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| Syrah bunch going into the colander |
She was very right. The porch did get hot in the summer and the grape vine has provided enough shade to make a marked difference.
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| Veraison last year |
Friday, August 8, 2025
Grape Harvest
In non-bee news, we just harvested our syrah grapes.
When first we moved into our home in East Sacramento, a good friend was helping us move some furniture with her truck. She looked at out porch and said: that's going to get hot in afternoons; you should put a grape vine on the corner to shade it.
Next stop: attempted rosé of syrah.
Sunday, August 3, 2025
New Bottling - Updated
New jars arrived. I have dug up the old labelling materials. Spent a little time this morning bottling some of the honey that we harvested last year. There is one more batch of honey from the year prior that can be bottled, once we have warmed it slightly; it has crystallized in the intervening year and I want to gently re-liquify it. [Update -- I have bottled a few jars of this now too!]
We have four different harvests from last year ready to go:
I've updated the labels to reflect our new location.
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| The artists and their work. |
We have four different harvests from last year ready to go:
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| top: Spring 2024 bottom left to right: early and mid-summer, and early fall |
Summer 2023
This light amber honey, harvested in 2023 from our East Sacramento garden, is bursting with the taste of summer. It has a beautiful fruity essence, evoking notes of stonefruit (almond, peach and apricot). The finish is a beautiful combination of a soft, floral undertone and a unique marshmallow-like sweetness. (not pictured)
Late spring
A delicate and light amber honey harvested from the early spring blossoms of East Sacramento. Bees forage on blooming early almond, fruit trees and local wildflowers, creating a mild, floral flavor with subtle notes of almond blossoms subtle herbs and a nice floral finish.
Early summer
Crafted from the rich, summer bloom of East Sacramento, this honey is a bolder expression of the season. Our bees collect nectar from hearty plants like sages, mock orange, and lavender, giving the honey a distinct golden color and a complex, aromatic sweetness with distinct herbal notes and amazing orange blossom inspired finish.
Mid summer
A robust, deep amber honey harvested from East Sacramento's mid-summer bloom. Bees forage on late-season wildflowers and tenacious urban flora like star thistle, sunflower and summer herbs like basil, oregano and thyme. The result is a viscous, crystalline, honey with a complex, herbal and earthy sweetness with a somewhat bitter finish.
Fall
A silky, deep amber honey, capturing the last blooms of an East Sacramento fall. Bees forage on late-season flowers like allium, goldenrod and herbs. The result brings a lovely clean sweetness with light hints of clay and spice.
Now for marketing. I am disenchanted with Etsy, where we used to sell, and we don't have a relationship with any local market yet like we did with Bi-Rite in San Francisco. I am half-tempted to just create a little honor-system stand in the front yard with a little cash box, or a QR code to my square....
I have only bottled less than half so far; I want to see what sizes sell in which harvest before I commit all of the jars. I'd rather sell out of a particular harvest than have to backorder while I get more jars.
Thursday, July 31, 2025
Trying to get back in the routine
It has been a decade since we have had the capacity to keep bees in the City. However, in 2021 we took advantage of the housing sales slump to relocate to Sacramento. Having our own house with our own yard means we get to have our own hives again and so we have started beekeeping once more.
Last summer (with our nephew's help), we were able to extract a little over 12 gallons of honey. We like to extract the supers individually to get the character of the nectar as the season progresses.
The earlier extractions were very light in color and fragrantly sweet. The later season supers were substantially darker in color, but somewhat less viscous, less sweet and much more herbal in character. I've ordered a batch of jars and updated our labels so hopefully we will be ready to sell again in the very near future.
Over the intervening decade, it has become more challenging to maintain a healthy hive; the increase in types and tenacity of various parasitic pests in the hive means that the colony is now contending with hive beetles and wax moths while still battling mites. The mites are now spreading deformed wing virus which adds a new layer of challenge.
But at the same time, mite treatments are more varied with simple things to keep the mite population down such as managing drone brood and periodic dusting with sugar coupled with more aggressive miticide treatments when mite counts start to rise.
Keeping the mites at bay allows the bees to focus on keeping the other pests at bay and gives them a decent chance at survival.
This year we replaced our queen with a new variety that shows promise in mite resistance (Olivarez Golden West). So far, it seems to be working, I have seen very few mites on our bottom board and though there have been a few beetle sightings, there doesn't seem to be significant interference from them in the hive activity.
The earlier extractions were very light in color and fragrantly sweet. The later season supers were substantially darker in color, but somewhat less viscous, less sweet and much more herbal in character. I've ordered a batch of jars and updated our labels so hopefully we will be ready to sell again in the very near future.
For this year, we have one super nearing 80% capped. We added a second super recently and the colony population seems very robust. I anticipate at least 5 gallons of harvest by the autumn.
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Finally
It has been another roughish year for the bees, though not so bad as last year. We only had one colony really do well this year, and it currently seems to be struggling -- there does not seem to be any sign of a queen after a late swarm. We were able to capture a different swarm and start a new colony, hopefully it will be able to get itself up and running before the weather turns too cold and wet.
The good news is that the one hive that has been doing well for most of the summer has produced about 30 lbs. of honey for us so we will be able to get a small shipment to Bi-Rite for the fall and hopefully for the holidays as well. We are just working on getting it into jars and labeled now, so look for it in less than a week.
Please visit our shop to purchase Noe Valley Honey and other hive products from the Pollen Princesses.
The good news is that the one hive that has been doing well for most of the summer has produced about 30 lbs. of honey for us so we will be able to get a small shipment to Bi-Rite for the fall and hopefully for the holidays as well. We are just working on getting it into jars and labeled now, so look for it in less than a week.
Please visit our shop to purchase Noe Valley Honey and other hive products from the Pollen Princesses.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
First Hive Visits of the Year
It's been while since the last post because it ended up being a tough year for the bees. Of our five hives, only two managed to hang on.
The diseased hive seemed to bounce back only to completely vanish a month later -- I suspect that was our first experience with colony collapse, but am not really sure. The other hive at our friend's limped along for a while, then petered out. They never really showed signs of illness, but the population just never got very big. One hive at the Dolores location suffered the same fate. There was a small population in November, so we let them go as they were but they did not make it through the winter.
Overall, 2010 was a very cold summer but also fairly dry for the area. I suspect that the bees did not get out to forage as much as they needed and that even when they did get out nectar was scarce. Consequently we simply did not harvest any honey last year. Anything that the bees did collect we left for them to get through the winter.
The two hives that we have left are bustling now, though. The one at Dolores is chock full of bees and I hope to have a chance to explore the hive more thoroughly to see how much nectar and pollen they have been bringing in, and to make sure they are standing up to mites and generally healthy. The hive on our friend's roof is also very busy, but a little smaller. We added a new honey super to the top and are hoping that they get right to work on it. There was plenty of brood, and plenty of honey, and quite a bit of new nectar.
The year seems to be off to a promising start.
Please visit our shop to purchase Noe Valley Honey and other hive products from the Pollen Princesses.
The diseased hive seemed to bounce back only to completely vanish a month later -- I suspect that was our first experience with colony collapse, but am not really sure. The other hive at our friend's limped along for a while, then petered out. They never really showed signs of illness, but the population just never got very big. One hive at the Dolores location suffered the same fate. There was a small population in November, so we let them go as they were but they did not make it through the winter.
Overall, 2010 was a very cold summer but also fairly dry for the area. I suspect that the bees did not get out to forage as much as they needed and that even when they did get out nectar was scarce. Consequently we simply did not harvest any honey last year. Anything that the bees did collect we left for them to get through the winter.
The two hives that we have left are bustling now, though. The one at Dolores is chock full of bees and I hope to have a chance to explore the hive more thoroughly to see how much nectar and pollen they have been bringing in, and to make sure they are standing up to mites and generally healthy. The hive on our friend's roof is also very busy, but a little smaller. We added a new honey super to the top and are hoping that they get right to work on it. There was plenty of brood, and plenty of honey, and quite a bit of new nectar.
The year seems to be off to a promising start.
Please visit our shop to purchase Noe Valley Honey and other hive products from the Pollen Princesses.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Update on the Diseased Hives
Well, we have lost both hives from our friend's yard. It's a bit disappointing, but one of the things that happens when you are dealing with nature.
The smaller hive just eventually petered out. There simply wasn't enough population to sustain the colony. Still not sure what caused the decline -- typically I'd expect colony collapse to have happened much more suddenly, with the bees just leaving the hive, not dwindling away like this colony did. I suspect it may have been a case of nosema that they were simply unable to weather.
The foulbrood hive was confirmed to be European foulbrood, so we proceeded with our plans to salvage the colony. We were able to transfer the adult bees into a fresh clean hive, then sterilize all the hive components of the old hive with a blowtorch.
We kept the colony quarantined and closed in with screen in the new hive for two days, then transferred them into a second new hive with sugar water to feed them, still keeping them screened in for a few more days. Then we removed the screen and let them go about their business.
Within a week the queen was laying eggs again and brood was developing. The brood developed well and things seemed to be just fine for the colony.
Unfortunately, the colony absconded from the hive last week -- the entire group just left. Maybe this time it WAS colony collapse; the symptoms seem right. The brood that remained of course all died because there were no nurse bees to care for them, but they looked as if they were healthy until then; there was still no sign of foulbrood in the new brood.
The hives near Dolores are still doing pretty well, but the nectar flow seems to be slow -- it's been a very cold summer here in the City so they may just not be finding as much nectar as they might otherwise. One hive is doing very well, the other is a little slower -- both seemed to have spotty laying patterns at the last inspection, but the queen was seen in one, and eggs and worker brood were seen in the other so the queens are present. We'll keep an eye on them.
Please visit our shop to purchase Noe Valley Honey and other hive products from the Pollen Princesses.
The smaller hive just eventually petered out. There simply wasn't enough population to sustain the colony. Still not sure what caused the decline -- typically I'd expect colony collapse to have happened much more suddenly, with the bees just leaving the hive, not dwindling away like this colony did. I suspect it may have been a case of nosema that they were simply unable to weather.
The foulbrood hive was confirmed to be European foulbrood, so we proceeded with our plans to salvage the colony. We were able to transfer the adult bees into a fresh clean hive, then sterilize all the hive components of the old hive with a blowtorch.
We kept the colony quarantined and closed in with screen in the new hive for two days, then transferred them into a second new hive with sugar water to feed them, still keeping them screened in for a few more days. Then we removed the screen and let them go about their business.
Within a week the queen was laying eggs again and brood was developing. The brood developed well and things seemed to be just fine for the colony.
Unfortunately, the colony absconded from the hive last week -- the entire group just left. Maybe this time it WAS colony collapse; the symptoms seem right. The brood that remained of course all died because there were no nurse bees to care for them, but they looked as if they were healthy until then; there was still no sign of foulbrood in the new brood.
The hives near Dolores are still doing pretty well, but the nectar flow seems to be slow -- it's been a very cold summer here in the City so they may just not be finding as much nectar as they might otherwise. One hive is doing very well, the other is a little slower -- both seemed to have spotty laying patterns at the last inspection, but the queen was seen in one, and eggs and worker brood were seen in the other so the queens are present. We'll keep an eye on them.
Please visit our shop to purchase Noe Valley Honey and other hive products from the Pollen Princesses.
Monday, June 14, 2010
Bad News in a Couple Hives
This past weekend was magnificent weather here in the City, perhaps attributable to global warming or just El Niño. At any rate, Sunday was a great day to visit the bees. We brought a friend of ours along who has kept bees with his dad in PA for ten years.
The hives near Dolores park seem to be doing alright -- one of them is humming right along, with a healthy amount of brood and almost a full super of honey. I'll be adding a second super to that hive in a week or two while they finish filling this super and cap the honey. The second hive, which was started as a split from the first hive has several eggs and a queen but the population is a little on the low side -- I'm going to give them the shortening and sugar patty treatment in case it is tracheal mites. This treatment worked very well last year with a flagging hive. Otherwise we'll just keep an eye on them and monitor the population. If they are suffering from Nosema, there is not a lot we can do but hope they are able to weather it (just like the flu for us).
We then trekked over to our friend's yard to see the hives there. He has recently started his own hive there from a package because he's interested in watching his own colony up-close. The colony has really taken off over the past couple of weeks with LOTS of brood and a good amount of nectar collected. They've even begun to cap some honey at the top of a few frames. It is very nearly time for him to expand that hive to a second hive body.
The two hives we have at that location are not doing well at all though. The smaller hive, which we began as a split from the first hive had started out very well, but the population has simply dwindled away. There are now only a few dozen bees (instead of a few dozen thousand) and the queen is dead or missing. It is hard to say what happened, it could be colony collapse, though that has not been a problem for us before, or more likely it is that the hive we split them from was diseased to begin with and the new colony could not battle the disease.
The larger hive from which we took the split seemed to be just booming earlier in the year, but when we opened the hive last week, we noticed that the bottom chamber was simply empty -- all the bees were in the top. We planned on swapping chambers this week, but when we opened the hive we noticed that there was nothing but capped brood -- not much in the way of supplies, honey or pollen, and no larvae or eggs. The brood caps were also very dark. I pulled a stalk of dried grass and pierced a few of the caps -- yes I would have to kill a few larvae to try and diagnose what was happening, sad, but necessary. Instead of ooozing creamy white as a healthy larvae would, the cells instead contained a sort of beige goo with a lugubrious consistency and a kind of off smell: foulbrood!
This is a disease that infects developing larvae, killing them off and disintegrating the bodies in the cell. The adult bees are not affected, but they are also unable to clean the cells because of the consistency of the dead brood. The spores of the disease get into the honey, wax and even the wood of the hive so there is no way for the bees to rid themselves of it.
We are going to try to save the colony (assuming the queen is still present), though we will have to put them in all new clean equipment, replace the frames and foundation and destroy all the existing foundation, wax and honey.
We hope to be able to shake the adult bees and queen into a clean nuc and close them off for a day without foraging, then transferring them back to a new clean hive and basically treating them as a captured swarm or a new package. This time of separation appears to be a sufficient quarantine to keep the adults from reintroducing the disease into the new hive.
Failing that, we will have to re-sterilize the equipment by scorching it with a torch, then start with a new, healthy colony. Either way -- our honey production this year is going to be severely reduced as both hives that we use for the Pollen Princess label will basically have to start over. The honey from the Dolores park location will still be available at Bi-Rite under their label once the bees have brought in enough surplus to harvest. We will also hopefully be able to harvest and bottle some honey from our newest hive just below Corona Heights above the Castro.
Please visit our shop to purchase Noe Valley Honey and other hive products from the Pollen Princesses.
The hives near Dolores park seem to be doing alright -- one of them is humming right along, with a healthy amount of brood and almost a full super of honey. I'll be adding a second super to that hive in a week or two while they finish filling this super and cap the honey. The second hive, which was started as a split from the first hive has several eggs and a queen but the population is a little on the low side -- I'm going to give them the shortening and sugar patty treatment in case it is tracheal mites. This treatment worked very well last year with a flagging hive. Otherwise we'll just keep an eye on them and monitor the population. If they are suffering from Nosema, there is not a lot we can do but hope they are able to weather it (just like the flu for us).
We then trekked over to our friend's yard to see the hives there. He has recently started his own hive there from a package because he's interested in watching his own colony up-close. The colony has really taken off over the past couple of weeks with LOTS of brood and a good amount of nectar collected. They've even begun to cap some honey at the top of a few frames. It is very nearly time for him to expand that hive to a second hive body.
The two hives we have at that location are not doing well at all though. The smaller hive, which we began as a split from the first hive had started out very well, but the population has simply dwindled away. There are now only a few dozen bees (instead of a few dozen thousand) and the queen is dead or missing. It is hard to say what happened, it could be colony collapse, though that has not been a problem for us before, or more likely it is that the hive we split them from was diseased to begin with and the new colony could not battle the disease.
The larger hive from which we took the split seemed to be just booming earlier in the year, but when we opened the hive last week, we noticed that the bottom chamber was simply empty -- all the bees were in the top. We planned on swapping chambers this week, but when we opened the hive we noticed that there was nothing but capped brood -- not much in the way of supplies, honey or pollen, and no larvae or eggs. The brood caps were also very dark. I pulled a stalk of dried grass and pierced a few of the caps -- yes I would have to kill a few larvae to try and diagnose what was happening, sad, but necessary. Instead of ooozing creamy white as a healthy larvae would, the cells instead contained a sort of beige goo with a lugubrious consistency and a kind of off smell: foulbrood!
This is a disease that infects developing larvae, killing them off and disintegrating the bodies in the cell. The adult bees are not affected, but they are also unable to clean the cells because of the consistency of the dead brood. The spores of the disease get into the honey, wax and even the wood of the hive so there is no way for the bees to rid themselves of it.
We are going to try to save the colony (assuming the queen is still present), though we will have to put them in all new clean equipment, replace the frames and foundation and destroy all the existing foundation, wax and honey.
We hope to be able to shake the adult bees and queen into a clean nuc and close them off for a day without foraging, then transferring them back to a new clean hive and basically treating them as a captured swarm or a new package. This time of separation appears to be a sufficient quarantine to keep the adults from reintroducing the disease into the new hive.
Failing that, we will have to re-sterilize the equipment by scorching it with a torch, then start with a new, healthy colony. Either way -- our honey production this year is going to be severely reduced as both hives that we use for the Pollen Princess label will basically have to start over. The honey from the Dolores park location will still be available at Bi-Rite under their label once the bees have brought in enough surplus to harvest. We will also hopefully be able to harvest and bottle some honey from our newest hive just below Corona Heights above the Castro.
Please visit our shop to purchase Noe Valley Honey and other hive products from the Pollen Princesses.
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