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12 December 201820 May 2019
Phoenixville Honey

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Winter Market Dates
Final Fall Honey
Early Fall Honey
Late Summer 2020 Honey
2020 Honey is Here!

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Printed up a new round of our tea towels today! Y

Printed up a new round of our tea towels today! Yes, our bee towels are hand printed by yours truly in small production runs. The color is hand mixed, so there may be a slight variation from batch to batch, but it's always a sunny yellow orange color. We're thinking about reversing this and doing white printing on a yellow-orange towel.. what do you think?

The boys are back in towwwwnnn! That is one fresh

The boys are back in towwwwnnn! That is one fresh chunky drone which means it's the start of swarm season. The hives remove all the male bees (drones) for the winter since they're a strain on hive resources - they don't forage for food and can't protect the hive since they have no stinger. In the Spring, however, the queen starts laying unfertilized eggs that produce male bees. While they never contribute their DNA to their own hive usually, they're important for honey bee survival as a whole, and exist only to donate their genetic material to a virgin queen from another hive. It's a mating ritual they don't survive, but they live an otherwise pretty carefree life, not having to work like their sisters!
#beekeeping #phoenixvillepa #phoenixville #phoenixvillehoney

April market dates! We've got honey from our loca

April market dates! We've got honey from our local beekeeper friends since we're sold out of our own, plus we'll have candles, dippers, and hand-printed tea towels. Pop over to @growingrootsfarmersmarkets to see who else will be at the markets!

All those pretty pollen pants coming home! Spring

All those pretty pollen pants coming home! Spring is _finally_ here and the bees are all over it. Checked all the hives and we've got queens in all 4 of them who are laying eggs all over the place, plus we already saw capped drone brood so we're about 2ish weeks out from having drones around. I finally undid all the winter insulation and put on standard entrance reducers instead of the mouse guards, so of course we're getting a two day cold snap this week. 🤦 Pretty sure they'll be fine now that they're ramping up and building up the colony size, plus they've already stored a bunch of nectar and pollen.
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Yet another year of going 100% on hive survival over the winter and it feels so good for all that work (and worry) to pay off in the Spring. While we're currently sold out of our own honey, we do have honey from local beekeeper friends, and we should have fresh honey starting in June!
#phoenixville #phoenixvillepa #phoenixvillehoney #pollenpants #beekeeping

New market dates for March!

New market dates for March!

Headbutt. . Slow motion bees are still my favorite

Headbutt.
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Slow motion bees are still my favorite bees.

Still four for four on hive survival! The bees we

Still four for four on hive survival! The bees were all buzzing in the sunshine and warmth today after a long stretch of snow and cold. The snow was spotted with orange, proof they've been out pooping *everywhere* today. I even spot checked a frame since it was warm enough and found capped brood, so the queen has been laying for about two weeks at least, if not more. I also noticed the Maple trees starting to form buds, so even though it feels like this is the longest winter ever, Spring really is right around the corner.
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Tomorrow (Thursday) we'll be at the Eagleview Farmers Market in Exton from 11a-1p. We're completely sold out of our own honey, but we do have a stock of honey from beekeeper friends in Chester County. It's a lighter honey from June 2020 and is exactly the same as our own June honey, plus the beekeepers are friends and mentors and I know they're following the same practices as I do and have the same level of care for their bees.
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More later - it was so delightful to see the bees stretching their wings, cleaning up the hive, and returning to activity after so many quiet months!
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#phoenixvillepa #phoenixville #phoenixvillehoney #beekeeping

We're prepping for our next few weeks of markets a

Hard to believe we're only about 4 weeks away from

Hard to believe we're only about 4 weeks away from Maple tree bloom time when the hives look like this! All are showing activity and it's pretty likely that our queens have started laying eggs already in anticipation of Spring. It takes 3 weeks to go from egg to adult bee emerging from her cell for a worker bee, so in order to have a new set of worker bees ready to forage on Spring pollen and nectar, the queen usually starts laying about now. It can also be the most tricky part of the winter - hive population is going to start building and stored honey is going to be at it's lowest point, so we have to be sure to monitor the weather and supplemental feed. One long cold snap can sometimes mean that it's too cold for the cluster can't move to a new area of stored honey in the hive, so they can starve even though they're just a few inches from honey. Glad to see sunny days like today to give the bees a break and shift the winter hibernation cluster if need be!
#beekeeping #phoenixvillepa #phoenixville #phoenixvillehoney

Salted Honey Caramels, or also, how beekeepers hib

Salted Honey Caramels, or also, how beekeepers hibernate.
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I'm always looking for different ways to use honey and this is a perfect way to use up crystallized honey (if you're not stirring it into tea and spreading it on crackers with cheese like we do). To be fair, there's nothing at all wrong with crystallized honey - it's a natural process of the sugars in raw honey separating over time. I prefer using crystallized honey in recipes where I need to measure out a specific amount because it's a little easier to coax out of the jar and measuring cup without dripping honey everywhere.
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The recipe is really easy to follow with some great tips, but you do need a good thermometer and need to carefully watch the temperatures since that boiling sugar can get away from you pretty quickly. The hardest part of the process is trying to wrap all the caramels while you've got a sugar high from periodic quality assurance testing!
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Recipe from @wholefedhomestead, used cream from @seven_stars_farm and butter from @milkhousecheese to keep it mostly local. Also used two different varieties of our honey - a lighter Spring honey for the lighter caramel and a darker Fall honey for the other. There is a taste difference, and unsurprisingly, I like the darker one more since that's also my favorite honey. I read elsewhere that once wrapped, they can be frozen in a bag for up to a year which makes for a pretty delicious year if they manage to last that long!
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Recipe: https://wholefedhomestead.com/salted-honey-caramels/
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#honeycaramels #honey #phoenixvillepa #phoenixville #phoenixvillehoney

Checked on the hives today and all four are still

Checked on the hives today and all four are still buzzing! For winter, I use a screened inner cover, layered with a towel or old t-shirt, insulation board, and the the outer cover. In the video, you can see the towel lifted away to show the cluster of bees eagerly awaiting a sugar restock! Throughout the winter, on milder days like today, I add fondant or candy sugar chunks to provide supplemental food. The purpose of the setup is to absorb the condensation produced from bee respiration as well as the temperature difference, and make it easy to add sugar without disturbing the bees too much. It takes me all of two minutes to lift the towel, slap on some fondant (yes, just like cake fondant!) and cover them back up which keeps them from losing too much heat.
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I'm in the hives once a week in the Spring and Summer, and about every other week in the Fall, but it's only about once a month in the winter. They're busy keeping warm and it's better to not disturb them any more than is necessary to add extra sugar if needed. Mid-January means we're only about 6-8 weeks off from our first Spring flowers which are usually in early March, starting with Maple trees. Hard to believe we're already this close!
#beekeeping #phoenixvillepa #phoenixville #phoenixvillehoney

It's National Hot Toddy day! Grab a mug of tea, a

It's National Hot Toddy day! Grab a mug of tea, add your favorite honey 🍯, some lemon and spices, maybe a little whisky too, and enjoy a warm winter beverage on this grey Monday. Apparently the traditional recipe calls for plain hot water instead of tea, but an informal polling showed tea is the preferred base for a hot toddy. How do you make your hot toddy? Do you have a favorite mug or a favorite whisk(e)y? Let us know all about it!
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#nationalhottoddyday #hottoddy #hottoddyday #phoenixvillehoney

New year, new schedule! Eagleview and Downingtown

Tomorrow (Tuesday) is our last market of the year

Weather-related schedule change for this week, but

Found one hive had a couple of drones still linger

Found one hive had a couple of drones still lingering around, much to the agitation of the worker bees. The male drones are rather violently kicked out of the hives in October since they don't contribute to hive survival and are a drain on precious winter resources. The worker bee (female, right) was chewing on this drone's wings in an effort to remove him from the hive and make sure he doesn't come back.
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We also saw quite a bit of pollen coming in! Shades of dark orange and even a lemon yellow which makes me think some sort of willow has gotten confused about what season it is.. we even saw forsythia blooming, and while the bees don't touch forsythia, it means it's entirely likely some of our other early spring pollen producing plants have been tricked into blooming as well. This sort of bizarre winter makes it extra challenging for a beekeeper! If there's an abundance of pollen coming in, the queen may start to lay eggs again which would put their honey supply in jeopardy of running out early. Having a normal, cold winter just doesn't seem to be in the cards this year!
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#phoenixville #phoenixvillepa #phoenixvillehoney #beekeeping #droneeviction

We've for a few winter markets coming up! All of

We've for a few winter markets coming up! All of our outdoor markets with @growingrootsfarmersmarkets allow for pre-orders so you can grab your order and go as a safe, outdoors, no-contact option. Pre-orders are already open for Downingtown on Saturday morning!
#phoenixville #downingtown #phoenixvillehoney #downingtownpa

Small Business Saturday! Still working on gift id

A HUGE thank you to everyone who stopped by at one

Tomorrow at @pinecreekhayloft from 10a-5p, we'll b

Tomorrow at @pinecreekhayloft from 10a-5p, we'll be selling honey, beeswax candles and a new batch of handmade honey dippers from @stewartwoodstudio! Build the perfect handmade holiday.
#phoenixvillepa #phoenixville #phoenixvillehoney

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