Wild Harmony Apiary and Farm

04/11/2023

The girls continue to help the world. Honey has amazing properties.

“Honey contains antibiotics and has been used for centuries as a natural remedy to combat several types of illnesses and treat wounds.

According to Cardiff University, it “possesses therapeutic properties which are the result of a range of factors including high sugar content, low pH, hydrogen peroxide and bee-derived peptides.

“Honey also contains antimicrobial phytochemicals which represent a rich source of leads for the development of drugs for the treatment of microbial infections.”

Over one million people died globally from antibiotic-resistant infections in 2019

12/13/2022

Hurricane Ian really put a hurting on bees in FL. Unfortunately, FL is where a vast majority of commercial bees overwinter. It’s tragic. We’re talking the loss of thousands of hives and millions of bees.

Hurricane Ian drowned so many bees and destroyed so many blooms that beekeepers are using emergency measures to try to help next year's produce harvests.

11/27/2022

Tucking the girls in for winter. Couldn’t help singing “Little pink houses for honey bees”.

11/17/2022

This is a very cool looking thing. They’re out of stock right now but they may be a new addition to the bee yard next year. Varroa is the bane of beekeeping so anything that helps control them is worth a consideration.

Raina Singhvi Jain is the creator of HiveGuard, a 3D-printed hive entranceway designed to protect bees from parasitic mites.

11/15/2022

🌩⚡️🌩 Whoa!

Shayla Love: This is Scientific American‘s 60-Second Science. I’m Shayla Love.

11/14/2022

https://apple.news/A5f4arwbgRvW_rMjT1UT6dg

A new study by University of Maryland entomologists shows that the lifespan for individual honey bees kept in a controlled, laboratory environment is 50% shorter than it was in the 1970s. When scientists modeled the effect of today's shorter lifespans, the results corresponded with the increased col...

10/28/2022

Yes. It appears bees play. 🐝🏐🐝

Insects’ lives may be richer and more complex than previously thought.

10/27/2022

Latest finding adds to theory that animals, including humans, naturally arrange things in a certain order, even without being able to count

08/06/2022

What do bees 🐝 do when it gets too hot☀️? They "beard" the hive. It's like hanging out on the porch, without a porch.

Stay cool, everyone!⛄️

07/30/2022

We have honey 🍯🎉🐝🎊 and more on the way 👏👏👏. Which means more spinning 💪🥵….but more honey 🍯😃

The video is honey 🍯 flowing from the extractor into a 5 gallon bucket. The bucket has a pair of metal sieves on top that will strain out what you see mixed in. The vast majority of it is beeswax but there may also be some bee bread (pollen packed with nectar, honey, and enzymes the bees produce), and even the occasional bee bit 🐝.

Honey 🍯 is extracted either by crush and strain, or you spin it. Unfortunately, the electric extractor we picked up a year or so ago decided not to work 🤷‍♂️ Luckily we still have the hand crank model and hands 🤲.

The photos described below are in the comments, it's a FB thing. Either video or photos directly attached but not both.

There are two pictures 🤳with honey frames. One shows a frame sitting on top of a box of frames. The other shows a frame being scraped to remove the wax cappings before spinning.

There is a top down view of the honey extractor with two frames loaded in it - notice the hand crank 💪.

The last picture shows the final product 🍯 all bottled up. After a year with no honey 😥, it’s a wonderful site🥳😃

As always, I thank each of you for being here. Like the bees, each of us needs all of us and all of us needs each of us. This page wouldn’t exist without each of you. Thank you.🙏

07/14/2022

Hi everyone👋 The bees 🐝🐝 are progressing along rather nicely at this point. There are notes on the pictures but that is a queen. I’m going to address two things in this post, one of which I owe from a prior post. So……

Swarm update
It’s been a long wait, 6 weeks🗓, since the first hive swarmed. But finally the time ⏰ is here to check for a queen 👸🏼 🫣😬🤞

Why wait six weeks?
When a hive swarms it leaves one or more queen cells fairly ready to hatch, usually within a week of the swarm, and a few more in process, in case the clumsy beekeeper damages a few🤦🏼‍♂️. I chose not to replace the original queen but to let them requeen themselves, let nature take its course.

Because of this I didn’t want to risk damaging any more queen cells than I already had 🤦🏼‍♂️when I confirmed the hive had indeed swarmed. Queen cells hang down between frames and can be rather large once fully formed so they’re easy to damage. Even if you don’t visibly damage the cell, it’s possible to damage the queen inside the cell after a certain point in development.

So, I wait until enough time has passed for a queen to hatch🎂, for her to go on her mating flight(s) 😍, and for her to finally begin laying 🐝🐝. And the result was …….🥁🥁🥁 we have a live and very prolific queen🎊🎉👏👏🎉🙌

How did we end up with a second bee yard this year?
If I want bees 🐝 in the spring, I need to order them in February. Normal NH winter loss rates for bee colonies is around 32%. When I checked the girls 🐝 in early Feb one of the hives looked like it might not make it. I thought I’d err on the side of caution and was going to order two hives but decided to go with three…..cuz reasons.

Well, all the hives survived the winter 👏👏👏. Not only survived but thrived. So I had room for a 4th hive at one bee yard and the other two are now in the new (old) bee yard 🙌🎉. And doing great. In fact, the pictures are from the new yard.

Like always, I get long. I try not to go on for hours, it’s easy to do. They’re so fascinating.

Please feel free to ask any questions, if there’s something you want me to ramble about, or just say hi in the comments. We love hearing from you.

As always, I thank each of you for being here. Like the bees, each of us needs all of us and all of us needs each of us. This page wouldn’t exist without each of you. Thank you.🙏

07/13/2022

Hello 👋 and welcome to the page 🎉. We keep honey bees 🐝🐝 in central NH. The posts here are primarily about the bees and beekeeping but we do have a couple of goats 🐐that show up now and again.

Please, make yourself welcome 🤗 Read through past posts 📖. Ask questions🙋‍♀️(you don’t even need to raise your hand).

Thank you for being here🙏. This page wouldn’t exist without each of you.