How sweet it is! on maple syrup and honey

The survival nut in me always looks for sources of things that won't be available after a major societal collapse. As a type II diabetic sugar is a consistent thought...too much or too little affect my mood and thought processes. We keep a couple of hives of bees..I got into it as a part of my 'get over what you are afraid of' mindset. Plus bees are a great tool for teaching you about working gently with nature. My friend Bruce loaned me a copy of "The Barefoot Beekeeper" and it rekindles my interest in playing with them...besides the honey I extracted a few years back is almost gone and it is time to refill the shelves. Having watched the process of making maple syrup at the FFA Camp Oswegatchie in Croghan, NY a few weeks back and having done a little refining with my middle school kids. I was pleased when Lee took the bull by the horns and used the buckets, covers and taps we'd found while insulating the attic at the local yoga center to tap the trees at the home of our friend Nancy. Lee has made about a half gallon for the season.

I spent a part of yesterday extracting honey from a semi-wild bee hive that had been set up by a swarm of our bees in the roof of our entryway last year. We want to hive these bees and pulled the boards. battens and soffit to get at them. Lee was the brave soul that broke out the chunks of comb that were in the way of the main hive. The stuff we got was not being used...probably abandoned due to the cold as the bees huddled in the central area for warmth for the winter. I used a double boiler arrangement with my canning pot to hold the water and a stainless steel stock pot to melt and separate the honey from the bee debris and wax. I scooped the debris out and dumped it into cardboard egg cartons...I'll use it later as fire starters. I let the wax and honey cool and was able to remove the 2 pounds of wax as a single layer and then poured the honey through cheese cloth into three quart sized canning jars. Not bad at all.

We're going to try to grow a variety of beet this summer that can be juiced and reduced to beet sugar syrup...we'll let you know if that experiment works out. Now to plan the combination sugar shack/smoke house/honey processing facility to add to the hundreds of other projects I want to get done...