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Phoenixville Honey

Honey produced in Phoenixville, PA by Jaarsma Apiaries

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By Phoenixville Honey 12 December 2018 20 May 2019

Look for our honey in the summer of 2019!

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It's days like this that remind me how beekeeping

It's days like this that remind me how beekeeping is the best job. I get to work outside and in some beautiful locations and the sunsets in the winter are simply stunning.

Today was a round of checking sugar stock on the screened inner covers and doing one last mite treatment so the bees are at the lowest possible mite levels going into winter. This is always my last ditch insurance policy to make sure mites are the last of our problems for keeping the hives alive over winter!
#beekeeping

🌟 Market on Main 🌟 Sunday, Dec 15 (Tomorrow!

🌟 Market on Main 🌟
Sunday, Dec 15 (Tomorrow!), 11a-4p
Shop with @bohemymarket, @juliemillerpottery and @forever.changes who are hosting some great local artists and makers! I'll be set up inside Bohemy Market, and I'll be sampling some of my favorite varieties of honey, plus I'm bringing lots of honey, beeswax candles, and tea towels for last minute gift shopping or a treat for yourself. Hope to see you!
#phoenixville #shopsmall

UPDATE: Dec 11 Sip & Shop moved to December 18 and

UPDATE: Dec 11 Sip & Shop moved to December 18 and now cancelled due to weather. Stay tuned for more updates!
December markets! Last one for 2024 is December 21 at Downingtown, but we'll be at markets all winter long too!

Swapping out to winter covers means that the bees

Swapping out to winter covers means that the bees hanging onto the summer inner cover need to motor on home. Their sisters line up with their butts in the air, fanning off the locator beacon pheromone, and the bees all come marching up the ramp and in through the mouse guards. I'm wrapping up winter prep today which involves removing the syrup feeders, adding screened winter covers, candy sugar, insulation, and mouse guards (if I missed any). Temperatures will be down to seasonable which means freezing temperatures most nights, so it's definitely time to wrap up feeding syrup and get them all in full winter mode!
#beekeeping

🧀 Sip & Shop 🍷 Join us at @birchrunhills wit

🧀 Sip & Shop 🍷
Join us at @birchrunhills with @legaragewinery tomorrow, Wednesday, for an evening of wine and cheese and local artisans. We'll have our honey, tea towels, tote bags, candles, and a couple of those popular honey sampler boxes. Hope to see you there!

Still some pollen coming in, though not much with

Still some pollen coming in, though not much with the worsening drought. Since it's been unseasonably warm, I've been able to continue adding sugar syrup into the hive feeders, hopefully to bulk them up even more since I suspect spring is going to be difficult unless we pick up absolute metric tons of snow this winter.

🐝 GOOD FOOD FEST 🐝 Tomorrow, Sunday, Novemb

🐝 GOOD FOOD FEST 🐝
Tomorrow, Sunday, November 3, from 11am to 4pm, join us at the Kimberton Fairgrounds for Good Food Fest!
SO many local food producers and makers, beverages, food trucks, and all your neighbors and friends at one giant celebration of local food. We cannot wait to see everyone!
#goodfoodfest @goodfarmsgoodfood @growingrootsfarmersmarkets @kimbertonwholefoods

November's schedule! Hope to see you at a market

November's schedule! Hope to see you at a market soon!

31 Days of Bees: Day 31 - Next year in wishes, cha

31 Days of Bees: Day 31 - Next year in wishes, changes, plans, dreams!
Oh gosh, not sure on this one. My priority this year was just to keep my head above water while dealing with an ongoing injury that happened just before the season kicked off. I'd really like to be able to be back to normal and have that all behind me now that the heavy lifting of peak bee season is over and I can hopefully focus on getting better (without making things worse)! I usually plan for one equipment upgrade every year, and this upcoming year, it's either going to be a new table for the processing space or an upgraded Oxalic Acid vaporizer. I'm still using an old varrox vaporizer with the pan and a battery jumper box which works, but it's slow and cumbersome, and a newer one will save loads of time!
#31DOB

31 Days of Bees: Day 30 - Favourite beekeeping IG

31 Days of Bees: Day 30 - Favourite beekeeping IG accounts
Obviously, I have to start with our organizers who make this whole thing possible - @rushingriverapiaries, @homesteadinthehood, and @evergreenbeekeepingco!
.
And two more - @apertureapiary for the creative 3D printing problem solving and life inside the hive educational models, and @capecodbeekeeping for the beautiful photography, videography, and beautiful woodworking!
#31DOB

31 Days of Bees: Day 29 - My Region in Winter is..

31 Days of Bees: Day 29 - My Region in Winter is...
Fickle! We either get no snow, some snow, or LOADS of snow. It can either be rainy and mild or cold and brutal. Temperatures can get down to 0°F for a week during a bad cold snap, but on average, our winter runs from December to March or so with average temperatures coming in around freezing (32°F). With such big variability in our winter, it's definitely better to over-prepare and keep adding candy sugar or fondant on mild, sunny days. I've never wrapped my hives since we're kind of on the border of needing to vs it not making a difference here. The biggest priority is to keep them dry and have insulation at the top to absorb hive moisture and condensation. Dry bees are live bees.
#31DOB

31 Days of Bees: Day 28 - My Other Favourite Polli

31 Days of Bees: Day 28 - My Other Favourite Pollinator
I couldn't find an old photo I took of a clearwing hawkmoth, but this little long-horned bee is in the top of my favorites! I've only ever seen the one, but I'm SO glad I got a photo because they're pretty cute. Those big blue eyes and fuzzy legwarmers, how can you not love them?!
#31DOB

31 Days of Bees: Day 27 - A lesson my bees taught

31 Days of Bees: Day 27 - A lesson my bees taught me
Always hydrate. If they're hot, you're hot, drink some water. Maybe even pour it around your suit for a little bonus evaporative cooling.
#31DOB

31 Days of Bees: Day 26 - A complimentary skill se

31 Days of Bees: Day 26 - A complimentary skill set that helps me in beekeeping is...
Sewing! Not only do I get to make the cutest dresses for market days, but I also use those skills to repair my bee suit and gloves instead of buying new. Repair until you can't repair (or it's more duct tape than original material 🙃)
#31DOB

31 Days of Bees: Day 25 - How many stings is too m

31 Days of Bees: Day 25 - How many stings is too many?
One. One is too many. I always wear a full suit, veil, and heavy gloves to lower my risk of getting stung and possibly kicking off a severe reaction. While I'm not allergic to bee stings, beekeepers are at a higher risk of developing anaphylaxis unless they're stung more than 200 times in a year according to studies. I'm not interested in getting stung that often, and I'd like to safely continue beekeeping, so I try to keep the sting count as close to zero as possible.
Photo shows stingers embedded in my gloves from a really hot hive last year.
#31DOB

31 Days of Bees: Day 24 - Skill you could easily t

31 Days of Bees: Day 24 - Skill you could easily teach
Probably the rolling demaree method. I've been doing this for years and the bees end up producing loads of honey and generally don't swarm using this method of management. The idea is you split up the brood boxes by putting a queen excluder and "buffer" box in the middle, keeping the queen in the bottom and cycling up frames of eggs while cycling down empty frames for the queen to lay eggs in. It's definitely more work, but it pays off in increased honey yield!
#31DOB

31 Days of Bees: Day 23 - Favourite recipe with ho

31 Days of Bees: Day 23 - Favourite recipe with honey
Fill a big cast iron skillet with cherry tomatoes, a buttload of garlic, honey, and balsamic vinegar, pop into the oven for a half hour, and something magic happens. I made this three times this summer while cherry tomatoes were in season, and it usually ended with me scraping down the pan with a crust of bread. It's SO absurdly good. I think I have the link in my food highlights and definitely recommend hanging onto it for next year's tomato season! You can even add some goat or sheep cheese under the tomatoes or use it to stir into pasta or pile on top of chicken.
#31DOB

31 Days of Bees: Day 22 - A memorable swarm story

31 Days of Bees: Day 22 - A memorable swarm story
Still my favorite from April of last year in our busy downtown, right about at 4pm. Luckily, people were more curious than alarmed, there were no stings, and this swarm ended up producing a fair amount of honey that year! Usually, if I take a swarm call, it's a clump of bees hanging out in a tree somewhere less visible, so it was kind of funny to be out on a busy street and have a bunch of friends asking if that was me in the suit 😄
#31DOB

31 Days of Bees: Day 21 - Best advice I've ever he

31 Days of Bees: Day 21 - Best advice I've ever heard
Feed your bees. I saw a video of a talk by Bob Binnie about the hows and whys of doing fall feeding and it brought a lot of things into focus. I knew I fed my bees sugar syrup to make the hives nice and heavy and give them as much of a chance for hive survival as possible. I knew that our late season forage contains sugars that are indigestible for bees as well as other mineral content that can cause dysentery in bees. I didn't know that there are for more health benefits to feeding back sugar syrup, and his talk put the science behind the "this is just what we do" that happens in beekeeping sometimes.
#31DOB

31 Days of Bees: Day 20 - A lesson I learned the h

31 Days of Bees: Day 20 - A lesson I learned the hard way
My hives have all hated wax and wire foundation. That picture? They've just been chewing and recycling the wax for other frames and have almost completely removed all the wax there. So, I've slowly been replacing these frames, tearing out the wire and putting in a plastic foundation sheet instead. I think initially we thought wax and wire would be more secure in an extractor, but they've been such a pain in the ass that I'll never use them again!
#31DOB

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