Honeybees Archives - Page 2 of 3

Treating Honeybee Stings

Honeybee stings happen. Being prepared with a quick treatment will reduce pain, itch and swelling.

But I’m allergic to honeybees!

This is something we hear all the time. There is allergic and then there’s ALLERGIC. Be sure to know the difference in a localized allergic reaction and an allergy to bee venom that causes a systemic involvement of your airway.

An allergic reaction will cause localized swelling, warmth and itching around the sting. This will last 2 or 3 days and cause relatively minor discomfort. The amount of swelling will vary from person to person, but can be treated with home remedies.

A systemic allergic reaction is quite a different matter. This type of full body involvement may cause a person’s airway to swell and impede the ability to breathe. Anyone who has this type of reaction to a bee sting must receive immediate medical treatment. Home remedies are not for you. You likely already carry an Epi-pen (a portable means of injecting epinephrine in an emergency) and for use immediately after a sting. This is a serious medical emergency and should be treated in an emergency room even after the use of an Epi-pen.

Home Remedies

Here’s what we do for the occasional bee sting.

First, don’t panic. This will alarm the other bees and you may end up being stung more than once. Walk away from the hive and remove the stinger. Your goal is to scrape the stinger out against the direction of the sting. When the bee leaves her stinger in you, there is a small bulb of venom at the end of the stinger. Place the edge of a credit card (in a pinch you could use the edge of your hive tool) between the venom bulb and the insertion point of the stinger. Scrape toward the bulb end of the stinger with a firm flick of the card. This should remove the stinger from your skin and stop the flow of venom. It is beneficial to do this as quickly as possible after being stung.

After removing the stinger, apply an ice pack to the affected area. This will help reduce swelling and offer immediate relief. We also add a smear of honey to the affected area. Honey has antiseptic properties and seems to reduce the itch. You can take an antihistamine such as Benadryl if necessary.

Remember honeybees will rarely sting while foraging away from the hive. They are focused on gathering pollen and nectar with no concern about much else. Foraging bees are not in a position to defend the hive or the queen. Unless aggravated, squeezed or stepped on, they are not likely to sting.

For more information about avoiding stings in the first place, check out this blog post on the Mother Earth News website: How To Not Get Stung

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What is a Real Farm?

What is the definition of a real farm?

Is there a certain amount of acreage required? Maybe a minimum amount of produce raised? Perhaps keeping livestock meets the qualification?

We have asked ourselves these questions as we build this slice of the country we call Five Feline Farm. At first, we referred to it as just the “farm”; a tongue-in-cheek expression of our postage stamp sized property plopped in the middle of large fields of corn, soybeans and wheat. As we discover our mission to live a full life with a blend of old skills and modern conveniences, we also found the answer to being real.

Is there a minimum required acreage?

We have five and a half acres. From this fertile land, we can grow a lot of the produce, herbs, fruit and nuts we need to keep our pantry and freezers full. There is even enough excess to sell at the Farmer’s Market. It takes a lot of planning and hard work but it is a joy to bite into a warm tomato fresh from the garden or add home grown roasted peppers to a pot of chili in the depth of winter.

How about a minimum amount of production?

The line of products we offer in our Mercantile, whether on line or on site is limited only by our time and imagination. We sew cat toys from scraps of fabric and stuff them with catnip grown and dried on the farm. There are balms and soaps and jams and baked goods all created right here. We even offer farm roasted whole coffee beans.

Are livestock required?

Did you know honeybees are considered livestock? It’s true according to the Illinois Department of Agriculture. Beekeeping has changed our perspective on many things. We are better consumers and more aware of good practice in how we approach planting, fertilizing and particularly pest management. We use this practical mantra: “if it’s good for the bees, it’s good for us”. Plus, any excess honey harvested beyond what we personally use is sold.

So our answer to the question….

Yes, Five Feline Farm is a real farm.

Five Feline Farm is growing beyond our wildest dreams. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook for daily updates.

Our Manifesto-Natural, Simple and Reclaimed

Here at the Farm we are about three things: natural, simple, and reclaimed. These tenets are the overarching guide for all our Farm endeavors. Most of these manifest in food. Growing, preserving, buying, selling, cooking, and of course eating food. But it’s also a lifestyle.

First an explanation of the name. Five Feline Farm is not a cat rescue. The name is an homage to the five charter cats who moved with us to the five and a half acres we call home. It is also a glimpse of our sense of humor. Who names a market farm Five Feline Farm only to explain ourselves over and over? Wait until you find out what we name our products.

I digress.

Back to our focus on food.

Natural and Simple

So much of our food supply is heavily processed, loaded with ingredients that sound more like a chemistry lesson than a food label. I can only conjecture that the rise of these artificial ingredients is correlated to the rise of disease and lack of well-being in our society.

We strive to use whole ingredients wherever possible. Not only whole but a direct connection to the source. Our vegetables come from our farm or local (within 100 miles) sources. Sometimes this is difficult and exceptions must be made. We can’t grow coffee in Central Illinois but we certainly drink it.

In addition to the gardens, we are beekeepers. Our honeybee colonies provide enough honey for our own use, some to sell and wax for value added products. The more we learn about the benefits of honey, the bigger a proponent we become. Honey is an all natural, non-spoiling food that can also promote healing.

You may call it recycling or repurposing. Whatever the nomenclature, it is a way of life. Even the farm we live on is reclaimed land. The property had been left to it’s own devices. Covered in wild grape vines and multiflora rose. Smattered with old appliances, rusty fencing and dilapidated buildings. Think ancient outhouse, rodent infested outbuilding, termite and dry rot compromised barn.

In the midst of these horrors we found treasures.

Wild blackberry and raspberry brambles for food. A vacated basement transformed to a goldfish pond. Garden art from a rusty iron drill press. Barn wood graces the fireplace mantel in the house, logs form garden bed edging.

Acres of open land perfect for a house, gardens, orchard and apiary.

Reclaiming happens in the kitchen too. No, we don’t forage in dumpsters, but we do make every effort not to waste. Leftovers are creatively combined into new dishes and branded “New Leavin’s”. If something can’t be used, into the compost piles it goes. Enriching the soil for next year’s crop.

As we reclaim the land, we reclaim ourselves.

There are outlets to try new things and expand our abilities. We often learn by trial and error. Like the hoop house dismantled by prairie winds rivaling a nor’easter.

Follow along as we share what we learn. You may decide to implement a few things for yourself.

Three Fabulous Reasons to Keep Honeybees

There are some very good reasons to host honeybees on your property. Then there are some FABULOUS reasons. Read on to find out why Five Feline Farm started in the honeybee business.

Honey of course. There is only one way to get real honey. From honeybees.

Whether you want honey just for personal use or to sell surplus, the only place to get honey is from honeybees.The worker bees spend the majority of their short lives gathering nectar and pollen from flowers. The nectar is returned to the hive, passed off to a sister bee and mixed with enzymes. This enriched nectar is placed in a cell, combined with the deposits of many other worker bees then fanned to dehydrate into honey. Once the honey has reached the perfect moisture content, the cell is capped off and the process begins again in the next cell. Naturally this doesn’t happen one cell at a time but hundreds of cells at a time by tens of thousands of bees.

2. Pollination. As the bees move from flower to flower they transfer pollen.

This is almost a side effect of the nectar gathering process. Honeybees have sticky hairs on their bodies that capture pollen granules when they visit flowers. As they move to the next flower and land, a bit of pollen falls off and pollinates that flower. Some crops such as almonds are totally dependent on the honeybee for pollination.

Although some of the pollen collection is accidental, there is also some intentional pollen harvesting. Pollen is a protein. It is mixed with honey and enzymes to create the “bee bread” fed to young larvae.

Here on the Farm, we have noticed improved production in the gardens after adding colonies of honeybees.

3. Fun. Honeybees are fascinating to watch.

We placed a bench just a few yards from the hives and off to the side. This creates an excellent place to sit in the evening to watch the bees come in with the fruits of their labor. Close observation reveals varying hues of pollen in the little pollen baskets on the worker’s back legs.

Trying to watch a single bee come out of the hive, take off from the entrance, circle once or twice and head out to the current nectar flow is amazing. I rarely use that word because it is so overused, but sometimes there is simply no other way to describe something. This is one of those times.

Do you agree with these FABULOUS reasons? Do you want to start keeping honeybees? If you do, start here to learn about some of the parts of the hive.