Can you do the Waggle Dance?

Have you ever wondered how Honey Bees tell the rest of the hive where the nectar is? They do a pretty sweet dance! Watch and see...

Life After the Lavender Festival!

Summer Bouquet Honey harvest is here!  Gary and I are sticking together (honey humor) and determined to get all of our honey harvested before our wedding anniversary this week.

This week we reached the 20th day of over 90 degrees.  And being in a beekeepers suit is not one of my favorite things to do when it's so hot.  But again we have been blessed with some very productive honey bee and the honey can't wait.

Bee's at Work!

We have the Lavender Hill Mob to thank for our bounty of honey.

As many of our visitors to the farm have noted our bee's have been very busy in our lavender field this year.

And this is the results.

Our honey is sold in these 8 oz and 16 oz 1800's Antique Muth Bottles with cork.  A great gift for out of town guests or for yourself.  And after the nectar is gone is makes a great spice bottle or vase for flowers (lavender).

You can pick up some of our yummy honey at our Lavender Market on the farm every Saturday and Sunday from 9 -4 till Labor Day.

All of our Lavender has been harvested.  I still have some cleaning to do in the field.  Now we wait for some our lavender to bloom for a second time.  We will need some much needed rain for that to happen.

Gary and I have built some new racks for drying our lavender.  It is so much easier then hanging with paperclips and chains.

 Some will be sold for dried bouquets and the rest will be used for sachets.

 We have also had a few new additions to our flock of sheep.  Seeing a new born lamb never gets old.

Yes, I have played hooky a couple of time to go swimming in Skaneateles Lake.  Can you blame me...look at that view.  And the water temperature is oh so fine!

Looking towards the village of Skaneateles.

 The bee's still have some flowers to visit.

And as the sunsets over our field of sunflowers we know we have put in a good days work and fun!

The Gift of Bees: In Memory of Hamilton Armstrong

Three years ago we were given the gift of nature, our bees from Hamilton (Ham) Armstrong. After 70 years Hamilton understood he could know longer take care of his bees.  After many conversations about our farm and a personal visit he knew we would take great care of them and thought we would be a good fit.

At the age of 85, Ham passed away peacefully in December 2011 at his home in Fayetteville, NY. After graduating from Tuft University.  He worked for Crouse Hinds, Crucible Steel and Carrier.  And was a member of the Iroquois Group of the Sierra Club, Onondaga Audubon, Adirondack Mountain Club, Green Lakes Park Committee, Syracuse Friends of Chamber Music, the National Women in the Arts: and a founding member of Council of Park Friends.  Last September Syracuse University presented a exhibition “A Magnificent Obsession: Selections from Hamilton Armstrong Collection of Prints.”  For decades Ham had been collecting prints created by some of the most important and well-known American and European artist of the last 200 years.

Ham often called our bees "The Lavender Hill Mob".  So in honor of Ham I painted two of our new bee boxes in his memory. I think he would be pleased with how happy they are.

Cornell University Master Beekeeping Program and Nuc Boxes

Recently we inspected our beehive after a mild winter and to our delight we have healthy and strong hives.  So we decided to make Nuc boxes.

A nuc box, is a smaller version of a normal beehive, designed to hold fewer frames. It is smaller because it is intended to contain a smaller number of honeybees, and a smaller space makes it easier for the bees to control the temperature and humidity of the colony, which is vital for brood (offspring) rearing. A nuc is created by pulling two to five frames from an existing colony of bees. Let's just say it is a nursery for starting new hives and raising a new queen.

A nuc may or may not be given a queen at the time it is created. If the nuc does not contain a queen or queen-cell, but does contain eggs, the workers will create a new queen from one of the eggs. 

If the nuc is to be given a new queen, the queen will be introduced to the colony in her queen cage either at the time the nuc is split from the main colony, or after a period of queenlessness that increases the likelihood that the new queen will be accepted.  The queens cage is placed between the frames and contains sugar candy, which the worker bees will eat to release her.

Nucs are often used to prevent swarming in a larger colony, by removing frames with queen-cells from a larger colony and using them to provide the basis for a new colony. The removal of queen cells and reduction in population in the donor colony diminish the urge to swarm. 

 Inspecting the hive takes time and patience.  

 Healthy hives will contain brood, eggs, pollen, honey, worker bees, drones and a queen.

 In the middle you can just see a bee emerging out of its cell. 

  

We set up the hives in another locations away from the exciting colony.  We will check them in 10 days to see if the new queen has been excepted.

To further my education on being a beekeeper I attended Cornell University Master Beekeeping classes last weekend.  

Their was much discussion about what color to paint the Super boxes.  Because bees don't see the color red.  Their favorite color...violet!

 Their extracting equipment.

 Students learning how to start a smoker.

 Inspecting the hives.

 Looking for mites, American Foulbrood, how healthy is the hive, is the queen there and is she laying eggs.

Can you spot the queen?  She is the one with the long abdomen in the middle of the picture with her tail in the air.

 It was two long days of classes and I will be back in the fall.  So worth it!

Winter Has Arrived!

Winter has officially arrived on Lockwood Farm. Up until this week we have had some unseasonably warm and mild weather.  But now snow and cold temperatures have finally arrived.

Although I am not a fan of winter I have to admit it is beautiful and cuddling with your favorite someone to keep you warm is nice.  But it is the winters of my youth that this weather brings back so many memories.  Wearing plastic bags inside your shoe boots so your feet didn't get wet, dressing with so many layers you couldn't move.  Playing outside making snow forts, ice skating, sledding and snowball fights.  We (the kids on Beech Street) would play outside all day until we went through several pairs of mittens and socks.

Do you remember the blizzard of 66?  I do!

 Vapors off Skaneateles Lake. This view always takes my breath away.

Before winter hits we cover our hives to keep the bees warm.  Having them wrapped can mean the difference between life and death for weaker colonies and good development in the rest.  They will feed off of the honey that has been left in the hives until spring.

 The lavender is now under a blanket of snow insulated from this mornings 6 degree temperature.

And even Grace is enjoying her first winter with us.  Although she is finding it hard to sniff out deer tracks she is having fun running and biting the snow.  It's hard to get her to come inside.

Winter always brings surprise and excitement in the barn.  Yesterday a new black baby lamb was born and I hope to take some picture sometime today. 

 Grace and I have been putting our thinking caps on and coming up with new ideas for the Finger Lakes Lavender Festival.  New artist, food and a few surprises have been planned.  Stay tuned!  To receive up to date information like us on facebook.

Pollination: it's vital to life on Earth

Lavender is now available for you to pick!

This

turns into

 this!

Lavender varieties  Folgate, Buena Vista, Munstead and Dark Supreme are available for you to pick on Saturday and Sunday 9 - 3.

What's buzzing on Lockwood Farm

I have to admit I haven't had time to blog lately; I've been busy building an ark.  Seriously, we have had 19 straight days of rain and the fields are full of water.  I don't want to think about what this will do to the lavender crop this year.  The only thing we have gotten done is check on our bee hives.

This time of year we check on the condition of the hives and how many bees survived the winter. The hives should have ample supplies of honey stored, a good population of bees, and the queen should have a good brood pattern rather than a spotty one.  We knew in the fall that we had one hive that was not healthy and hoped that a supply of sugar would get it through the winter.

Although this picture shows a supply of honey, unfortunately we lost this hive and another one.  And we will have to purchase a package of bees and introduce a new queen or purchase a nuc with bees and a queen included to replace the two hives.

Gary and our mentor, Richard Linck looking over the hives

After looking over one hive we could not find a queen so we decided to add a new queen and hope she will be excepted by the bees in the hive.

She is contained in this capsule and placed between a frame until the bees in her hive get her out. 

 We'll return to the hive after three days to see if the queen has been released.

 After the worker bees have chewed the candy from this container the queen is released.

As you can see from this picture the worker bees have been bring back pollen to the nuc box.

 Although it is disappointing to have the hive not survive we have learned so much from our little friends.