I went out to lunch and something caught the corner of my eye as I walked through a small flower garden at the back entrance to the County Office Building. A honey bee was working a blue flower. I was wearing my winter coat and the temperature was in the 50s.

This girl had braved the late fall chill in order to get a little more pollen for the winter. There must be a hive nearby, but there are nothing but high rise office buildings for as far as the eye can see.

During the summer these plants are covered in honey bees. There are also lots of bumble bees or Carpenter bees working the flowers. I don’t know where they live. There is a residential area about a 1/4 mile away and it could be that someone there is a beekeeper.

I had Justine’s video camera in my pocket and luckily the battery had some charge.

Here is the video:

We put a table out in the driveway with some bears and a jar with a sign saying “Honey $6”. We sell a lot of honey this way. The honor system works. You can get 12 oz bears of honey at the supermarket for $4 or less, but we charge $6 for real local honey that is  not adulterated, medicated or fiddled with. We are selling between $40 and $60 worth a week.

Sometimes people want to take the tour and if I’m here I’ll open a hive for them.

Erica spent the day making lip balm and hand cream from the wax we harvested. I leave the comb on the hive, but when I uncap the comb I get some wax. I melt this in a double boiler and filter out the lumps and dead bees. It makes beautiful pale yellow beeswax.

Erica is taking this and mixing it with sweet almond oil and shea butter. She makes it thicker for lip balm and creamier for hand cream. We bought some tubes for the lip balm and 1/4 ounce containers for the hand cream. Erica also made up some 4 oz jars for herself. The hand cream is great. I goes on oily but soon it is absorbed my the skin leaving a coating of beeswax. It makes your skin smooth and nice feeling.

Erica added peppermint oil to the lip balm and it tastes like Christmas.

We only have 12 of each, but since the experiment was a success, I will order more containers and she’ll make more. I have to make labels for them and we will sell them for about $3 or $4 each.

I have about two pounds of wax which I figure will make 120 lip balms or hand creams. I want to buy some fancy 1 ounce glass jars. I’d sell those for $12 an ounce. For each ounce of beeswax we use nearly two ounces of almond oil, so two pounds will make 5 pounds of stuff which is 120 1/4 ounce containers or even more of the 0.15 ounce lip balm tubes.

If we sell all the honey and all the lip balm and hand cream we will be on the way to breaking even on the bee expenses. This is only the second year of beekeeping. Next year I expect to do twice as well.

It went up to about 65 degrees yesterday, and it is almost as warm today. The hives were active and I actually saw workers returning with baskets full of pollen. There are some fall flowers out despite a week or so of killing frost. It looks to be a mild winter based on this warm weather in November. I found that the long range forecast for this area is slightly warmer than usual this winter with less snow than last year. The snow is not a big issue with the bees and I prefer more snow to less. I just have to make sure that the entrances are clear after a snow so they don’t suffocate. The screened bottom lets in enough air so that this should not be a problem, though. A lot of snow means moist ground in the spring and lots of flowers with a strong nectar flow and lots of Spring Honey.

I took the buckets that I used to collect the honey and brought them back for the bees to clean. They are very happy with this and I see very fat bees returning to the hives.

I put the hive entrance blocks on the hives last week when it started getting cold. I want to keep the drafts out of the hives. The bees did not seem to mind much and scrambled in and out of the openings without trouble.

I have not wrapped the hives or piled up the leaves around them, yet.

I tipped the hives to see how much honey they have. Just a push to see if they are heavy. They are very heavy, even the Russians. I see no reason why they should not make it through the winter.

I did not medicate them, but I have the Fumagilin and I will ponder using it. I would hate to lose a hive to Norsema, but I don’t want the stuff in the honey. Replacing a hive costs me $90, and I lose the honey crop for at least half the year while they build up. It may risk losing a hive rather than add Fumagilin. Fumagilin kills amoeba infections and has been used to treat cancer. It works great in honey bees. It is used on people, but large doses are considered toxic.

Last weekend I harvested for the last time this year. I totaled about 150 pounds for the year (37.5 pounds per hive). I could have had more, but I left all of the half filled frames in the hives. Each hive has two deeps with lots of honey and at least one super full of half full frames. I put the extracted frames back on top of that so they could clean out the last drops. I might pull the empties off in a while.

It is too cold now to bother the bees anymore (45F). Next week will be warm (over 60F) again. I am taking off time next week, so if it is warm I’ll work the bees.

This year I want to cut “blue board” and put that in the covers for insulation. I want to get some felt roofing paper and wrap the hives to help keep them warm this winter. The hives are about 6 inches off the ground on blocks, so I want to sweep dried leaves up and under the hives to help  keep the drafts down. I raked the leaves up under them last year and I think it helped.

I have about five pounds of wax. I am trying to figure the best formula for making hand cream and lip balm. It is not so easy as you need much more Almond Oil than you think, and the wax still floats to the top when it cools. The recipes on the internet don’t seem to be right.  The secret seems to be make tiny batches and use the microwave to melt the wax.

I mistakenly bought the bears without the flat space in front for the label last time, so I have to redesign the label with a hole in it to fit over the top, or else use a ribbon or thread to hold it on. The kitchen has piles of boxes with lots of bears, and we haven’t even started with the last batch of honey. We are selling 10 bears a week from the driveway. We should run out around Christmas. I put the Christmas presents in a separate box so we won’t accidentally sell them.

I have not been stung in months. Either the bees like me, or I have been very lucky.