· By Angela Seto
It's time to go home
I'm pretty happy here because this hive is looking good!
What's new on the farm:
We are approaching the end of May...
What that means for us is it's time to bring the bees home to Saskatoon!
This week has been jam-packed with all the jobs that need to get done to get them ready for the trip home.
First, we put on second boxes on all the hives that didn't already have them. The bees have been exploding in population, and they needed the extra space to keep growing without deciding to swarm and leave.
The second boxes also keep all the hives at the same height, making loading them onto the semi-trailer much easier and safer.
Next, the hives are spread out across several farm sites. We have to do this so there is enough food available for the hives to forage. If you have too many hives in the same spot, they will start competing with each other.
But when it's time to load the semi-trailer, we want to load all the bees at once. So we need to bring them all to one spot. However, you can't bring them all too early (for the reason described above).
We need to bring them in as late as we can before loading (that we can physically manage ourselves), so they don't spend too much time all in one spot.
Moving beehives is a grind! You have to do it either very early or very late at night. This is when all the bees are tucked in their hives instead of flying around.
We don't want to leave any bees behind, so we have to move them when they are not flying. Honeybees love to head out once the sun is out and the temperatures are warm. So that means dark, cold hours for us humans to get the job done.
This is a very stressful time because you're moving your entire operation in one fell swoop. Many things need to go right. Health inspections, truck issues, equipment breakdowns, getting onto the ferry, and so on.
Plus, we can't even fit all the bees in one load, so we have to do it all twice!
Why do we bother with this headache? It's because Vancouver Island is a paradise in the spring, but it soon gets very dry and hot in the summer. There isn't enough natural food for the bees to forage on.
Many beekeepers need to move their hives up to the mountains on the island to collect fireweed honey. We go back to our home in Saskatoon because flowers are plentiful in the summertime.
In fact, Saskatchewan is one of the top-producing honey regions in the world! Hives here regularly produce over 150-200 lbs of excess honey per hive. The top ones can get up to 300 lbs! Compare that to most places where 90 lbs would be a good yield.
There’s something special about our long, hot summer days. They help the flowers produce tons of nectar and give the bees lots of extra daylight hours to forage. And the flowers that we have access to are the reason why our honey is so beautiful and white.
Next week when you hear from me again, our first load of bees should be safe at home!
Honey Almond Crisps
I got this recipe from my mom, who makes everything from scratch. She started making these nut crisps as a sweet snack that was also clean and healthy. It's similar to a nut brittle; however, the nuts are coated in a very thin honey glaze rather than in a thick, hard sugar candy.
You can mix and match the nuts and seeds that you prefer, but the recipe below is a great starting point:
Ingredients:
- 1 1/2 cups sliced almonds
- 1/4 cup pumpkin seeds
- 1/4 white sesame seeds
- 1/4 black sesame seeds
- Pinch of salt
- One egg white
- 4 tablespoons honey
Directions:
- Mix all the nuts together.
- Beat the egg white and the honey together until they combine together well.
- Pour mixture onto the nuts and mix well.
- Cover a half-sheet baking pan with parchment paper and spread the mix in a thin layer.
- Bake at 325F for 30 minutes, turning the pan halfway. If you have a gas oven like my mom, she bakes it at 300F for 30 minutes.
- Remove the pan and let it cool slightly. While it is still warm, you can score and cut the pan into smaller pieces. If you wait until it's fully cool, it will be very brittle and break into smaller shards!