1.From the Falster FarmPerspective that is . . .www.falsterfarm.com

2. Karl & Nancy Falster Today Im hoping I can transfer a few things I have learned about the honey bee and a bit about how honey bees live in our part of North America. If this is your first time to meet us, we are a small family farm practicing the old methods of slow growing and slow cooking in the Nourishing Traditions style. Keeping bees was 1st a hobby, then an avocation, in fact I have been playing with bees since 1979.Like many farms of the pre-1950s we also keep a few stands of bees on our farm. Ourhobby farm went wild in 2003 as Falster Farm went international with its MiniatureHereford and mini Jerseys. As part of our farming practice we raise our beeves onpasture and finish them on clover East Texas Ball clover. Customers visiting would seeour Honey Bees following the mini Herefords finishing on clover; so, 1st we were sellinghoney on the farm, then a short class or two, some consultation calls, then a class onMead making, Farmers Market, and then a couple of retail outlets. 3. We even remove bees from structures. This has been a most interesting year for that. 4. Also, I am a Bee Hunter, and thats been a part of mywhole life. 5. Agricultural Propagation/Pollination of Fruits & Veggies Table Honey on Biscuits, Breads, Pan Cakes, Cereals just plain old honey Health Supplements 1. Relieve Hangovers. Had a little too much fun last night? A few tablespoons of honey, which is packed with fructose, will help speed up your bodys metabolism of alcohol. 2. Heal Wounds, Cuts, Scrapes & Burns. Dont reach for the Neosporin the next time you cut or burn yourself simply apply honey to the affected area. Honey works as a natural antiseptic. 3. Soothe Sore Throats and Coughs. Combine honey with the juice of one lemon and drink. It works like a wonder! 4. Remove Parasites. Hopefully youll never have to use this trick, but if you do, combine equal parts honey, vinegar and water and drink. The combination of these three ingredients is the perfect parasite killer 5. Moisturize Dry Skin. Honey is a fantastic moisturizer, especially on dry patches, like your elbows or hands even your lips! Rub onto your dry, patchy skin and let it sit for about 30 minutes before washing off. Honey also makes a great lip balm! 6. Condition Damaged Hair. Honey is a great natural conditioner. You can simply add a teaspoon of the stuff to your regular shampoo to smooth your damaged locks. You can also combine it with olive oil for a deeper conditioning. Let it soak for 20 minutes with your hair wrapped in a towel before shampooing as usual. 7. Have an Amazing Bath. Relax your body and soak your skin in a soothing bath. Add 2 tablespoons of honey to 1 cup of hot water and let it dissolve for about 10 minutes. Add 2 or 3 drops of lavender Young Living essential oil and add it to your bath. 8. Remove Acne. Stubborn acne can really benefit from a small daily dab of honey. Place a band-aid over the pimple, and take it off 30 minutes later. 9. Give Yourself a Facial. Combine 2 teaspoons of milk with 2 tablespoons of honey. Cover your face with the mixture and let it sit for 10 minutes before washing off. 10. Boost Your Energy. Quit turning to coffee for your daily energy boost! Replace your cup of Joe with a cup of tea. Mix in a tablespoon or so of honey. 11. Substitute Honey for Sugar in Baking. For every cup of sugar a recipe calls for, replace it with 3/4 cup of honey. For best results, add 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda and reduce another liquid in your recipe by 1/4 cup. Also, reduce the oven temperature by 25 degrees. 12. Make Infused Honeys. Why have plain old regular honey when you can have ginger lime honey or hot pepper honey?! 13. Make Almond Milk from Scratch. 14. Make Honey Wine from Scratch . . . The Alcoholic Beverage of the Ages MEAD! 6. Bees Constitute a number of families with some 20,00 species.They possess the most astonishing knowledge of engineeringand architecture in the animal kingdom, stand out from many other creatures in termsof their social lives, and amaze all who study their means of communication. Life in the colony, much more so than ants and wasps, is based on successfullycooperating with the other bees in the hive. Unlike almost all other creatures theirsexuality is very much repressed. With honey bees it is always the case that very few females (Queens) take care of thepropagation of the species. So the love of all the bees is focused on that one individual andher messages to them messages that direct the general aspect of the colony. The worker bee goes to the love life of the plant kingdom (flowers) and carries that lovewhich lives in the flowers into the hive. Therefore, the living element of this thriving,germinating love that is spread out over the flowers of the fields is also contained in thehoney that the bees make and we eat or drink. Life in the hive is a life lived in twilight, a life of security and desire for union andoneness in seclusion. The workers short life accomplishes cleaning and warming brood,feeding of others, producing wax, building comb, transporting food within the hive, guardduty at the entrance, visiting the flowers of the field and sucking up nectar into their honeystomach and regurgitating it when she returns to the hive, then communicating to otherswhere that nectar or pollen source resides in relation to the current position of the sun thecosmos. 7. Three types of Individuals:Queen TYPICAL COLONY1 Queen Workers200 80,000Workers0 5000 DronesDrones 8. We observe that the Honey Bee is a creature more directlyinfluenced by the sun than any other. There are three types of bees with three different timeperiods of development to maturity: 16 days for the Queen,21 days for the Worker, 22 24 days for the Drone. The sun needs as much time to rotate on its axis as it takesthe drone to mature. The Queen on the other hand doesnt wait a full rotation shestays completely within the realm of a single rotation. Bydoing so, the queen places itself entirely under the influenceof the sun, which then allows it to become fertile eggproducing. So everything that is connected with the capacityto lay fertilized honey bee eggs is under the influence of theSun, also in respect to the entire cosmos. The more the sun rotates to its complete rotation the morethe larvae is thrown toward the earth influence, such as theworker, though very much a sun creature, it is closer to theearth influence than the Queen. And , the Drone, maturing outside the complete Solarrotation has freed itself of the Suns influence altogether. So we have three sorts of honey bees to look at the SunQueen; the Worker, which still has some extra earthly powers;and the Drone which has nothing at all of the Suns effectsand is completely an earth creature. Everything normally taking place with the honey bee is notinfluenced by the earth as you will see only fertilization. 9. Really hard to say as the elements areso interdependent for form andsubstance:Colony in the round - formed from thewax, nectar, pollen.Six-Sided cells of workers and dronesmost economical way to cover a givenspace. The queen lays her eggs in a circle. The comb itself takes on a beautifulheart shape which is under the influenceof the rounding law of hanging chains. 10. The round queen cell hangingvertically from day one fortified andcomplemented by royal jellythroughout the larval stage, are thenecessary components to make a realqueen.She is the ruler of the dark domain, inthe most noble sense she is a servantall her life. Usually mates onceaccumulating enough semen to lastseveral years, producing many 100s ofthousands offspring.Italian Queenand her court. 11. Egg and first stage larva laid dead center& Horizontal! Off center indicates a layingworker and loss of the real queen. (This isa good place for you to ask me a toughquestion.) Larvae of different ages. The whitematerial in the bottom of the cell is foodsecreted by adult workers. Older larvae with cells being capped Worker pupae - changing to the adult. An emerging adult. 12. Born in a 6 sidedhorizontal cell Are the bulk of thecolonys population Suppress their sexuality Perform all duties andlabor for maintenance ofthe colony Produces the wax that thecolony is built on. 13. Nest (comb) construction: workersbuild the comb which forms theinternal structure of the hive. Thecomb is made from beeswax, anatural secretion sweated out inthin, wafer like, almost, translucentwhite plates through glands on theunderside abdomen of workerbees: that has been consideredsacred in almost every culturethroughout history. It takes nearly a million of theseplatelets to make up a deep frameof honeycomb making it the mostvaluable aspect of the hive. 5-8 pounds of honey imbibed tomake a pound of wax! 14. Maintenance of the nest: Bees are careful about nest hygiene; clean cells before reuse, and remove debris and dead bees.Fanning & Guards: Workers are responsible for Environmental control. They will fan at the entrance to circulate fresh air into the hive if carbon dioxide levels get too high or if temperatures rise above acceptable levels. Acceptable temps maintained by bees are cold-blooded animals and lack automatic control of their body temperature. They have only behavioral control of temperature, but nevertheless maintain the hive at 90 F regardless of the outside temperature! When too cold, bees contract their flight muscles repeatedly without moving their wings; this behavior generates heat. They are ready to fend off ANY intruder. 15. Most modern farmers think that animals and insects are just wondering generalities, but nothing could befurther from the truth. Bees know the smell of their colony and anything not imbibed with the smell of their hivewill be attacked . . . If an intruder smells foreign then its likely that the bees in your hive will try to kill them byballing up and smothering them to death, and /or stinging them. Be they mice, roaches, wasps, or the newqueen you want to introduce. They will then remove it from the hive, if too large they will move it to a corner and encase it in Propolis. . . Thecasement gum of the hive imbibed with marvelous healing components for those who chew it. 16. Pollenis carried on the hind legs of the worker when foraging. Pollen is stored in cells and serves as the source of proteins, fats and minerals. 17. Collection, Handling and Storageof Food: Bees collect nectar andpollen from flowers as food. Nectaris carried internally in the honeystomach. Pollen is picked up bythe special body hairs as a beevisits a flower. Nectar is converted into honey by workers in the hive. When the honey is ripe and the cells have been filled, the workers cap the cells with a wax capping. Falster Honey is deep and golden 18. Labor Activities of Workers How does a Bee know what to do?How did the pupa turn into a bee? How did the growth stages of the bee first emerge? Who or what defined thatprocess? Was it the bee itself-or chance, as evolutionists would have us believe-or a more powerful force thaneither of these?The answer to these questions is clear. It is absurd to claim that the insect inside the cocoon could carry out thenecessary changes within itself, in full knowledge of what it will need in the outside world. Its totally out of thequestion for the eye or digestive system, or substances such as enzymes and hormones, to form inside a pupathat develops as a result of happenstance changes in itself. Neither can there be any question of an externalintervention in the pupa.During the pupal stage, neither chance nor the bee itself enables the perfect completion of each of the beesorgans, with all the functions they will require. Such a flawless development can only be performed by asuperior and matchless Power - God, who is matchless in creation.Every bee emerges from the cell with all its bodily structures fully formed. Neither happenstance nor the bee itselfcan bring this about. 19. The Queen is the unique and most importantindividual in the colony. The lady of six legs. The perfect formation of the wax is to a large partdirected by the Queen or the result of her genes. Clustering of brood and pollen is directed by theQueen . . . 20. Without the presence of a Queen a colony cannotfunction normally. Disperse/abscond, or develop a laying queen situation. Observation of the Queens egg laying patternsare an important part of beekeeping; one of thebasic goals of good management is to assess thequality of the Queen, and to a degree control andpromote her. Queen Excluder Supplemental Feeding of Honey and Lemon Grass Oils BioDynamic Remedies 21. Supersedure is the process by which anold queen bee is replaced by a newqueen. Supersedure may be initiateddue to old age of a queen or a diseasedor failing queen. As the queen ages herpheromone output diminishes.Supersedure may be forced by abeekeeper. When a new queen is available, theworkers will kill the reigning queen by"balling" her, This method is also used tokill large predatory wasps that enter thehive and may be used against a foreignqueen attempting to take over an Develops from a fertilized egg or young existing colony. Balling is often aproblem for beekeepers attempting tofemale larva (emergency Queen.) introduce a replacement queen. Queens are reared in special cells If a queen suddenly dies the workerswill flood several cells, where a larvaround, not hexagonal hanginghas just emerged, with royal jelly. Thevertically, not horizontally. young larva floats on the royal jelly. Theworker bees then build a larger queen Queen larvae are fed a diet of Royal cell from the normal sized worker cellJellyand it protrudes vertically from the face Cell capped on day 5, larva spins of the brood comb.cocoon 22. Completes development and emerges after about 15 1/2 to 16 days after the egg was laid. Announces her advent by a series of piping notes (challenge, call to arms?) Seeks out rivals and cuts that rivals cell, or two emerging queens will fight to the death. Yes both may die. Initiates mating flights at 5-6 days of age She flies as high as she can so that only the strongest can get to her.Two Virgin Queens in Death Struggle 23. Males: larger than workers, large eyes,no stingers Hatch from unfertilized eggs, reared inlarger cells, longer development time(24 days) Only function is reproductive Reach sexual maturity at about 12 daysof age and initiate mating flights Virgin queens leave the hive to mate,seeking males at drone congregationareas. Mating occurs in flight. Dronecongregation areas remain stable over aperiod of years. Drones not reared all year - only springand summer Number of drones dependent on colonystrength and condition Drones kicked-out in Fall 24. Well, before you get head over heels involved in beekeeping just remember you dont have to buy all the fancy stuff. Start out with the minimal:1. a beekeeping beginners class,2. smoker,3. hive tool,4. hat and veil,5. a hive with a super or two,6. a package of bees,7. and a proper sense of clarity and calmness.Things will probably go just as wellfor you as a minimal beekeeper!Youll get the honey, the fun andfascination. 25. Successful beekeeping is more easywhen it is born in the classroom. 30 -40 years ago, beekeeping waseasier since there were no mites,small hive beetles, CCD etc. Now-a-days, an educatedbeekeeper is a more successfulbeekeeper. It is vital to attend abeekeeping class taught by anexperienced beekeeper with goodcredentials. AND, if available, attend and supporta bee keepers club. But remember most everyone has anaxe to grind in this hobby /commercial enterprise. So keepyour mind open. 26. My Bees Know My PresenceSense My EssenceThey Cant See Me They Taste MeLike Cattle Horses and Dogs 27. There isnothing sacredabout the hivedesign. 1st were tilelike made fromdung, pottery,skips from Capedwoven straw, Honey BroodNest 28. Middle Tennessee Gums 29. Modern Top BarHives Andrew Harrisworking his TopBar Hives in theShade. 30. Thestandard Langstroth bee hive consists of a variable number of hive bodies, wooden frames to hold comb, a bottom board and a cover. 31. Purchase a package. You can catch a swarm, or 32. The Modern Spinning Extractor replaced thewarm drip/gravity and squeeze sponge process. Keeps the wax useable for next round. Simplifies volume Yields of the honey, much lessmessy . . . If that means anything to you. 33. Goes in the Top Spins around comes out the Bottom . . . 34. Raw Unprocessed - All Natural - HoneyWe use interesting bottles we can find.Winnsboro Farmers Market To make our Hobby Pay for Itself. 35. Cover um up,These bees were upset? load um up,Pompeii used them in move home.war. 36. Saturday 3/28/09 7:55 PM Sunday 3/29/09 Frozen 37. 1. 2. 12/20/10 - Dusk34.. My Original 1979 8 FrameCypress Hive Body5. 38. Knowing the natural rhythms of your bees is essential for staying safe. If you takethe time to consider a few things before working the hive, your bee work is boundto be enjoyable. Choose a day that is bright, sunny and warm. High Barometric Pressure.Thunderclouds or storms are to be avoided. Working the hive on a colder day can be dangerous for the bees. Honeybees beginto cluster for warmth if the temperature drops below about 57 degrees. Getting to know your bees is essential. The mood of the bees changes from day today. If you open the hive and the bees seem agitated, lined up on the bars in guardformation, you can always close the hive and come back another day. Has a car, lawn mower or weed eater been by recently to get them excited? Because scents and pheromones are so important to life in a bee colony, they alsoare an easy way to cause a defensive response. When youre on the way to visit yourbees, avoid fragrances (hair products, perfumes, aftershave or deodorant.) I use essential oils to calm myself down, and chewing tobacco. I move slow andeasy-like to keep a calm demeanor. I focus on the bees -- in my mind as well as mybody. I avoid being distracted by my wife and children. Stand out of the flyway. Let a little smoke get on you too, if they are flying on you. Use your hive tool and grip methodically. Use as little smoke as you need, lay it onthe frames not blowing down the alleys. Calm, sure movements are best. Stayrelaxed. Dont work too fast or with quick jerky movements. Bees are sensitive tovibrations, so bumping or banging on the hive can set off their defensive response You are going to get stung . . . By accident or on purpose, always try to make it anaccidental occurrence. 39. From the Falster FarmPerspective that is . . .www.falsterfarm.com