Lavender Cuttings and Honey

January 24, 2021January 24, 2021 Lazer Creek Apiary2 Comments

Back in fall, I read a post on Pinterest that recommended using honey as a root stimulator. The link to that post is no longer active, but I did find another resource from Gardening Know How this morning. I believe the recipe I used listed two tablespoons of honey, while this one only uses one, but I may be wrong.

I really didn’t think this would work, but I tried it anyway, using honey that I didn’t want to bottle because it came from cleaning wax cappings. I mixed the honey and water in a mason jar, pulled leaves off lavender cuttings and scored the stems a little and then dropped them into the mason jar while I continued my search for leggy lavender. Most of the cuttings therefore soaked in the honey water for at least 20 minutes before I unceremoniously stuck them into a planter.

When the sun finally came out last weekend, my patience ran out and I just had to dig up the first cutting! To my surprise, it had around 3 inches of roots from all around the stem. Not all of the cuttings were quite that successful, but every one had enough of a root system to transplant it. I thought briefly about moving them to individual pots for another six months of babying, but the more cuttings I dug out with fantastic roots, the more work that seemed to be. We now have an additional 30 plants along the driveway. Now, not all of them may survive, but the exciting thing for me is that every cutting had roots. In the past, I’ve had anywhere from a 50 – 75% success rate using the same process but with store-bought chemicals.

I dug up two gardenia cuttings yesterday, but those are not yet as successful. Still, gardenia cuttings have always taken longer to root and had a lower success rate than many of the other plants I’ve propagated. I moved them from the greenhouse to outdoors and will leave them alone until the weather turns hot. At that point, they’ll stand a better chance of surviving in individual pots or in the ground. When I transplant them, I’ll douse them with honey water to give the roots another helping hand – maybe.

Spring is in the air for the bees, too! The pollen feeder and syrup feeders are abuzz and the lonely calendula blossom above was covered in bees all day long. I sowed calendula seed too late last year but managed to get a handful of plants started in pots. They have bloomed throughout the winter and survived temperatures as low as 23 degrees. Not only are they a great resource for bees at a time when not much else blooms, calendula blossoms are reputed to aid healing for a variety of skin conditions. I use calendula blossoms in the anti-itch salve that I make and have used calendula-infused olive oil in one batch of soap so far. I hope to get enough growing this spring to have plenty for the bees and me to share. From what I’ve read, calendula will readily self-seed and grow in even the poorest soils, so I just need to get some going, leave some flowers to go to seed, stop the chickens from eating them, and stop the cat from digging them up to poop in the flower pots!

Well, the sun is out and the thermometer is rising, so it’s time to leave the computer and head outdoors! I don’t think I’ll be throwing any more mulch around with a pitchfork today, but there are some less strenuous garden and bee chores I can tackle. There are always plenty of reasons to get out an enjoy the sunshine here on the farm, and there will be time enough to do laundry after sunset.

Cooking · Home Remedies · Honey · Lazer Creek Apiary · Natural Food Sources · Pests - Bees · Products and Vendors

Our biggest harvest yet – 95 lbs of honey.

June 1, 2019 Lazer Creek ApiaryLeave a comment

Spring was good to us with its profusion of blackberry blossoms which yielded hives full of pale and delicious honey. We put our daughter and her boyfriend, JI, in bee suits for the first time and had them smoking and brushing bees, which they greatly enjoyed. (I’m glad that I was the only one who got stung on their first excursion to the bee yard! I even restrained my remarks to the bee that crawled up my boot. )

We only checked honey supers above excluders and were still able to pull 95 pounds of honey. There are full supers with frames that were 3/4 capped last weekend, so we’ll have more to process in the near future.

As the workshop is still in disarray, we extracted the honey in the kitchen with the four of us working very well together in the cramped space. JI is a natural at decapping frames and we all took turns cranking the handle on the extractor. I’d covered the island with a sheet and put towels down on the floor, so clean up was a breeze. With water and electricity at the shop now, we were able to pressure wash the equipment. I even had enough energy left to pressure-wash the wood ware that I plan to repaint sometime this week. (Or do I mean next week? What day is it? I love summer break!)

The main nectar source right now appears to be elderberry, and the bees are still visiting buckwheat early in the day. I’m very happy to see them on the lavender, but I don’t yet have enough lavender for it to make a difference. I just read that varroa mites don’t like the way lavender smells, so lavender pollen and nectar can help protect bees. (Source: Plants for honey bees) That makes me want to go out and clip more cuttings right now, but I need to wait a while as the plants are currently in full bloom.

Honey May 2019 — My first attempt at lavender-infused honey.

I did cut some blooms a couple of days ago for my first attempt at making lavender infused honey. I know I need more, but I really want to leave as many flowers on the plant for bee-forage as possible. Some of the recipes I looked at require heating the honey, which I prefer not to do, so I am following a recipe from NectarApothecary.com that takes 4 – 6 weeks. I do not have dried blooms, so I know there’s a risk that fresh flowers will make the honey crystallize, but I’m not worried about that as I plan to add it to tea or simply eat it by the spoonful when I have a sore throat! I know I’m not supposed to disturb the honey, but I can’t resist taking the lid off to inhale the incredible aroma now and then. It’s only a matter of time before I dunk a teaspoon in, so there may not be much left in the jar by the end of the six weeks….

Today we get to find a home (other than the living room) for the Honey Keg and pour our liquid gold into it for storage and eventual easy bottling. I couldn’t find my mason jars and lids the other day, so it may be time to just have a case of pre-sterilized containers shipped in. Our previous process of ladling honey into jars in the kitchen sink is going to take too long, but I’m not going to complain about how much honey we have. After all, our progress means we’re one step closer to being able to retire from our day jobs!

It’s another beautiful day on the farm, and we finally have a chance of rain in the forecast. Cucumbers, grapes, blackberries, and tomatoes are all getting closer to being edible. We got to eat four incredible blueberries from one of the new bushes yesterday. The workshop passed the building inspection yesterday. Best of all — we no longer have to worry about what is going on with our old house and can now focus on framing the honey shop in the workshop. It just simply doesn’t get any better than this!

Lazer Creek Apiary · Pests - General · Relaxing

Fall and yellow jackets

November 5, 2017 Lazer Creek ApiaryLeave a comment

While temperatures remain above average, we only have to look at the spectacular fall colors (and occasionally grab a jacket in the morning) to know that winter is just around the corner. Of course, everything in nature knows it too — including yellow jackets.

Beekeepers across southern Georgia have been reporting record numbers of yellow jackets this year, and we are no exception. The infestation around our hives made it impossible to do any hive checks this weekend. However, the screen entrance reducers that we added to the wooden reducers have made it possible for even the weaker hives to defend against the horrific number of pests vying for the resources our bees have worked so hard to store. Hubby bent strips of screen into steps in a way that the bees enter from the sides through a square opening and then make their way to the wooden entrance in the middle. I don’t feel like I’m explaining it well, but I’ll get a picture once the yellow jackets die back. We did very quickly check the candy board on one of the hives and the bees have eaten about half the sugar we put on two weeks ago — or is it three? We know that next time we make candy boards we will put wax paper on top of the screen so that the sugar has time to harden. The sugar that fell through has assuredly attracted some of the invaders!

As neither checking the weak hive nor doing any work close to the apiary was an option, I weeded the lavender garden and threw out a little more buckwheat seed. It’s probably too late for the seed to do much, but who knows when these warm temperatures will end? Bees are foraging on the buckwheat planted in front of the RV, so the possibility of blocking new weeds, adding nitrogen into the soil, and providing bee food is too tempting to resist.

I let my lavender plants in the city grow until they became very straggly and woody. Then, when I pruned them back, two of them didn’t survive. I don’t want to make that mistake again, so I, somewhat reluctantly, trimmed lavender and rosemary plants today and now have a good harvest to hang in the well house to dry. To say that my last attempt to make lavender oil was unsuccessful would be an understatement — baby oil with coconut oil makes an awful base — so I’m looking forward to a second attempt. However, I did successfully use mineral oil to make a batch of lemon grass oil, which I then used to make beeswax furniture polish, so that’s what I’ll try with at least some of this lavender. Hmmmm – maybe I should re-read the book I have about making products with lavender before I decide….

So, as we are rapidly approaching the time to make the commute back to city life, I am happy to report that I have blisters instead of eye strain and a relaxed mind and body that find it impossible to feel any stress. We got to spend a wonderful evening with family yesterday. We got to hear about our neighbors’ road trip. Maggie got to spend time with all of her doggy friends. The lavender garden looks like a garden again. There are a whole lot of things that didn’t go as planned this weekend, but somehow when we’re here, plans feel less important. Life is good and getting better all the time!