Last weekend we held our annual Autumn Natural Beekeeping course at Milkwood Farm. We got to harvest Warré honeycomb for eating, press a bunch of stored honeycomb, and check one of the Warré hives as part of the course. It was an amazing two days with a great crew of folks…
Tim Malfroy and the class at our Warré Apiary...
I really felt a sense of the ‘bounty of Autumn’ this weekend with all the bees a-buzzing, honeycomb harvesting, and being able to feed everyone who came with the Autumn delights coming from our organic market garden.
In addition to the practical aspects, Tim Malfroy presented a great weekend of solid knowledge about natural beekeeping, bee biology, colony biology, the history of beekeeping, how to start natural beekeeping, different sorts of honey and comb, what bees need, how to deal with disease and pests naturally, the pollination crisis and CCD. Whew.
Getting smokey. While we keep use of smoke to a minimum during a hive visit, it's a safety stopgap in case something goes wrong, and good to have on hand, just in case...
Opening the hive
The underside of a full box of natural comb, drawn out by the bees from the top bars...
Tim shows the class a comb showing healthy brood patterning...
Tim shows students a comb of half virgin, half brood comb, that the bees have just finished filling with honey
Back in the woolshed, it's time to talk about honeycomb in all it's intricacy, and press some comb for honey
Honeycomb! Stored from the last harvest we did at the start of February, in readiness for this pressing
Tim loads up the honey press with comb
Warré honey (also called wild honey) being pressed from the natural comb - with all the enzymes intact, full of pollen and propolis... this is as good as it gets!
As a special treat, we harvested a comb of capped honey during the hive visit to eat that afternoon in class
Warré honeycomb all cut up and ready to munch. The lighter comb is virgin honeycomb, and the darker comb has had brood cycle through it, but now contains honey.
Everyone got a piece of both the virgin and the brood comb - two very different flavors. The virgin comb is light and melts in your mouth, the brood comb is slightly stronger and more nutty and textured in flavor... perfect with a bit of ricotta and some fresh apple...
An empty Skep hive that Tim shows as part of his session on traditional beekeeping of various cultures. A beautiful object, woven from reeds...
We’ve learned so much about natural beekeeping this year, and next year will be different again. It’s proving to be a fascinating journey full of implications for how we relate to the world we live in, and how much better we could do to find a balance that still bears a harvest.
Tim will be teaching more Natural Beekeeping courses in the Spring and beyond at Milkwood Farm and in Sydney. The courses fill up very quickly and are suited to anyone serious about wanting to do best-practice natural beekeeping in urban or rural settings.
Many thanks to all the students who came to our farm from far and wide for this weekend – it was great to meet you all! Big thanks to Tim Malfroy for his tireless commitment to best-practice natural beekeeping, to Olivier for the amazing food, and to Trev for his awesome co-ordination. And to our 120,000 or so lady bees (and the drones too).
