Economics of Urban Beekeeping

We certainly aren't keeping bees to supplement our family income, but this article is an interesting take on the basic economics of beekeeping. Is it an endeavor that can pay off? Sure, if the bees survive the winter and harvested honey is sold for $15-$20 a pound like hipster Brooklyn honey.

Here's the full article.

Wheat Bread

I think I found a wheat bread recipe I like. I have white loaves down, but the wheat bread I've made has been too dense or the flavor has been off. Yesterday, I tried the recipe from Baking Illustrated which is by the editors of Cook's Illustrated. Cook's Illustrated recipes are sometimes pretty complicated, and the prose is kind of preachy, but you have to hand it to them -- the recipes work. This bread is a combination of white flour, wheat flour and a little bit of rye flour sweetened with our own honey.

Half a loaf is cut up for Thanksgiving stuffing. Yum.

November Bees

It's five days before Thanksgiving, but the weather has been great for the last few days. It was over 60 degrees, sunny and calm -- great flying weather for the bees. Karl removed the varroa mite poison from the hive this afternoon. Everything looked fine, and he actually saw bees with tons of pollen. I wonder what they could be collecting these days.

What our bees are visiting these days

We've had really great weather the last couple of weeks -- clear, sunny with temperatures in the '60s. Once it warms up in the morning, there are lots of bees going in and and out of the hive. Karl and I were just asking ourselves where the bees were going because it doesn't seem like there are many flowers in bloom these days. This weekend, we stumbled across a few flowering plants with a whole mess of bees buzzing around. Mystery solved. Now what are the names of these plants?



This big bushy plant had a couple dozen honey bees on buzzing around it.

Video of Honey Extracting

We made a short video of our honey extracting day. My favorite part is at the end. Karl put out the frames and the bees cleaned them up.

We don't need our burglar alarm turned on today

Yesterday's spinning is done and the frames are outside being cleaned up by thousands of busy bees. Karl set up the frames on our picnic table right outside our kitchen window.

October Honey Harvest

Here's the honey extracting set up in our kitchen.



We held a capped frame steady over the large gray tub. Karl then used a stiff wire comb-like tool to scrape the wax caps off the honeycomb and into the tub. We had a bunch of boys from Karl's Cub Scout Den, as well as a couple neighborhood families over and everyone got a chance to scrape off wax caps.



Once the honeycomb is opened up, we put four frames into the cylindrical extractor. You turn the crank on the side really fast and honey flies off the frame.



The moment of truth: you open the valve at the bottom of the extractor and honey gushes out into a cheesecloth lined bucket. Aksel was pretty excited, exclaiming "waterfall!" An amber waterfall of dark, flowery honey.



The final step is hanging the cheesecloth to filter the honey.




Haven't weighed it, but there's probably a good 18 pounds of the sweet stuff.