 For Cuesta Park Neighborhood honey, email to: honey@neubarth.org We practice "natural" beekeeping - absolutely no pesticide or fungicide treatments. The bees are feral (captured from Cuesta Park Neighborhood swarms). We believe that allowing the bees to live with minimal human intervention will select for bees genetically best fit to survive without human help. Spring 2013 I'm sad to report, that after epic bee vs. bee battles that lasted weeks, all four hives were robbed out by other bee colonies in the area. I may have started it by putting some "wet" honeycomb back on the hives after the last harvest. The smell of wet honey attracted the other bees right when the local flowers were drying up in the fall. The other possibility was that some type of disease was weakening the hives, although I was not able to find evidence of any disease. I'm not giving up on the "all natural" method of beekeeping, but next time I see other colonies robbing my hives, I plan to install anti-robbing screens to help my bees better defend themselves. We now have a single hive from a commercial package I got through the bee guild, and I expect there will be other bees moving into the empty hives. Crystalized Honey? Some like it that way. Spoon it into your tea or onto toast. If you want to return it to its liquid state, heat it to not over 120 degrees F. An easy way to do this is in a pot of warm water. Or in the oven overnight with only the heat from the oven's internal light bulb. Store your honey in a warm place to prevent re-crystalization. |