The bees are in their huddles and the honey's in the house!

honey995.jpg A gift from the bees: My jar of beautiful Michigan honey!
I recently opened a jar of the honey I helped harvest, and measured a cup of that sweet, liquid-gold into a holiday recipe for Pumpkin Honey Bread. It was a magical moment; symbolic of months of learning, and filled with appreciation for the fussy foragers and worker bees that transformed nectar from over a million flowers into that honey I was holding. 

When last we met in the bee-yard it was June and my beekeeping adventure had just begun. Now, the honey's harvested, the hives are winterized, and the super boxes with their empty honeycomb frames are piled high in the honey house.  
When the temperature drops, activity slows down in the hives, and thousands of bees cluster on the honey combs surrounding their egg-laying queen. They'll spend the winter purposely shivering together to produce heat. (Even in sub zero temperatures, the center of the rotating bee-huddle will remain about 95 degrees, and never get cooler than about 47 degrees at the outside edge.) On sunny, winter days bees take short flights to eliminate their waste and maybe gather a little water from the snow to
honey7.jpg A metal hackling tool is rolled over the honeycomb to pierce the cells and uncap the honey.
  bring back to the hive. Each colony will consume about 50 pounds of honey over the winter months -- doing their "bee-best" to insure the survival of the colony until spring.

Michigan bees have earned a winter break. 

The growing season that vexed farmers also stressed bees. Many spring blossoms perished in a freeze, and mid-summer's field crops, gardens and flowers struggled to survive Mother Nature's double whammy of unrelenting heat and drought. Bees had little to forage on in July and August, especially on farmsteads where clover and alfalfa flowers are their usual mainstay. 

honey91.jpg The honeycomb frames are placed in the extractor which will spin out the honey.
 A few of our new hive splits failed. Some of the bees might have found their way back to the mother hives. The more plausible scenario: There wasn't enough nectar (carbohydrates) and pollen (protein) available to sustain them. During extreme summer heat bees must expend energy toting water to cool the honeycombs as worker bees briskly fan their wings to keep the hives from overheating.  
The beekeeper estimated his honey harvest was about 60% of typical. The hives that thrived and produced the most honey were those he keeps on a friend's produce farm where temperature-controlled hoop houses and irrigated fields insured a good supply of nectar. 

A responsible honey harvest disturbs the bees as little as
honey94.jpg Honey flows from a spigot at the bottom of the extractor thru a strainer and into sterilized buckets.
  possible and leaves enough honey to see the colonies thru the winter. Equipment helps. We smoked the bees to calm them, and used a fume board to drive them safely into the lower supers and brood boxes. We removed the metal excluder that previously prevented the larger queen bee from moving up to lay eggs in the honey supers. The surplus honey-laden supers were taken to the honey-house where the honey was extracted, strained, jarred and labeled. 
While we're busy in our kitchens delighting in a little of this year's precious honey harvest, the shivering bee clusters in the hives hold the promise of another spring.

Recipe: Pumpkin Honey Bread

These loaves derive their natural sweetness from honey and pumpkin (or squash). They keep and freeze well, and are perfect for gift-giving. I dressed mine up with a light sprinkle of streusel (use your favorite recipe) before baking. This recipe and hundreds of others are available from the National Honey Board.

pumpkin_honey_breadedit.jpg Still warm pumpkin honey bread!      
1 cup - honey 
1/2 cup - butter or margarine, softened
1 can (16 oz.) - solid-pack pumpkin (I used cooked Michigan-grown Butternut squash)
4 - eggs
4 cups - flour
4 teaspoons - baking powder
2 teaspoons - ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons - ground ginger
1 teaspoon - baking soda
1 teaspoon - salt
1 teaspoon - ground nutmeg



