00

For the past two years Slow Food Chicago has sponsored a Summer Solstice potluck fundraiser for us at the apiary. It will be happening this year on June 19th and should be the best one yet. Only $15 per person ($10 for Co-op and Slow Food members). Bring a dish to share and a chair to sit on. We'll also be holding a raffle with great prizes including a private tour of the City Hall rooftop garden and beehives, a dinner for 2 at Brasserie Jo, a Joe Breezer Itzy folding bicycle, organic/biodynamic wine from Candid wines and more. Reservations are required. Find out more here - Slow Food Chicago

The Sweet Summer Solstice event is part of our effort to raise $10,000.00 to begin raising our own honey bee queens. Every beekeeper loses a portion of their hives each year and must replace those bees with ones purchased from Southern or Western beekeepers who have a longer beekeeping season. We don't believe it is a sustainable way to continue in beekeeping.

We want to reduce our dependence on this supply by raising our own queens. Doing this will allow us to reduce the yearly expense of buying package bees and allow us to derive extra income from sale of queens and nucleus hives to other local beekeepers. The start-up costs and labor for this are considerable so we are trying to raise the $10,000.00 to get the program up and running.

If everyone who sees this donated just $5.00, we would be well on our way to our goal.

Yippie! The Bees are Here!

2009-04-12T12:52:00.019-05:00

This is the time of year every beekeeper looks forward to. The weather is getting warm enough for the bees to fly out collecting early pollen and new packages of bees are ready to be delivered to anxious midwestern beekeepers.

We ordered 80 3 pound packages of bees this year. For the first time, they are being sent directly to our apiary in a cargo van from Navasota, Texas. Last week we did some last minute preparation needed in order to be ready to install the packages when the bees arrive.

Since we had so many fewer hives last season we had to count and arrange screened bottom boards, hive boxes and top and inner covers. Then haul around several heavy concrete blocks that we use as hive stands to parts of the apiary where there were only empty spaces last year.

We got notice that the driver would arrive around late morning on Thursday and had the beekeepers, Michael, Rhonda and Rob and several volunteers ready to go. The most interesting thing to me was the method of installing the packages of bees. Most beekeeping books will tell you to shake the bees into the top of the hive. This is the method we used to use. We found that we ended up with a large number of confused bees flying in the air not knowing which hive they were supposed to go to. This leads to all kinds of confusion with some hives gaining massive amounts of bees and others almost empty. The result is a crazy apiary and several days of equalizing hives

This time, on the advice of our bee supplier, B. Weaver, we simply took out 5 frames from the top box, installed the queen in between two of them and laid the open package down inside the hive. A much more gentle method of introducing a package. The bees simply walk out into the hive and start their work.

The next day we started to take the empty boxes out of the hives. I got to help complete the job on Saturday. Open the hive, take out the empty package and replace the 5 missing frames. I used this as an opportunity to kind of spot check the population to see whether the bees had stayed put. Most hives had about 3 frames of bees which is just about right. We won't be checking for released queens for about 5 more days.

Just a quick note. We encountered an old metal shipping scale in the street late last summer and will be using it to keep track of the weight of one of our hives.

If you would like to see more Package installation pictures, click on "Here we are in pictures" in the right side column .

Why is our Honey so Damned Good?

2009-03-15T10:38:00.007-05:00

Any real understanding of honey has to start with an understanding of the foraging habits of honey bees. Foragers leave the hive and go search for nectar. When they come upon a good nectar source that has a lot of flowers in bloom they will take up all the nectar they can and go back to the hive and let all the other bees that they meet there know where to go to get the nectar. It's a little like the commercial - one bee tells two friends and they tell two friends etc. Very soon every foraging bee in the hive will be working that nectar source.

Orange blossom, tupelo, and buckwheat are examples of honeys from a single source. A beekeeper can get a single source honey by placing hives near a very large bloom of any flower from which honey bees are known to take nectar. True single source honey comes from rural areas where many acres of one plant are available to the bees.

City bees don't have the opportunity to get honey from just one source. Like any good beekeeper, we keep track of what nectar sources are in bloom at any given time and can get a good idea of the major sources our bees are visiting. But there is always a portion of nectar collected about which we can only speculate.

Generally speaking we can say our honey is primarily from two major sources. Most people don't realize that trees can be a source of nectar for honey bees. There are thousands of linden trees growing in the parkways here and our bees start working them as soon as they start blooming. One of the most highly prized honeys is clover honey. Not dutch clover but white sweet clover. It was planted on the prairies as forage for cattle and still thrives in vacant lots and railroad rights of way. It also blooms in abundance. So it is these two nectars that form the foundation flavors for our honey. It is the rest of what the bees forage on that gives our honey depth and complexity of flavor.

The French have the term "terroir" which refers to flavor imparted to wine grapes by the soils in which the vines are grown. Something like that occurs with honey but it relates more to the locality of nectar sources and weather conditions that affect when and how long a source blooms. In fact honey from hives in other locations in Chicago tastes different from the honey from our apiary. It's all about where the bees go.

We know our bees visit two large nearby public parks which have many ornamental plantings that vary from year to year. We also can be sure that the bees are working the perennial plants that are planted in the street medians. In the last few years we have noticed large amounts of Nepeta racemosa (catmint) planted in medians which can add a slight flavor of mint to our honey.

What I'm leading to here is that our honey is a truly seasonal product which varies somewhat in flavor from year to year and even from week to week. It's flavor is unique to our location in the city and is very special because of that.

There is a lot more to tell about honey. Pease feel free to ask questions in the comment section.

Where do Bees Come From?

2009-03-01T12:10:00.000-06:00

Having checked on the hives a beekeeper in the Midwest has an idea of how many have survived the Winter. With some cold weather still to come it isn't certain that the hives that were healthy in February will still be viable by the time of the first nectar flow. So a beekeeper has to make an estimate of how many hives will need to be replaced.

How does a beekeeper get new bees? Most beekeepers will get bees one of two ways. They can buy what are called package bees. These are bees that are collected from other hives and put into a screened box. Once about 2 or 3 pounds of bees are in the box, a small wooden cage is included inside. It holds a queen bee which was raised in a separate hive.

She is put in a cage for her own protection. Having just come from the hive they were raised in and being familiar with the queen from that hive, these bees need time to get used to the new queen. Until then, they are as likely to kill her as to take care of her.

Once the queen cage is inside, a can of sugar syrup is inserted into the top. It has tiny holes in the bottom which will let the bees feed during their trip to a new hive. Packages of bees like the ones in the picture are shipped from southern states and California to beekeepers all over the country. A hobby beekeeper with one or two hives can get packages sent through the mail.

The second way to get bees is by buying what is called a nucleus hive or"nuc". I pronounce it "nuke" some people pronounce it "nook". It is a half size version of a regular hive with a queen that has been accepted by the bees and has started laying eggs. Nucs are typically available closer to home for a beekeeper. A lot of hobby or small business beekeepers will raise nucs to sell to other local beekeepers.

Which brings me to a third way a beekeeper can get bees. That is to raise queens and start their own nucleus hives. That is what we at Chicago Honey Co-op are going to begin to do this year. We don't think that ordering packages of bees every year is very sustainable. We want to invest in raising our own bees so that we can not only avoid the cost of having bees shipped across country to us but develop bees that are hardy in winter and good honey producers. Bees that we can use ourselves and make available to local beekeepers here.

Winter Beekeeping

2009-02-12T19:58:00.000-06:00

February in the Midwest is the time for beekeepers to try to find a day with warm enough weather to check up on the hives. It is a critical time of year. The bees are running low on the honey they stored (or that the beekeeper left for them) and a hive that runs out of honey in the late winter will not survive. The bees also need protein at this time. A queen bee begins laying eggs again in January and the larvae need protein. That protein comes from the pollen the bees collected over the summer. If there isn't enough of that left, the larvae, or brood as beekeepers call it, will not develop into strong healthy bees. Yesterday was one of those days here in Chicago. Sixty three degrees, sunny and perfect for checking hives.

At the end of our beekeeping season last Fall there were fifty hives in the apiary. Of those fifty, fourteen were still alive yesterday. While that is a heavy loss, it is actually a hopeful sign. There have been years when we lost all our bees.

Just a word here for those who are thinking Colony Collapse Disorder, No, that is not what caused the losses. Honey bees are subject to bacterial infections, fungal infections, parasitic mites and other pests all of which can, at the very least, undermine the health of a beehive. We can't look inside a hive and tell what caused it to fail but there is no shortage of possibilities.

So what went on at the apiary yesterday?

On a warm day in winter honeybees will come outside and fly so it's pretty easy to tell which hives are still OK. Each of the living hives gets opened up and a brief inspection is made to see if the bees have enough honey. If not, one of the dead hives is opened up and frames of honey are taken from there and put into the good hive in a place easy for the bees to reach when they are clustered together on cold days.

So, checked and supplied the hive gets closed up and the bees are ready to get through the next bout of cold weather. With luck we might get all 14 hives to make it until the first spring nectar flow.

Next time - Where do bees come from?

2009-02-05T22:07:00.000-06:00

It's Winter here in Chicago and this is the time of year when beekeepers catch up with everything they didn't have time to do from April until October. Hence my ability to sit down and write this first post. Not that I get to do much beekeeping myself. Besides my own job I am the member of our Co-op that takes care of our day to day business.

I should tell you about our little Honey Co-op. We started out in 2004 as an idea in the minds of three of my (now) friends. That first year we partnered with a local nonprofit to offer job training in beekeeping, selling at farmers markets and the various skills that go along with that. The trainees were people who had spent time in jail and had no prospects for employment ahead of them. It was an eventful year and we did very well for a brand new business but I'm sorry to say that after a couple of years things didn't work out with the nonprofit.

We decided to go ahead on our own in 2006 with 2 of the original trainees who became our regular beekeeping staff. We registered as an agricultural co-op and sold memberships to raise capital to purchase some more hives. Since we don't have the staff or funds to pay trainees ourselves we partnered with another nonprofit to teach beekeeping to their urban farming trainees.

I should mention how lucky we are to have found a large vacant space on the West side of Chicago to have our apiary. It is a city block long and backs up to an abandoned rail line. In addition to beehives we have made a large community garden there for our neighbors and friends to grow food. Through the kindness of the owner, we rent this land for $1.00 per month until it gets sold.

In the coming weeks, I'll tell you more about our co-op, our products and I'm looking forward to writing at length about beeswax and honey.

Until next time.