Early Fall: Apples, Granola, Honey & the State Fair

2021 Maryland State Fair

Windtree Bee Honey Places in Top Five!

We entered our honey in the Small Beekeeper Class, Amber Category — and we won fifth place! This was our first time entering honey to be judged and I wasn’t sure how it would go.

How we judge our honey

The only things we care about are whether our bees, us, and our friends, family, and customers think our honey is ready for harvesting and at peak quality. The bees tell us when they think it’s ready by capping it (they seal the ends of the honeycomb when the moisture content is just right). Next, we bottle it in a clean kitchen using sterilized jars and cute packaging. Then, everyone else lets us know how tasty it is. 😉

Every batch of wildflower honey is unique and delicious. Similar to the way in which wine vintages are affected by the annual grape harvest, honey harvests are affected by the types of flowers the bees gather nectar and pollen from when they make that batch of honey. Neat, right? So, even if we wanted to, we could never again exactly produce the Windtree Bee Summer 2021 batch again. But what a batch!! We’ve been so happy with it! 🙂 🙂 🙂

Award-winning honey calls for celebratory selfie

How the Maryland State Fair & Agricultural Society Judges judge honey

The judges care about all the things I mentioned above, but they are meticulously exact about everything — as they should be. They judge each entrant’s honey on six criteria: containers, crystals, foam, accuracy of filling, density (water content), and flavor. We had top scores for nearly every criteria but so did the other beekeepers. The one area where we could improve is “accuracy of filling”. I didn’t even know that was a thing with honey! With my jellies, jams, and preserves, I’m insanely accurate about filling and I always measure the “headspace” of my jars. But we’ve never been quite that accurate with our honey because you don’t vacuum seal honey. We’ve always made sure it’s at least as full as a pound and if someone gets a little extra, no big deal.

So there you have it! Probably more than you ever wanted to know about how honey is judged! 😀

Champion Honey Display: an amazing entry crafted by another beekeeper who also does stained glass. This was truly a work of art with mini-metalwork bee sculptures framed in what looks like a giant Langstroth hive frame. Gorgeous with a great message!

Early Fall Means Apples!

I wanted to go apple picking at Shaw’s last weekend but they’re closed on Sunday, so I drove down to Weber’s Cider Mill. I hadn’t been there since my kids were little. It wasn’t as busy as I remembered, but it could have been the weather (rainy) or the pandemic or… who knows? They have a nice little farm store where I was also able to pick up a gift for my neighbor.

For the market this week, I made a double batch of Apple Pie Jam with the apples from Weber’s. Craig said this jam is the best I’ve ever made. (While this makes me happy, he says this every time. Haha.) But it’s really delicious!

**Apple Pie Jam**
Use on cinnamon scones, blueberry bagels, graham crackers, oatmeal, and ice cream

New Granola Flavors!

I also made two new batches of granola for tomorrow: Nutty Apple and Peanut Butter Banana. I’m selling these in 16 oz jam jars, which is about two cups. That’s a lot of granola, but if you love granola, you could eat it straight out of the jar. (BYOM — bring you’re own milk; I’ll have spoons!)

We’ll be at the Hereford Farm Market, 17004 York Road, in Parkton, Maryland, from 9:00 a.m. until noon tomorrow. Look for us at the “Hats & Honey” table beside The Contented Rooster.

July 30, 2021August 1, 2021

We have honey!!

After a two week hiatus from the market and a two year hiatus from selling honey, we finally were able to harvest a large batch for this season. Soooooooo happy about it!! This year’s batch is perfect — light-amber in color with a sweet, floral taste. Not too mild, not too strong. (Craig’s calling 2021’s harvest the “Goldilocks Batch.”) 🙂

For anyone who is new to Windtree Bee, welcome! You can read more about us here but basically, we’re backyard beekeepers who have a small one-acre apiary in Parkton, Maryland. We started selling honey a few years ago at the Hereford Farm Market and other local places. We’re not commercial beekeepers. We don’t travel around the country with our bees boxed up in a hot truck hauling them from monocrop to monocrop to pollinate on-demand. Instead, we have only a handful of hives. Except for giving them a sturdy Langstroth hive to live in and treating for varroa after the season’s harvest, we let our bees do their thing. They fly free, foraging for pollen and nectar wherever the wind and their little wings take them. They pollinate whatever crop or plants they feel like pollinating.

Our bees are our partners

It’s important to us that our hives are as healthy as they can be, so we never harvest all the honey that the bees make. We leave enough for them to over winter. If we had harvested every drop of honey our bees made this year, we might make more money at the market, but then they wouldn’t have enough food to make it through winter. We could feed them sugar water, but that’s like feeding your kid only Pop Tarts from September through December. How healthy would they be by January? (And the lead up to spring is the time the bees need to be at their healthiest and strongest. That’s when the queen needs to be laying brood and pumping up the hive’s numbers so they can be ready for spring foraging.)

Bee-loved flowers

We plant lots of flowers for our bees: zinnias, black-eyed Susans, lavender, bee balm, etc. If you’re interested in buying a “Bee-loved Bouquet” from me, let me know! Bouquets would be one-of-a-kind and full of whatever is blooming that day — hand-picked and arranged by me. (Expect a casual cottage bouquet in a mason jar or thrift store glass vase. Don’t expect something that looks like it came from a professional florist! 😉 ) For various reasons, I won’t be selling flowers at the market this year, so the only way to get Windtree Bee flowers this summer is to reach out!! Prices will vary based on bouquet size, bloom freshness, and whether I’m delivering the bouquet or you’re picking it up.

What else will we have at the market tomorrow?

Peach Preserves made with fresh, local peaches from Shaw’s Orchard and our own honey!! I’ve made jams with honey before, but not with our “2021 Goldilocks Batch”!!! 🙂 🙂 🙂

Pineapple Preserves, a.k.a. home-canned pineapple, which is THE BEST. There are only two ingredients — fresh pineapple and simple syrup.

Chocolate Raspberry Sauce. I’ve made a few chocolate jams this summer. This one is specially made to pair with ice cream!!! 😀

I also have new, gorgeous suncatchers from my niece & nephew’s glazier grandma, Mary Nolan. She designs beautiful, bespoke bee and honeycomb glass for me.

See you at the market tomorrow! We’ll be at the Hereford Farm Market, 17004 York Road, in Parkton, Maryland, from 9:00 a.m. until noon. Look for us at the “Hats & Honey” table beside The Contented Rooster.

Interested in a Windtree Bee flower bouquet? Use the form below to let me know!

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July 9, 2021

Pollinator Gardens

Master Gardener Cara Bonner recently gave me a tour of Baltimore County’s Demo Garden. If you haven’t been yet, you should go! The demo garden is open to the public year-round and access is free. No dogs, shut the gate behind you, sign the guest book, and then stroll around for inspiration and ideas.

Baltimore County’s Center for Maryland Agriculture

Inside the demo garden are different themed areas. My two favorites were the Pollinator Garden and the Monarch Waystation. Each area has its own mailbox with information and handouts inside.

The Pollinator Garden mailbox has information sheets about the plants that are in the garden, common Maryland pollinators, and tips for planting your own pollinator garden at home. Popular flower choices are zinnias, black-eyed Susans, and sunflowers. You can also plant milkweed for the monarchs, salvia for honeybees and hummingbirds, and phlox for butterflies and hummingbirds. Remember, no pesticides!! A lawn that looks like AstroTurf is not only unnatural, it’s a desert wasteland to pollinators. But a lawn full of clover looks charming and is wonderful for the bees!

My own pollinator garden

After visiting the pollinator garden down at the Ag Center, I was inspired to plant my own. Here’s what’s in it:

Yellow Yarrow (Achillea)
Black-eyed Susans (Rudbeckia)
Dwarf Sneezeweed (Helenium)
Catmint (Nepeta)
Salvia
Phlox
Bee Balm

They’re all perennials, so hopefully they’ll come back next year.

Baltimore County’s Master Gardener Demo Garden is in Cockeysville — 1114 Shawan Road
For more information on pollinator gardens and invertebrate conservation, visit the Xerces Society

TREES FOR BEES

Central Maryland Beekeepers Association had a journeyman beekeeper from Georgia as its guest speaker this month. Jimmy Gatt talked about why trees are among the best things you can plant for honeybees. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to make the meeting, but CMBA shared Jimmy’s list of trees, shrubs and forbs with me. I’m sharing it below with their permission. (What’s a forb? Forbs are generally broad-leafed flowering plants that are not grasses or woody plants like trees and shrubs.)

Trees:
Basswood (Tilia Americana)
Buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidentalis)
Devil’s walking stick (Aralia spins)
Franklin’s tree (Franklinia alatamaha)
Smooth sumac (Rhus glabra)
Winged sumac (Rhus copallinum) — highly recommended
Staghorn sumac (Rhus typhina)

Shrubs:
Summersweet (Clethra alnifolia)
Coralberry (Symphoricarpos orbiculatus)
Shrubby St. John’s wort (Hypericum prolificum)
New Jersey Tea (Ceoanthus americanus)
Bottlebrush buckeye (Aesculus parviflora)
Meadowswet (Spirea alba)

Forbs:
Anise hyssop (Agastache foeniculum)
Common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca)
Butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa)
Swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata)
Clustered mountain mint (Pycnanthemum muticum)

CMBA’s next membership meeting is at the Ag Center — August 3rd from 5:00-9:00 p.m. Join the club and then tour the Demo Garden! 🙂

June 18, 2021June 19, 2021

Bee, Honey & Flower Update

Three of our hives look really good. They’re so healthy that Craig’s added extra supers and is worried about them swarming. Look at them in this pic! They are practically bursting out of this thing. We’ll know more about the honey harvest in about a month.

My zinnias look horrible. I don’t even have the heart to share a picture. They are the opposite of the bees. Instead of thriving, they’re just… not. They’re not growing. They’re stunted. It’s not that we planted too late. It’s not the rabbit. It might be that I didn’t mix in the right soil amendments this year. But I think what really happened is I didn’t thin them when they first came up as seedlings. It’s a rookie mistake and one I’m regretting. Live and learn.

My beautiful “Brush Strokes” violas are doing well.
They look terrific and taste earthy. Sort of mild and spicy at the same time.

And the surprise flower success of the season — clover!
Both in our garden as ground cover for the walkways and in our yard.
We intentionally sprinkled clover seed in all our bare patches and it came up beautifully. The bees love it!

What am I bringing to the market tomorrow?

This week’s choices were inspired by Father’s Day. All savory, spicy offerings that pair well with grilled meat.

Honey Peach Chutney — With vinegar, ginger, mustard seeds, and crushed red pepper flakes, this has a tangy, spicy bite. Serve with pork chops, beer-can chicken, or goat cheese and toasted baguette slices.

Apple Onion Marmalade — this is actually an apple jelly flavored with onion. Spread it on a turkey & cheese sandwich or an everything bagel.

Dad’s BBQ Spice Rub — a classic barbeque rub with brown sugar, smoky & sweet paprika, and a half-dozen other grilling spices.

May 28, 2021May 29, 2021

We’re back at the Hereford Farm Market!

Every Saturday from May until November, we’ll be at the Hereford Farm Market from 9:00 a.m. until noon. We share a table with Mandi and Rob (Rosie Posie Design Co). Mandi sells hand-knitted accessories, mug rugs (beautiful one-of-a-kind coffee coasters), and other fiber artisan offerings.

Look for us at the “Hats & Honey” table near Contented Rooster’s pop-up pastry shop.

Why “Hats & Honey” when we have neither hats nor honey to sell?? Possibly because I’m the worst marketer EVER. Possibly because I’m ignoring everything anyone has ever said about branding best practices. But, in truth, it’s because people at the market know us as the “Hats & Honey” table and we have a sentimental attachment to our table banner. (We will have both hats & honey in the fall!!)

While Craig and I wait for our little bees to finish making honey, we’re selling other fun bee- and honey-themed products, as well as homemade jam. Here’s what’s available from Windtree Bee this month:

HONEY CINNAMON ALMOND GRANOLA

Limited quantities! I’ll probably make this once or twice a month, just to take a break from jam batches, which are much more labor intense. These are 16 oz jars, but dry weight is about 2 cups. Except for the almonds, salt, and honey, all the ingredients are organic. Smelled awesome while baking. Like a fresh batch of cookies!! 🙂

HONEYCOMB SUNCATCHERS

St. Gobnait, Patron Saint of Bees and Beekeepers

My sister-in-law’s mom, Mary Nolan, is a glazier. She has a basement studio where she makes bespoke stained glass. This spring, she made six beautifully handcrafted bee and honeycomb suncatchers. The one above is my favorite.

BEE BALM AND GARDNER’S SOAP

Made from our beeswax!

My next-door neighbor, Tammy Tracey, makes homemade soaps, body scrubs, and beeswax salves. We gave her a bucket of beeswax from our hives and she used it to make a lavender-scented hand cream and a rich, dense nighttime balm, which is great for winter eczema. She also makes a strong gardener’s soap with pumice and tea tree oil — useful after possible poison ivy encounters!

HOMEMADE JAM

I’ve had a lot of fun coming up with new flavors each week. For Preakness Saturday, I made a batch inspired by the horses. “Midnight Bourbon” Maple Apple Butter sold out almost immediately. “Risk Taking” is My Jam (a caramel apple coffee jam) followed soon after. I have one — one!! — jar of “Keepmeinmind” for Grilling left. It’s a smoky-spicy savory apple-based jam that is a terrific compliment to grilled pork or chicken.

I also have a few carrot cake and cinnamon pear jams and a half-dozen mixed berry jams left. Mixed berry (raspberry, strawberry, blackberry, and blueberry) is a classic summer jam, so I made a double batch last week. Check back each week for new flavors!

Flower Update:

Everything is in the ground! Mostly. I held some of my sunflower seeds back. I’ve never been successful at succession planting, but it’s always fun to try. Our old garden fence was falling down, so Craig built a new one. Our spruced up garden with all the newly planted little rows of seedlings must have looked very enticing to one of the neighborhood’s wild rabbits. He (or she) chomped off the tops of several seedlings. I was just about to go all Mr. McGregor when I caught my younger daughter carrying a sack of carrots out to the garden in the hope that she could coax the rabbit out. Hmm… Stay tuned…

Bee & Honey Update:

Thank you to everyone who has stopped by our table to ask about the bees. The hives look good! Well, most of them. One hive probably has a laying worker, but we’ll probably let nature run its course and see what’s what with that hive in a month. In the meantime, Craig took on some additional beekeeping work looking out for another hive on a nearby farm. And we met some other local beekeepers who sell nucs only a few miles from us, which is great! We have neither the interest nor the acreage to try to sell nucs, so it’s nice to find a convenient source for Hereford-hardy bees!

Hope everyone is enjoying the cicadas and the start of summer! See you at the market!

April 2, 2020April 2, 2020

Spring 2020 – Honeycomb, Jam, and More Bees!

We lost all our hives over the winter. Total and complete bummer, but unfortunately not an uncommon experience. Craig’s beekeeping buddies lost most of their hives too. Everyone ordered new nucs this year from Central Maryland Beekeepers Association. Because the starter hives come from Florida, everyone’s been wondering how delivery and distribution would be handled this year due to COVID-19. CMBA made several changes to the way the pick-ups are normally handled to keep things safe and compliant with current state orders. If everything goes as planned, our new little bee buddies will be installed this weekend.

Swarm Catcher

April and May are great months for beekeepers to catch natural honeybee swarms. (For more info on what a swarm is, what to do if you see one, and who to call, check out CMBA’s site. Craig’s listed as a beekeeper to call for the 21120 area.)

What’s so great about a honeybee swarm?

Besides being just a neat nature-y thing, anecdotal evidence suggests naturally occurring bee swarms might be better adapted to our backyard than out-of-state nucs. (Two beekeeping buddies caught swarms last year. Post-winter, those hives are still alive.) If we manage to catch a swarm, and if it survives winter 2020, we want to split it into two Maryland-hearty hives next spring. There’s a lot of hoping, wishing, and praying to our plan, but that’s beekeeping.

First things first – catch a swarm. Here’s our swarm catcher. We’re going to hang it in one of our evergreens.

NEW THIS YEAR

Honeycomb

We bought some special frames, so that we could offer squares of honeycomb. If you’ve never had it, you will love it. It can be eaten plain, but is also great with tea and toast, figs and Brie, and – according to food writer Hattie Ellis – buttermilk panna cotta.

Jams and Jellies

For some time now, I’ve been wanting to add a new product to our Hereford Farm Market table, which would extend our selling season and diversify our offerings. Homemade jams and jellies seem like a perfect companion for home-harvested honey and cottage bouquets. To ensure that my methods were safe and my recipes sound, I enrolled in a water-bath canning course down at Baltimore Chef Shop, Hampden’s teaching kitchen, this past January. I hope to offer small batches, depending on what’s in season. Ideally, I’ll be using fruit from the farm market and/or local orchards.

Flowers

Before I could decide if I even wanted to do a soil test this year, UMass sent an email saying the lab was closed due to COVID-19. So I ordered some pH test strips online and bought some basic amendments based on last year’s lab test. Hopefully, all will be well. Seeds that need to be started inside have been planted and are happily growing beneath lights in my basement. (For a list of the types of flowers I’m growing this year, check out my flowers page.) In the meantime, I’m enjoying spring blooms.

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Farm Market

The Hereford Farm Market has a new website. Check out the other vendors and stay tuned for more info. As far as I know, it will still open, although there will likely be new rules for shopping and gathering. Get up-to-date info on the market via Facebook and/or Instagram.

State Parks

Governor Hogan’s stay-at-home order allows for limited hiking and biking in some state park areas. I imagine this is because exercising outside is a double benefit to people’s health. One of our favorite ways to cope with the current crisis is to take our dog, Tugg, for hikes and a swim in the Gunpowder River. We are very lucky to have such beautiful state parks so close to where we live! For DNR’s FAQs about the stay-at-home order, click here. For the Maryland Park Service’s list of state parks that are open or closed, click here.

Tugg retrieving his bumper from the Gunpowder Falls

Puppy Tugg with his bumper

Books and Movies

These are on my to-read and to-watch lists. Some are new releases, others are older.

HONEYLAND

The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse

Virtual Tours

Lots of virtual tours these days! Here are five of my favorites:

Honeycomb Gloves by Rosie Posie Design Co.

Everyone, please take care during the month of April. Stay safe and well!

Craig and Jill started keeping bees in 2015. If you liked this post, please subscribe so you don’t miss the next one!

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September 20, 2019April 2, 2020

Selling Season + Winterizing the Hives

Craig harvested about the same amount of honey as last year (roughly 120 pounds). I was hopeful for a bit more because we had one more hive this year, but… bees, ya know? Totally unpredictable – at least that’s been our experience with backyard beekeeping. (We don’t claim to know how the big commercial beekeepers/honey producers operate and, in fact, aren’t advocating for that type of practice. We both continue to think that beekeeping is best for bees if done on a small scale.)

So, we jarred up this year’s harvest and started selling. It’s been fun!

We’re selling at these places this year:

OAK SPRING FARM STORE: Tuesdays from 2:00-6:00

HEREFORD FARMERS MARKET: Saturday, September 21st from 9:00-12:00 (possibly additional Saturdays)

HEREFORD FALL FEST: October 19th (10-5) and October 20th (10-6)

Craig and his friend, Chuck, are also offering another free “Intro to Beekeeping” class at:

PERRY HALL LIBRARY: September 28th from 2:00-3:00

BEE REPORT

We decided to keep our little nuc instead of over-wintering it at a friend’s house, so now we’re up to four hives. I think that will be our max. As stated above, we’re not looking to go big. We’ll see how many make it through winter. For now, they’re looking good!

Winterizing the Hives

Here’s a neat thing about bees – they are super tidy. They like to keep their hive clean and will also clean any honey-covered equipment you leave in the yard for them.

After harvesting, we put the supers and buckets outside for a few days so the bees can clean them. Here are some other common things beekeepers do to prepare for winter:

HIVE CHECK UP: Basically, beekeepers want their hives as healthy as possible before heading into winter. This means assessing the strength of the queen, estimating how many bees are in the hive, seeing how much honey they have left, and checking for problems.

FEEDING: We try to leave lots of honey in the hives for our bees, but some beekeepers (us included) occasionally feed sugar water to their bees after the harvest to give them an extra calorie boost heading into winter.

TREAT FOR VARROA: Varroa mites are like vampires to bees. They suck a bee’s insides out while also probably infecting it with a virus. Lovely, huh? Varroa are pests whose full scientific name is varroa destructor for a reason. A varroa infestation can easily wipe out an entire hive and spread to another hive very quickly. But you don’t want to treat for varroa before the harvest, which means it’s usually a fall task.

ENTRANCE REDUCER: Once summer is over, there are less bees, making less trips. To help the bees keep their hives warm in the winter, and to keep out intruders like mice, beekeepers sometimes install “entrance reducers.” You have to be careful about using them though, because if the bees are still too active, the entrance can get clogged with bees and the whole hive will die. (Yep, that happened to us one year. Always heartbreaking when you lose a hive, no matter the cause. Doubly bad when you feel like it was something you did.)

VIVALDI BOARDS: These are specially built frames that help with winter moisture, ventilation, and feeding problems. We’ve never used them before, but this year Craig made them for all our hives. (Every year, our goal is to have ALL OF OUR HIVES SURVIVE. Will this be the year?) Click here for a link on how to make these yourself.

Craig has been beekeeping since 2015. Jill started selling honey in 2018. Currently, they have four winterized hives and a flower garden that needs to be put to bed. Their latest experiment: Vivaldi boards. Stay tuned…

August 1, 2019April 2, 2020

Planning for the 2019 Honey Harvest

Many beekeepers in our area harvest their honey by the end of August. By then, the bees have been hard at work producing honey and most of what you can take is ready. (We always try to leave enough honey for the hives to over-winter so we don’t have to feed them sugar water.)

How do we know it’s time to harvest?

Aside from the time of year (late summer), the main thing Craig looks for are multiple frames of completely capped honey. (Worker bees cap each cell when the water content is perfect for ripe honey.)

How harvesting works

This bit is written for anyone with a mild interest in how the honey they’re buying/eating has been harvested. (If you’re a new beekeeper, you’re going to want more detailed instructions — see below.)

Uncap the supers. This means the beekeeper basically takes a hot knife and cuts the top off all those little honey cells.
Extract the honey from the frames. We use a centrifugal honey extractor. All the honey gets spun out of the frame, drips down the side of the extractor, through a filter, which gets out all of the really big bits of wax, etc. Then the filtered honey drips into a clean bucket with a closed spout.
Bottle the honey. Glass jars are sanitized, lined up, and filled from the bucket. Usually, Craig fills the jars and I put the lids on. It takes an hour or two to bottle one bucket of extracted honey.
Etsy is a great place to find quilt squares
Package the honey jars. I keep it simple. Each jar gets a little quilt square, secured with a clean rubber band.
Box them up for sale… Or give them away to friends & family! 🙂

For wannabees and beginner beekeepers

If you want more information on getting started or harvesting your first batch of honey, here are some additional resources:

JE SUIS PREST

Anyone an Outlander fan? First published in 1991, the novel follows the adventures of Claire Fraser nee Beauchamp as she travels back and forth through time, Scotland, France, and the U.S. Her lover’s clan motto is “Je suis prest” — I am ready. 😀

Stay tuned… I’ll let you know in a future post how the harvest went!

Craig has been beekeeping since 2015. Jill started selling honey in 2018. Currently, they have three established hives and one nuc, which they will likely overwinter at a friend’s house. Craig has presented at the Hereford and Cockeysville libraries on beekeeping basics.