One week after Dr. Cambray left, Matthias and I had procured two Langstroth hives with the help of a local Roxbury, CT bee keeper. Another week later we introduced the bees to their new home on the B. United grounds. And so we are well on our way to producing honey and mead!
So what lies in our future other than bee stings? Well, this year will involve learning to keep the bees healthy and happy. This means managing the hive for mites and making sure the queen is laying eggs. Hopefully by the end of fall both deep hive boxes and the honey super will be full of bees, brood and honey. Then the first over-wintering of the bees will be the most difficult here in New England. There are several tricks that can be employed to keep them alive and well. First we will leave all of the honey in the hive for a food source. Then we will insulate the hives, foam board or bails of hay seem to work. A heat sources can also be added to the hives depending on how cold it will get, but based on our hive locations (the B.United building is acting as a wind block) hopefully they will be warm enough. From there its pretty much all luck. If the bees survive the first winter each hive should produce up to 10 gallons of honey each next year. That gets us well on our way to making mead!
Once we get enough honey, we get to make mead! The key to producing mead with wild yeasts, as we learned from Dr. Cambray, is to make the mead with the entire honey comb. Within the wax of the comb is where all of the nutrients lie that allow the yeast to grow, multiply and create alcohol. Our bee friends collect these nutrients and then implant them in the wax of the comb. To be able to harvest the whole comb from the hives we are using foundation-less frames in our honey supers. This allows us to cut the comb out and reuse the frames. If we were using a top bar hive we would be all set, unfortunately in Connecticut, bees in top bar hives have a reputation of not surviving winters. Nobody seems to know why. So once we get the full honey comb, we will break up the comb and honey with a mechanized paddle, add water and then wait for the wild yeasts to do their thing! The ratio of water to honey depends on the type of mead you want to make. For a dry mead, the ratio is 4 parts water to 1 part honey; a sweet mead is 2 to 1.
Hopefully next year we will be on our way to a full apiary of at least five hives guaranteeing us to about 50 gallons a year! We can’t wait for all that mead!