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| Camp Kreitzer gold! It really is worth its weight in golden goodness. |
I really do! And Larry and I love sharing our enthusiasm with others. A few days ago we hosted a bee demo and bonfire cookout with several families from our chapel. While I was gathering things for the demo, I found an unharvested honey frame in our pool house fridge. Surprise! Somehow we missed it when we took our honey to the annual bee club honey harvest where we collected about 50 pounds of Camp Kreitzer gold.
Our little bee yard is doing well as we head into "bee winter." The nectar flow is about over except for a few fall sources like aster and goldenrod. The girls are still bringing in lots of pollen. I love to see their pockets heavy with little round orange "pollen pumpkins." We fed the hives the last sugar syrup of the season today. As the weather turns cold, we'll switch to sugar patties if we need to, but hopefully they will store enough sugar syrup to make it through until March. We're asking the bee patrons to help all three of our hives to survive the winter and greet us in the Spring. We took three large jars of honey to the Poor Clares in Alexandria who so faithfully pray for all our family's needs and for our bees as well. Bees have a lot to teach us about working hard and cooperating as they do their waggle dance to inform their sisters where the good gathering places are. God gave us these amazing little creatures to spark our sense of wonder and remind us that work and life in general is sweet.
Thank you, Lord, for all your creatures great and small.
It's been a busy Spring here at Camp Kreitzer. One of our first adventures was creating a nuke from our one strong bee hive that survived the winter. Good thing we did because about a month later the big hive swarmed. There were so many bees in that hive that it is still thriving with a new laying queen and the little hive has a laying queen as well. So that is good news for the survival of our little apiary and honey production. We've already pulled out eight frames of capped honey from the big hive which is about 25 pounds. And there are a lot of other frames almost completely capped. We hope to get more before the honey harvest and plan to split the big hive again as well. We'd like to have at least three hives going into the winter because we generally lose one.
