Easy Comb Easy Go

We've had a few trade offs this fall.  All of our bees left us, but they did leave behind a twenty pound gift!  That's right, honey!  When we went to check on our bees a few weeks ago there weren't but a few left in the hive.  The queen was obviously gone and we think the bees either swarmed or were honey bound.  We'll have to start fresh again next year with a new package of bees. 

Since the bees won't be needing it during the winter, we decided to harvest all of the honey made throughout the summer.  To do that, we scraped each frame of wax and honey into a large strainer and let the honey drain into a bowl below.  We melted the leftover honeycomb in a crock pot and let the wax solidify on top of the excess honey.  The recovered honey went into the bowl with the rest and then the wax was re-melted into blocks for candle making.  After collecting all of the honey we could, we filtered it through some cheese cloth into mason jars.  Viola!  Since we won't need all of that honey for cooking and baking, we plan on making mead as soon as we find a good recipe.

We also butchered two of our turkeys, one for Christmas and one for whenever (Thanksgiving was already covered).  But because we can't drop below our bird quota, we picked up three new ducks.  They're Cayuga/Rouen cross-breeds, but we won't hold that against them.




Sadly, our cat Pazuzu decided she liked living with the neighbor better than us, so in order to stay at our mammal quota, we had to replace her too.  However, we decided to go with a different species. Yep, we are bringing a new, little homesteader to the farm.  Baby Stinson is due May 19th!

And no, the baby doesn't actually have talons.