Why We are starting a CSA

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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 .