Collecting the Honey

Last weekend we robbed the bees of their honey. About a month ago the husband could see that there was a lot of honey to be harvested but the weather wasn't good in July so the bees ate quite a bit of the honey themselves. So we didn't get as much as we thought we were going to but, nevertheless, it's just great having our own honey.

Here are some of the frames before the honey was extracted.

The beeswax will also be used. We don't waste anything!

The honey has to be strained through two very fine sieves to remove any little bits of wax and any little bits of bee.

This year we bottled some of the honey in these hexagonal jars. They hold about three quarters of a pound. The other jars that we use hold a full pound.

You can look back at last year's post about harvesting honey to get some more information.

The weather has improved slightly this month over July. We get some nice sunny, even warm, days but also so much rain. Everywhere is starting to feel and look autumnal. A couple of weeks ago I took these pictures of our holly; berries already. Lots of the trees have their berries too. Some of the leaves are turning colour and starting to fall. It's been a very strange summer!

There's our wee dog hiding in the hedge!

Remember I told you about the field next to us being used as a 'maternity' field? Well, there ended up being three calves and their mothers. Here they are all together.

This one is a beautiful colour.

These two are very alike. You'd almost think they are twins but they're not.

Look at that wee face! Love the eye patches.

They've all been moved to another field now, a bit further away. Some day the calves will be separated from their mothers and we'll have to listen to them lamenting over their loss. It's so pitiful.

Thank you all for your lovely comments about the sea glass shawl. My big blanket is finished too but I still need to block it. The thing is, I don't really know how I'm going to manage it; the blanket is enormous! Maybe this evening. 

Anyway, all the best for now. Bye!

What I Did With all Those Plums

This year we've had a bumper crop of plums; I told you about picking them here and here. 

 

As well as just enjoying them the way they came off the tree (washed first of course!), I spent a lot of time stoning plums and making various plum dishes so we could preserve all the fruit. Some of the fruit was stewed and stored in the freezer and some was just frozen uncooked but with the stones removed.

 

This simple dish below is made by lining a baking tin with puff pastry, laying plum halves on top, sprinkling with a bit of demerara sugar and then baking. I can't remember for sure now, but I think I made four of these.

 

Quite a lot of honeyed plums were also made. It's amazing how many plums it takes to fill a jar once they've been softened gently.

Plum crumble is a must-make.

Last, but not least, I made plum sponge. This is really a pudding rather than a cake. First I layered plum halves in a deep Pyrex dish, sprinkling some sugar between the layers. I then used a recipe that makes a very light sponge and poured it over the plums. Some of the sponge mixture made its way between the plums but most of it stayed on top. The pudding was baked until the sponge was golden, enough time to soften the plums below. This was a good way to use up a lot of our own eggs as well as plums!

Here are some of the eggs we've been lifting lately. The one on the left is a normal sized hen's egg laid by one of the older hens. The one on the right was laid by one of our new hens that have just started laying. The one at the front must be the first ever egg laid by one of the new hens! Look how tiny it is. But it had a yolk and I was able to use it!

There are many sponge recipes around so just use whatever is your favourite if you want to make this pudding. And I'm sure any sort of soft fruit - or even apples cut into small chunks - would work just as well as the plums.

I'm not quite sure how many crumbles and sponges I made; three of each, I think. But there aren't that many now as we've been eating our way steadily through them. The Aga really comes into its own for this sort of cooking or baking. It's only since moving to this house that I have got an Aga but I would hate to have to go back to a normal cooker again.

September is proving to be a lovely month so far. The early morning skies are beautiful, there are mists, there are bountiful crops and the swallows are still swooping around, preparing to leave us.

No-one sums up this time of year better than John Keats in his poem Ode to Autumn.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

 

 

I love that poem. All the best for now and thanks for all your lovely comments. It really makes my day to read them.

Beeswax and Not Quite a Recipe for Dinner

A by-product of the honey harvest we've recently had is beeswax. Now beeswax can be put to many good uses, one of which is making beeswax candles. We have planned to make beeswax candles after each of our honey harvests (we've been keeping bees for about four years) but so far have never got round to it. In fact, we still had the beeswax from last year still waiting to be used. This year we were determined to make the candles.

As it turned out, the husband was off on Bank Holiday Monday (25th August) but I had to work. So the husband made the beeswax candles all on his own. They turned out really well. The colour is natural and when they burn they have a beautiful honey scent.

As well as the candles, some of the beeswax was used to make a few beeswax polish bars. Look, it even says BEESWAX on the bar! Isn't that rather nifty?

Here they are together - candles and polish. He did a good job.

Not to be outdone, I also made something nice for dinner. This isn't really a recipe but more a method for making a tasty meal.

First I cut up a selection of vegetables, mostly from the garden. On this occasion I used two onions, five cloves of garlic (we love garlic but you don't have to use any if you don't want to), three small courgettes, a red pepper, an orange pepper and 250g of chestnut mushrooms. A small pineapple was also cut into chunks and added to the mix. Not everyone likes fruit with meat but it isn't necessary to add any if you don't like it. Sometimes I use a mango instead of pineapple.

The whole lot was fried gently in olive oil until well softened but not completely cooked. Then I added five chicken breast fillets that had been cubed. That was cooked until the outside of the chicken cubes were done and had turned white instead of pink. For vegetarians you can leave out the chicken and it is still really yummy; I've tried it this way too.

Now two tubs of soft cheese were added. Mine were 250g tubs but you don't have to be too exact. Mine were also Extra Light but you can use Full Fat just as well. Sometimes I use crème fraiche, soured cream or even quark. At this stage I also added a jar of mango chutney. Any sort of chutney will do; just use your favourite. I should have used pineapple chutney, I suppose, but I only had mango. Anyway, a really good stir and the juices from the vegetables and chicken combine with the soft cheese and chutney to make a lovely, creamy sauce. Simmer the whole lot until the vegetables and chicken are completely cooked through. To hurry things along I did mine for about 20 minutes in the Aga roasting oven but it could be done for a bit longer at a lower temperature, say in the simmering oven. If you don't have an Aga then just simmer it in your usual way.

Serve with rice, pasta, quinoa or whatever you fancy. Simple but tasty. This amount would serve at least ten people, by the way!

Welcome to my new followers and commenters. It's lovely to have you join in.

Best wishes to you all until the next time.

Plums and Pasta Sauce

The plums are ready for picking so I made a start with them. It's hard to believe how many there are after there being none last year. I picked these....

... and these ... and then some more and there's still more left to pick. That's a seriously big spider!

The plums are delicious just eaten the way they are. Some have been cut up and added to fruit salad. Some have been stewed and then stored in the freezer. The Aga is fantastic for stewing fruit. Just leave the pot on top of the Aga (not on the hot plates), no need even to add water, and after a couple of hours it is perfectly stewed. Like this ...

The stewed fruit was divided into containers for the freezer. Do you wonder at the amount of things I tell you that I've frozen? There's been a lot recently. We have a small freezer in the kitchen, two other under counter freezers and a small chest freezer. They are now almost full so I need to use things like the frozen blackcurrants to make cordial.

Some of the plums I just halved, poached in a little water and some of our own honey. Then I stored the honeyed plum halves in sterilised jars.

With a label added so I don't forget what's in there.

A lot of the plums made their way into three plum crumbles that are now residing in the freezer to be enjoyed some other time.

As well as dealing with the plums I decided to make pasta sauce using some of our tomatoes. Rather than putting them in the freezer! The tomato sauce recipe I use is Sue's of the lovely Quince Tree blog. It is very easy to make but also very delicious.

I made enough for five jars and our dinner.

There's a crocheted baby blanket almost finished too. I'm working on the border and have reached the stage where I'm not sure if there will be enough of the Rowan Milk Cotton to finish. If there isn't then I'm not sure what I'll do - apart from having a good old weep! I got the yarn years ago so I'm not sure if it is still available. Even if it is, the dye number will be different. Ah well, we'll cross that bridge if we ever come to it.

Best wishes to you all.

Honey Harvest

Last Wednesday evening the husband put the clearing boards in all the hives. These boards allow the bees to move away from the honey frames into other parts of the hive but they can't get back again to the honey. So it clears the honey-filled supers of bees who will inevitably be less than pleased whenever their honey is taken away!

On Friday evening the husband donned his bee suit again and went out to take all the frames of honey from the hives.

Here he is carrying one of the supers filled with frames of honey.

 



This is what the frames look like when they come out of the hive. You can see the honeycomb sections which have been filled with honey and then capped with wax. When the bees have capped the honey you know it is ready to extract.

That's the frames with a pound honey jar to let you see the size.

In order to get the honey out of the frames we first remove the wax cappings. This is done using the heated blade of a knife.

The white containers in the background are used to feed the bees their sugar solution that replaces the honey we extract.

One determined bee remained in one of the frames of honey and stung the husband on the end of his thumb. That was the end of the bee; they die after stinging.

Now, two at a time, the frames go into the honey spinner. The lid is put on and a lot of effort is employed to spin the honey out of the frames. It basically works like a centrifuge. We only have a very basic machine that is operated by turning a handle on the outside. It takes a lot of man/woman power to get it going! When one side is done, the frames are turned and the honey spun out of the other side.

We both ended up with using-the-honey-spinner blisters. Here's mine! It was very sore and stingy; still is, in fact. It had me yelping every time I touched it over the weekend.

At this stage the honey is building up in the spinner. It gets harder and harder to spin out any more honey so what's in the spinner is drained out into a food grade bucket with two special sieves on top. Everything has to be scrupulously clean and dry. Honey plus water equals fermentation; the method for producing mead.

The honey has to be left overnight to drain through the sieves. This has to be done somewhere warm. In fact, the whole honey extraction process needs to be done in a warm place.

The next day the honey can be poured into the clean jars; there's a tap at the bottom of the bucket for doing this. Each jar is inspected to make sure it has no cracks or chips.

And here is the finished product!

 
There was a good harvest this year and we managed to extract nearly ninety pounds (weight) of honey.

Sometimes there are honey frames that are particularly suited to being used for section honey. This year we had a couple. You can really see the defined honeycomb pattern.

The honey is cut from the frame with the honeycomb and stored in jars. We didn't have anything else suitable though I think section honey is usually kept in a box.

It's so rewarding to have our own home produced honey. We know how and where it has been produced and it tastes really delicious.

Washed and dried wax cappings are also very useful. They can be chewed to help relieve arthritis. Or melted down to make bees wax polish and candles. We intend to make bees wax candles this year. We have intended to make them for several years but so far haven't actually made any. But this year we will make bees wax candles. The candle making equipment has been brought out so it will happen.

So that's this year's honey harvest finished. Now the bees will be 'put to bed' as the husband says. They get the honey frames back into the hives to keep what bit of honey is still left on them and they are fed a sugar and water solution. They use this to build up their stores of food for the winter.

Here are some interesting bee facts:

• During the summer months each hive will hold approximately 60,000 bees and 1,000 drones
• All the bees are females
• The drones are males
• During the summer the queen lays about 2,000 eggs a day
• The life span of a honey bee is about six weeks during the summer but six months for the 15,000 or so who make their way into the winter months
• There is normally only one queen in a hive. There can be more than one when the bees sense that something is wrong with the old queen and they produce a new one by feeding a larva with royal jelly. Also, when there are too many bees in a hive they will produce another queen and the hive will split or swarm. One queen flies away with half the bees who have filled themselves with honey to keep them going until they can set up a new hive. Bee keepers do everything they can to stop a hive swarming
• Honey bees don't hibernate over the winter
• When the drones are no longer required they are thrown out of the hive and left to die. New drones are bred the following year
• The queen has a sting but she won't sting a human. The queen's sting is used to kill another queen
• The drones don't have a sting
• When a honey bee stings a human it dies

I'll finish with a picture of me holding some drones. They'd been dumped out of the hive and were crawling about on the ground hence the bits of grit on my hand.