“The wine in the bottle does not quench thirst.” – George Herbert. Hello All, This will be very short. On January 31, 2018, Noah and I tasted the September Pear Mead. It wasn’t ready yet and tasted terrible. It was very dry and smelled a little like beer – however, the acidic finish that I…
Tag: honey
Roasted Honey Mead – AWESOME!
Christmas Day 2016, we tasted my first mead… and it was bad. So while I am an amateur (for now) I am determined to get it right. “The secrete to doing anything is believing that you can do it,” – Bob Ross. If you have followed any of my Mead blogs, then you know that…
Pear Mead: One Month Out
“In wine there is truth,” Pliny the Elder… and with a name like that, you have to believe him. I spent the weekend doing chores around the house. Of my many tasks, Sunday I bottled the Pear Mead I made on 9/24/2017. Mistake 1: While I was preparing to bottle, I kept thinking there are…
Mead Note: One month tastes
This is our new stray cat, BuffyShe looks like I feel. “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough,” Albert EinsteinI posed a simple question on Facebook’s Mead Makers page. What should I expect a semi-sweet mead to taste like at the one month racking?Almost all the answers were the same: “You will get a…
What if my alpacas get flees and other insane thoughts
“It is always darkest just before the day dawneth.” Thomas Fuller, circa 1650 I woke up at 3:30am and my first thought was, “What if my alpacas get flees?” It would be a reasonable question… If I had alpacas! It all started partly because my wife is afraid that opossums will eat our beloved chickens….
Mead – Mastering the basics
“Wine is constant proof that God loves us and loves to see us happy,” Benjamin FranklinBees make honey but men make mead – the latter being the more remarkable. Mead is extraordinarily simple to make and fairly idiot proof as I myself have proven. I have taken to making my mead from the cooked honey…
Part 3 of 3 – Beetles, Chickens, and Mead
“I have never seen mead enjoyed more in any hall on earth.” Beowulf If you keep bees and have never tried mead then you have missed the point of beekeeping. Mead has as many variations as wine or beer but has it’s own unique identity. Since I live in Mississippi, the only mead that seems…
Walkaway Splits – Right & Wrong
“If a job is worth doing, it’s worth doing poorly first.” – Joel Salatin All of my hives at Dr.D’s are spaced 18″ apart in all directions Work and weather have stifled my beekeeping but it hasn’t stopped me completely. Saturday, my wife and I went out to Dr. D’s place and split Hive-B.1 &…
Uncapping Knife Explosion
“The last time I heard a boom like that, Japan surrendered the war.” Nelly I bought an Uncapping Knife last year and just got around to trying it out this week. The first time it worked okay but kept getting so hot that it burned the honey – perhaps that is normal. What is not…
The Beetles Kill Another Hive
The bottom board of Hive-D “I don’t believe in Beatles, I just believe in me,” John Lennon… but then John never kept bees! I was sure that all was well in my home apiary. I had strong (though queenless) hives and minimal comb. So you can imagine my surprise yesterday afternoon, when I went to check…
Schrödinger’s Cat and My Bees
“Now he found himself lying in his rumpled bed and wondering if this was how you came untethered from the real, rational world. If this was how it started when you lost your mind.” Stephen King – Four Past Midnight. I held my breath while I searched the hive but it was for nothing – the…
60 Stings – like being molested by a briar bush.
My wife, Jen I drove to Philadelphia, MS Friday and picked up my three new queens. More importantly, I got to visit with Johnny Thomson of Broke-T Apiaries – what a nice guy. He answered all of my questions, which was a huge help because I couldn’t seem to find the answers anywhere. Here were…
Honey Bound – Lots of bees but no brood
I’ve begun taking before and after picturesso when I am at home trying to figure outwhat the hell went wrong, I have a better record. Honey Bound: The term refers to a hive that is so full of honey and pollen stores that the queen doesn’t have any place to lay eggs. So yesterday I…
Summer of 2015 Final Tally: 7-Hives
Dale (father-n-law) moving supers Hello beekeeping fans, Well, it is now the end of summer and time to tally my efforts for the 2015 year. No suspense, the answer is 7 hives. So here is a summery of this years splits. I started with 4 hives but one of those died shortly after the spring…
Failure to Thrive
Failure to Thrive is a medical term to describe children who are not gaining weight as expected and have poor height growth. However, today is seems like a good description of my beehives. Today I visited my hives at Dr. D’s place – I have been avoiding my 3 hives at the old farm since…
No Bees – No Pumpkins
When people find out that I keep bees, their first question is always, “Well how did you get into that?” Pumpkin Flower The answer to that is unique and goes back to the movie, A Walk In The Clouds. If you’ve seen it, then you are probably thinking that there weren’t any bees in…
A Nope Snake
Nope! Nope! Nope! A few weeks ago I went to the farm where we first started our apiary and collected all of my old hives. The mason blocks I originally used had, for the most part, turned to rubble. This left many of the hives laying in the mud, accelerating their deterioration. However some…
Cleaning a Mountain of Frames – Procrastination tips
Hundreds of old frames “Procrastination is like masturbation; it’s good in the beginning but in the end you realize you have only screwed yourself” – Anonymous My mother says that when I was a kid I would roll around on the floor and stand on my head to keep from doing homework. I suppose some…
The Breath of Death – oh how my bees hate CO2
Found on iwastesomuchtime.com My mother had a stroke about ten years ago. She has recovered but the stoke left the left-side of her body paralyzed. After a few months of therapy, she was able to walk short distances and is able to live alone – though my brother lives across the street from her and…
Bees Can’t Swim – Feeding My Bees.
“Great is our terror of the unknown” – Titus Livius. The day after I found wax moths in one of my hives I placed cedar chips across the hive entrance of all of my hives. I also sprinkled a little on the top bar of the infected hive. It seemed like a good idea at…
Honey Homestead 