The Art of Honey Collecting

   Hi everyone. I hope you've  having a nice weekend.  

   I'll also be joining Nicole for Sunday in the Art Room  and Gillena's for Sunday Smiles 

   The past week I had the first time experience of collecting honey from one of my bee hives.* I call it an experience because I learned a lot, and the biggest thing I learned was that I didn't really know much about collecting it. 😉 Grin.

   (*For those of you who haven't been reading my blog for awhile: I have 2 hives. The one that I started this year is keeping all its honey because basically this hive had to start from scratch this past May. The hive I'm collecting honey from is the one that is now just under 1 1/2 years old.)

   First I needed to get the honey super with the honey in it off of the hive. Our winters here in New Hampshire are too cold to leave  the third box on for the bees to enjoy the honey, even though they would probably love to have that honey to eat.  Because of the cold you really can't have more than 2 boxes on the hive during the winter. Bees need to be able to heat the inner hive by wiggling their bodies even on the coldest days, and the more space (3 boxes instead of 2), the more heat they need to make to keep the whole hive warm. 

   I'm also a little late getting the honey super off mainly because of my shoulder issue.  You can see the honey super in the photo below. Before I lifted the box, I took out the 2 empty frames on the bottom. I think this box weighed somewhere between 40-50 pounds (18- 23 kg), and being short with a rotator cuff issue meant I basically lifted and then let gravity help me bring it down onto the ground. The box was heavy, and I didn't want to injure my shoulder any more either.

     You might also remember that I left out a couple of frames last spring because the bees had already started to build honeycomb upward  when I went to put the super on. Isn't that a cool pattern they made? You can actually see the honey there too.

    It ended up not being a honey collecting issue though as you'll read further on in this post.

   And you can also see the honey on this one side of this frame. All the frames I left in the have  honey like this on both sides.

   There was no way I could carry this box very far, so I put the honey frames into a couple of garbage bags and then brought those  bags into my basement. It's cold enough in my basement and obviously not full of sugar loving insects so it was a good place to store the frames for a few days.

    I finally got my honey spinner  assembled so then I was ready to spin out the honey. (And please ignore the mess on the shelves of my laundry area. Eeek. Another day I did get them cleaned out now that I have some new basement shelves, but that was after my honey collecting adventure.)

    

    I now learned the most about collecting honey.  The biggest thing, and the most important when spinning it, is that you want the honey to be warm. OK, so I messed that one up having kept the honey frames in my nice cool basement. But I couldn't put them outside either, which I'll explain in the next paragraph. 

   The other thing I learned is that it would have been nice to do this in an area where I could have put a table. That is because you need to slice off the beeswax that is over the honey, so when you spin it the honey can come out.  I could have put a table outside, and I could have spun it outside, but then the smell would have attracted all kinds of 6 legged and potentially hungry visitors. 😩 This year spinning would be in the basement. With cold honey.  😰🍯

   Or I should say this year spinning would  collect hardly any of the cold honey. The honey was too viscous to come off the frames. It ended up being better to slice off the comb and  then put those slices into some large plastic food storage containers. Then, to warm up the honey, I put those food storage containers  on my kitchen counter near the sunny window. The warmth made the honey drip out of the comb. 

   I have 3 containers like this one. And it's a slow process. This could take up to 2 or 3 weeks for all the honey to drip out. Part of the slowness is that honey only  drips when it's warm, and at this time of year, other than for part of the day when my kitchen counter gets the light from the window, it isn't exactly hot. That's OK though since it's not like I must have the honey right this second. Besides, I'm also leaving later this week for an 11 day road trip, so I wouldn't even be home for it anyhow.

  I also have a few ideas  for keeping the honey warm too, but since I have yet to try them, I'll keep my ideas for another post.

   After that dripping finishes, I'll need to filter the honey before it is ready to use.  If I could have spun it out, I could have filtered it quicker and it probably would have needed less filtering.  I should also add, I did get some honey in the spinner, but that may end up being just a few spoonfuls.🥄

   This process left me with some still sticky hive frames. I could have washed them with soap and water right away, but I decided to give the residual honey back to the various bees. I took the frames and put them outside, leaning them up against a garden wall.

  And you can see the honey bees  and others really enjoyed the treat. ❤

  I'll have more of this adventure to share with you once the honey has dripped and I go to filter it.

  Have a super rest of your weekend and start to the new week also.

   

  

    

    

   

Wrapping up August at AJJ

 Hi everyone. Happy Sunday. I hope you are having a nice weekend.

 Since tomorrow is the last day of the month, today I am going to wrap up my journal pages for Art Journal Journey. This has been my month to host, and my theme has been In The Good Old Summertime.  You still have until tomorrow to link up, as the theme runs through the end of the month. 

   Let me also thank everyone who joined in over at Art Journal Journey this past month. There was some wonderful summer journaling, and all of you who joined are journaling rock stars for certain! ❤👍😊

  I'll also be joining Nicole for her  Sunday in the Art Room (SITAR) and  Gillena for her  Sunday Smiles.

  Today I have 2 pages to share. I was experimenting when I made both, and they both have a "summer travel" theme. First, let's head to the beach.

  This first one started with me just feeling like scrubbing to make a background. From there I saw this partial sheet of paper sitting on my work table, and I thought, it could be water. I cut along the bottom of one of the dark blue zigzags.  I decided to go with an underwater image so I die cut the shells and seaweed piece. I colored it in and added a small 1/2 pearl to the center. It also needed a border, and this strip of blue both trim seemed to do the trick.

   The lighthouse and black cormorant bird were both sitting on my worktable since I thought they would work for another page but then never used them. I used a yellow marker to make the light and to color in bits of the lighthouse. Then I stamped the quote.

   This other page is a little too busy perhaps? It started with an arched window stencil and a pen. I only traced the inner parts of the windows. Then I colored them in.  The camera, the plants and the girl are various cut outs from the Ciao Bella Rivera book and some other papers. The sun is a metallic gold image that I added a bit of color too. The cat is a chipboard image that I colored several times. I'm not sure he is even needed at this point, but I didn't have an overall plan for either of these journal pages. They just evolved as I went. Finally I used a couple of word stamp sets from Paper Artsy to add all the writing and I used a blue paint pen and a pen to put an edge on my page.

 

  That's all for me. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your weekend and start to the new week.

More Gelli Printing

   Hi everyone. I hope you're having a nice weekend.

   Today I am joining Gillena for her Sunday Smiles and Nicole for her SITAR-Sunday in the Art Room. Last Sunday I shared some Gelli prints. (Here's the post if you missed it: Adventures in Gelli Printing.)  This past week  was another mostly quiet one so I spent an afternoon making a second round of prints. It was  wet and rainy that day so instead of going outside to get some leaves, I  used a variety of stencils. 

   This time I was very happy  with all my pages. No brown YUK like I had on a few pages last week. 😊   Here's a few of my favorites. This first one reminds me of a painting on a brick wall.

   My trick (OK technique 😉) is to never clean the plate. That way  when you pull a print you get bits and pieces from older prints  (I think they're called ghost prints) and spots of colors that were left underneath.  Plus don't use thick amounts of paint, so rolling with a brayer is a good idea.  These  prints are done on student grade watercolor paper, but I have printed on everything from  scrapbook paper, deli paper, cloth and even newsprint. 

 The check patterning this next print is from using the plastic roller I mentioned last week. It's meant to roll even lines in clay, but if I roll it  in both directions on my plate (vertical and horizontal) it creates this pattern.

    The other thing I really like to do is pull a plate, let the design on the paper dry a few minutes, and then repress it back onto the plate and pull it a second (or even third) time.

 I then switched up my stencil.

I switched it up again.

I thought the window shapes in these next few would be great for some Halloween journaling.

   I really liked how the alphabet stencil looked. And the  ghost like rings are made by using a small piece of left over pipe insulation that I dabbed in paint and then "stamped" onto the Gelli plate.

    And here's the final stencil I played with.  In this next image you can see bits of yellow that were just dried on the plate from a previous pull.

   That's all for me today. Have a super rest of your weekend and start to the new week.

Some Adventures in Gelli Printing

 Hi everyone. Hope you are having a nice weekend. Today I am off to a gender reveal get together. It's the first time I've ever been to one of these types of parties. More about that in some other post, but this party might mean I get a bit behind (once again) visiting blogs.

  Today I'm joining Nicole for her SITAR/Sunday in the Art Room and also Gillena for her Sunday Smiles.

  After several very busy days, finally in the middle of last week I had a couple of days to myself. 😊 I love having days to myself, but then again, I like to do things too. In the big scheme it's nice to have a bit of a balance. One thing that always gives me balance is having some art time. And one thing I've been wanting to do for a while is pull out my Gelli plate and do some mono printing.

   Since I had the day to myself, it was time play.

   It's been quite a while since I last printed. Maybe even close to a year. Not that anything was stopping me from doing it. Sometimes I just get into the swing of something, and I have to practically hit myself in the head 😏to move onto something different.

   It actually took me  several pulls to my technique back. I love to layer images over other images when I Gelli print. However, my first few pieces just ended up all brown muddy YUK. I must have forgotten how to layer I guess.  😉 However, no page, however a mess, is really a waste. I'll show you how I fixed those further down in this post. But first, here's a few prints that I like.

   I brought in a few squash leaves from the garden. I also pulled out a sunflower mask I had. Mostly I played with those items, as well as some ripped up paper and a couple of stencils.

   This next one is just color but I really like  how it came out. The fine lines are from a plastic roller I have that is striped. It's meant for working with clay, but it also works great with a Gelli plate.

   And now for the muddy brown ones. On these first 2, I used the sunflower mask and then I pulled out some bright paints which really popped off the mud. On the last one I managed to get some muddy brown textured sunflowers, and then I added the bright pink sunflowers.

    I can't say I'm 100% happy with the muddy brown ones, but they are growing on me. And at least, if I decide I don't want to use them as they are, I can cut them up and use bits and pieces. 

    That's all for me. I hope you have a great rest of your weekend and start to the new week. 

Happy Weekend

   Hi everyone. Happy Sunday. I hope you're having a nice weekend. Mine's been busy, so if I haven't been by, I will be once things settle down a bit. 😉

    Today I'll be joining Nicole for her Sunday in the Art Room (SITAR) challenge and Gillena for her Sunday Smiles. I'm also going to start this post with another journal page for my In The Good Old Summertime challenge at Art Journal Journey.

    This page is part of a journal I made using some things from my stash along with some items  from a  Ciao Bella ephemera book. (I am NOT brand endorsing them, just mentioning this because I used a whole lot of this Rivera collection throughout my journal.)

    To keep the background light and summery, I used some green and some light blue paint to make some rough stripes. Then I took a piece of printed paper with some darker green and blue check and cut it  so it would make a slightly oversized frame for the photo. The photo is from a packet of Tim Holtz photos. I then added the citrus fruit stickers  to help frame out the old photo.

    I finished by die cutting the Adirondack chair out of white paper and inking it light blue to blend in with the stripes a bit. I finish by stamping the quote which is an old one without a brand on the wood base. Easy peasy. I love how just a few random assorted items can end up telling a story! It looks like it was a great day for this group of people. 👍

  I'll finish this post with a few summer views to go along with my summer themed page. Since there's flowers and plants in the background in the photo on my page, let me share the gardens/flowers in my yard. You'll also notice there aren't many close ups. With my shoulder issues I can't get much weeding done, but from afar, they look  thick and full of luscious growth in that later summer overgrown mode.

Have a super rest of your weekend and start to the new week. 

Honey, Honey, Honey

    Hi everyone. I hope you're having a super weekend. So far mine has been busy and the weather has been almost September like  (warm without the humidity). ❤

   Today I'm joining Nicole for Sunday in the Art Room  and Gillena for Sunday Smiles . I have lots of bees in today's post so I hope this post doesn’t give you the heebie-jeebies. 

  The other day I went out to do a bee hive check. Both hives are doing really well. Let me share a few photos with you.

    A) I'll start with my new hive, the one where the bees arrived this May:

    For some reason a lot of these ladies like to enter the hive by going under the top cover and under the outer edge of the inner screen cover as you can see in this first photo. There is a small gap there, which is there so bees can go in and out that way. In the 6 years I've had hives, I have never had any that used that opening as their normal way in and out though.   

    The screen  is the warm weather inner cover because it helps air flow through the hive to keep it from getting too hot. In the winter a solid inner cover gets put on.

   When the bees first arrived in May, I only had one box on the hive. But then the bees got busy with laying eggs, raising young and making honey. In order to give them enough room,  the last time I checked them I added a second box to the hive. 

    The bees now use the bottom box for their brood and the top box for making honey. This is the honey they will need for winter, so I will not take this honey. In fact, I won't take any honey from this hive this year.

    I have still been feeding them with a food patty (you can see the wrappers in the next photo), just because there is a lot of bees, and I want them to produce a good store of honey for the winter. Even with that, they seem to go through a patty in about 2 weeks. 

  Here's some of them actually using the front"normal" hive entrance.

   These next 2 photos are looking down into the hive. This is the top box, and you can see all the white comb they are building. This is what they will fill with honey and then cap.

    And what a crowd they have building that comb. 

  B) I'll move onto the old hive, or the one that came in 2025 and made it through the winter.  In this hive the ladies always go in and out through the main hive entrance.

   One thing I find interesting about this hive is how little they care whether I am there or not. Even when I open up the hive. The new hive is not that way at all. The new hive is very curious and a lot of bees come check me out.

   Earlier this year I added a smaller third box to this hive because the second box, where they store honey, was already quite full. This smaller box is called the honey super, and the honey that gets made there will be for me.

   You might remember the weird comb they formed. ( The post I explained about this is here: The Art of Bee Keeping.) Now that comb is pretty much full of honey, capped off and done. They are also building newer honey comb in the frames that are in this box which in the next few weeks should be filled up with honey too. 

    I decided I needed to have a few tastes of their labors, so I poked the comb with my finger a few times.  It was delicious.

   This is the first year I've ever had a honey supper filling up with honey. Now I need to learn about how to collect that honey. 🐝🐝🍯

  I'll finish my post with this funny that CJ sent along to me. I liked it so much I saved the photo.

Have a super rest of your Sunday and start to the new week.