Bee Swarm #8 ! What a spring!

Amazingly... our one lone hive has now produced 8, yes 8 swarms this spring!

Swarm *7 got away. It landed in a tree for only an hour or so and before we could get set to catch it, they left and traveled over a mile to a new unknown location.  Cant catch them all!

But today, in the midst of feverishly working on another time sensitive project, swarm #8 emerged and landed in a tree in the front yard. This was .. was BIG. the biggest swarm yet.  (sorry, in our haste we did not get any pictures).

We managed to repair one of the old damaged hives, and clean it up in time to catch this one.  IT was an easy catch, simply brushing them into a box worked. We put them into their new home and they immediately went to work. This seemed the strongest queen, attracting the bees from far away as we moved them to the waiting hive. It was quite a sight!

So now, there are not one, but seven working healthy hives on the farm. And.. they are all emerged from the genetics of that one hive! Very calm, efficient, dedicated bees!

We checked the main hive, the one that produced all the others, and it is becoming quite sparse. maybe 1/5 of the number of bees there was originally. checking a few of the combs showed that the swarm had taken most of the honey with them. We took this opportunity to remove some old twisted empty comb so that they can start fresh now.  And WOW.. the little bit of honey left in those combs... nothing short of incredible! The flavor of truly aged honey.. aged in the hive, is indescribable. I have never tasted honey from any store that even comes close!

So stay tuned! as soon as we can, we will be offering what I consider to be... the worlds best honey!

Bee Swarm!

In the middle of the Friday morning we discovered that our one remaining bee hive was swarming!

You may recall, we stopped our bee operation when the GMO alfalfa went in near us, becasue we could not guarantee that the bees would stay out of the alfalfa field and the excessive  chemicals used on the GMO crop. That effectively shut down our bee operation and honey products for a few years. During that time, we had one very healthy hive that just hung in there... year after year. And this spring it is stronger than ever.  So.. as all hives do, it swarmed to make a new generation.

Here is the top bar hive that they came out of, under the larger tree on the left. Where the eventually ended up landing on the first day is the shrub you can see right in the middle of this pic, along the driveway. If you look closely you can see thousands of bees in the air. 

Here they are starting to gather up around the shrub. There is actually a 4x4 post right next to the shrub that the queen landed on, In this pic you can see the cloud of bees hovering around the bush. 

These are the guys that stayed behind to make a new queen and start a new generation. They clumped on the back of the hive for a few hours then went inside to get to work by nightfall. 

It was fascinating to be there to watch the entire process from start to finish. We were able to clearly see each stage as it happened:

1. The bees clumped outside the hive, waiting for the queen to make her appearance from inside. 
2. Once she emerged, she takes off flying and all the clumped bees joined her in the air, making a cloud of bees.
3. The cloud expanded to maybe 100 feet as they sought the queen's direction. 
4. The queen lands on the top of the post inside that bush, and the cloud followed her and condensed down to a clump of bees on the post.
5. Most bees clumped to protect the queen, but a few scouts started flying around looking for a new home. 

The whole process only took about 4 hours start to finish.  They only move maybe a hundred feet, but it was a tightly choreographed operation!

Here is a video showing the start of the swarming.

And this video shows them landing on the post. Listen closely to the awesome sound of a swarm of bees!

Now the race was on to assemble a new hive and capture the swarm  so that we could keep them. We are reentering the honey production business this year, since the GMO alfalfa is now illegal in the county and must be removed. We are once again able to make the best raw honey possible!

IF... we can catch this swarm.

At first, we thought  the challenge would be removing the queen from the holes in the old post. But no. By the end of the day, the swarm had move from the top of the post to the BOTTOM!

Now that is a challenge! There seems no easy way to get them out from between the branches and the grass.  So, the only option was.. a bee vacuum! We don't have one, (although I always wanted a "real" bee vacuum) So we decided to build one. Not just any bee vacuum, but one specifically designed for this particular situation...

Check out the next post for the answer!

No Honey available for 2016 till maybe 2023

With all the good news for 2016, there is one black cloud. We will not be bringing back Little Sprouts honey for this next year.

As you may recall, we stopped producing honey as soon as we learned that a somewhat local farmer had planted GMO alfalfa in the Sams Valley area. The subsequent legal battle and court settlement between that farm, and the county has been in the works for quite some time. Now that the settlement is reached, and GMO alfalfa is here to stay for 5 to 8 years, Little Sprouts is forced out of the honey business.

Why?  The GMO alfalfa is within feeding distance of any hives located on our land. Offering honey produced that is likely to contain GMO pollen from that alfalfa field is not something we are willing to do. WE will not compromise on quality or health in our products.

GMO testing?  not practical... since each hive feeds independently, we would have to test each and every hive when harvested. At the cost of about $300 per test, the cost removes any potential profit from a natural type hive as we use. To raise the quality of honey we were raising, it requires lots of smaller hives... but that would mean lots of testing, so not practical.

So, as much as we would like to offer the unique honey we were producing, we simply cant. Our honey business is shut down until the other farm decides to remove the gmo alfalfa crop, which could be 5 to max of 8 years from now. This is why the popular phrase"co-existence" is totally bogus. organic and gmo can not co-exist. Not unless the GMO farm is required to pay for testing of potential contamination of their crop ot surrounding farms.  But legally they are not. not even in Jackson county. The responsibility of protecting the public from GMO toxins is solely on the organic farmer.

Fair? no.  Just? No.  Legal? yes.

There seems little we can do but pause our own business until they decide to follow the county ordinance. If anything changes... we will certainly let you know.. but as of now.. GMO wins for the next half a decade.

The end of honey products.. For now

Sad news.  Little sprouts farm is forced to officially shut down honey products made here.  This is not our choice,  but our duty.

As you may know..  There was a gmo ban put into place last year for our county.  This happened right about the time local farmers could have planned gmo alfalfa.  (although I can't imagine any reasonable businessman deciding to plant gmo alfalfa in a climate of potential ban,  but that's another story).  Up to now,  our farm had been far enough away from any gmo flowers to ensure that our bees never touched gmo pollen.  That has now ended despite the ban.

One farm,  only a mile from us,  has not only planted but now sued the county for the right to continue growing gmo crops or get paid some ridiculous amount of cash.   (another story). 

The bottom line is,  we now have gmo alfalfa grown within the flying distance of our bees,  so we can no longer say that honey produced here will be gmo free.  In keeping with our promise to you,  or integrity,  or business and health goals,  we can not continue in the honey business.  We have been effectively shut down against our will by this farm's exercise of choice against both the law and public sentiment.

While we contemplate our options, we wanted to explain why honey products are not on our available list anymore.  The future is of course undecided,  but for now...  We will not take any chances of selling an interior product.  I can not speak for other honey producers in this area...  Please inquire yourself when looking for an alternate supplier.  Our commitment to you stands firm,  we will not sell a product that we can not honestly say is the best,  and for now  honey produced in sams valley is contaminated  when the alfalfa blooms. 

It is sad to see this happen,  on many fronts.  Our own investment of time and money is potentially wasted due to their actions.  A health product is now not capable of being produced locally.  People loose part off their livelihood,  and others loose a necessary local product. Yes,  it is sad. But it is reality.

Hopefully this farm will see the impact they are having on their neighbors  and decide to stop this inanity.  But until then,  we all pay the price for their actions.  Hopefully no one will be physically harmed through their own backyard hives feeding of this genetically altered pollen,  only time will tell. 

Thank you for your support.

First Honey Harvest!

Its is HERE!  After a long wait, we can now offer our first Little Sprouts Honey! Thats right, not honey resold from other farms, but produced right here on our own farm from our own bees.

Our honey is quite unique. Rich, dark, flavorful, it is naturally produced in only Top Bar hives and naturally harvested  by hand, then dripped from crushed comb with no heat, no pressure, no machinery of any kind. Honey just like the bees have.

Top Bar hives have several advantages, one being the forced creation of new honeycomb for each batch of honey.  No re-use is possible as the comb is harvested along with the honey, then brand new comb is produced to replace it.  This does affect the flavor of the honey, since honey is created inside the cells of the honeycomb, the purity of the honeycomb is a factor in flavor.

Our first harvest is available immediately, sold in half pint only, in VERY limited quantities.  Be sure to order yours today!

Link to the online store: https://www.farmigo.com/store/littlesproutsfarm

Look under the HONEY section.

Honey harvested!

We harvested a small amount of winter made honey yesterday!  Hopefully we will be able to offer some for sale next week.

Stay tuned!

Honey made from... High Fructose Corn Syrup?

Most people just dont realize, we didnt, that most commercial honey, even local, is not actually "pure " honey.  There is a common practice of bee keepers harvesting all the honey at once, and feeding the bees sugar or even HFCS to sustain them until they can replace the honey.

Now, sure, I understand that this doesn't actually get into the honey itself. But stop and think, is this good for the bees? The bees do produce the honey, so doesn't it make sense that something that compromises the health of the bees will compromise the quality of the honey? do you want to buy honey from weakened bees?

One promise we make to you is that Little Sprouts will never follow this practice.  Our bees retain enough honey at each harvest to live on until the rebuild the supply. In essence, we only harvest the surplus. AND if feeding supplementally is ever necessary, we will only feed honey, not sugar water.  This does increase the cost of the honey by lower production per colony, but it is well worth it in the end to us. We simply wont sacrifice any of our farm animals or insects for the sake of o higher profits or production.

Here is a link to an interesting recent study that shows a link between HFCS and bee health decline. Worth a read.

http://phys.org/news/2013-04-high-fructose-corn-syrup-tied-worldwide.html#jCp

Honey officially joins the list of fake foods

Shock finding: More than 75 percent of all 'honey' sold in grocery stores contains no honey at all, by definition (Updated)
Here we go yet again. You apparently can't  buy honey in a grocery store and know that it is honey. According to these tests, if you do purchase something labelled as honey in a store, you only have a 25% chance that it is actually honey. There is a 75% chance that it is  chemically just liquid white sugar.
How do you buy honey today? Simple, the same as do many other foods, buy only from the producer you have met and know and trust.
I contend that it is the modern model of several middle men in the food industry that allows such lies to exist. The public had no means to verify what the label says, and virtually no way to trace the origin. The government is no use, they are way too busy pouring bleach on locally grown food. (recent news out of nevada)
Several thoughts here...
1. Government agencies like fda are eating our time and cash attacking local farmers for supposed violations where no one is harmed, while ignoring situations where health of consumers is damaged by practices of big ag.
2. The fix here is again to change the model to what had historically worked.... Buy food from small local farmers only. look your good creater in the eye and form a trust relationship with him.
3. All the studies that show honey as harmful and nothing more than sugar make sense... Chances are, the honey tested was actually only sugar! Demonstrating why studies that do not cite the source of the food being studied and production methods are worthless.
4. Any good can be healthy or unhealthy based on how it is created and processed. There is no such thing as common nutritional content of modern food. the nutritional content if based more on methods of production than nature and original content. Most labels today do not at all represent this.
Eggs are another example of this. I was appalled to find that labels of most eggs list the content that the government assigns to eggs, not what the eggs in the package actually are. THE EGGS ARE NEVER TESTED! Yet we more for a fact that nutritional content of eggs varies widely, sometimes by an order of magnitude! Eggs, like honey, can be good for your health, or bad for your health.
5. By the same reasoning, nutritional advice that does not specify the source of good to be used is worthless. most of the advice floating around today  is just false for this reason. Again the example of eggs.... Eggs from most producers should be limited in the dirty because they area in fact unhealthy, while eggs grown right actually reduce cholesterol instead of raise it. it all depend on the production. If your nutritionist doesn't recognize this.. Find another that does!
6. it is more implant to understand the production method than to know where the food comes from. JUST BECAUSE IT COMES FROM A SMALL OUT LOCAL FARM DOES NOT GUARANTEE QUALITY!  Sadly many small local farms follow many of the same teachings of big ag, so their product is similar. The only way to know the good is healthy is to know the farmer and find out what he believes and does.
For instance, I recently spoke with a small local farmer about potential animal feed. When asked if it was organic, he admitted "not certified but really the same thing". When questioned further, he explains that he only sprays poison  ( weed killer) once when the seeds are planted, and poison (pesticide) once when the flowers emerge. But he never sprays the produce, so it is "just as good as organic." IF YOU DON'T ASK DETAILED QUESTIONS, YOU DON'T YET KNOW THE SITUATION!
Bottom line... Honey gets added to the list of foods that you can no longer buy in the store... Another reason to find a local farmer, learn about his beliefs, training, processes, and stick with one you trust.
Your family's health depends on it.

Natural Honey? Are you sure?

Today we live on a world where you never seem to know for sure who to believe. Our food is no exception. Labels abound with wording that leads you to believe certain things, but are you being mislead? A recent revelation at our house demonstrates the extent to which this is a problem.

Honey.. one of the simplest foods in the market, right? There are really only two choices.. raw or not.  Simple, direct, believable. Raw honey means it has not been heated enough to alter it or kill the enzymes and nutrition... not raw means it has been heated enough to kill everything and render it a simple sweetener with no other food value.

But wait....

Our family relies a lot on honey. We as a family use no sugar at all, shying away form even foods that have sugar as a content. this is a huge commitment as you can imagine, as sugar exists in virtually every food in the supermarket today. We see huge advantages to this lifestyle and diet choice, but hat is subject of a separate blog post. For now let me simply assure you that being totally sugar free is a huge issue for our family.

What does this have to do with honey? Well, have you ever seen a honey jar list sugar as an ingredient? Probably not. Therefore it is safe to assume that honey is just .. well.. honey.. without sugar? unfortunately .. NOT TRUE.

We recently realized that the "raw natural honey" we have been buying in the store is not natural, nor true 100% honey. Why? Commercial honey producers routinely follow a process whereby they steal all of the honey from a hive, and feed with liquid or powdered sugar to keep the bees alive until they can make more honey. This is done, as most agriculture mistakes, in the seeking of higher profits. Unfortunately is has a severe side effect.... Some of the sugar ends up in the honey. Think about it.. honey is made from nectar and pollen that is collected by the bees, mixed and "fermented" in sealed blocks within the honeycomb. Feeding sugar instead of pollen or nectar means the honey produced is going to contain traces of sugar, which has been verified to be the case.

Another negative aspect is this.. sugar is by no means as complex a food as honey, so when you feed sugar for extended periods to bees you necessarily weaken them through bad nutrition. Imaging a child eating ice cream 3 times a day.. will they be healthy? Since honey is a created food from collected and ingested food sources.. doesn't it make sense that the health of the bees and nutritional value of the honey also depend on the fundamental food source?

Personally I as appalled when we realized that even a local brand, labelled as "raw and natural" honey was nothing of the sort. The beekeeper routinely feeds sugar after stealing all the honey to increase his personal profits. So.. in my own understanding that means that he has chosen to take higher profits at my family's health risk, but practices that he is hiding behind nice words on labels. "natural" obviousness does not mean to him "as in nature" because in nature bees never eat sugar. We personally find this unacceptable, and will no longer buy honey in the store.

It is sad to realize that what we assume to be the case in food is not, once again. This is one of the motivating factors to our operation of little sprouts farm in a completely open environment. we encourage everyone to KNOW OUR FARMER.. your food producer, personally. Dont trust what a marketing person puts on the label.. talk to the guy that produces it. Ask him every question about how it is produces, what justifies his calling a food "natural".   If all consumers would hold the people behind hte labels accountable, labels would have meaning, or at least be unnecessary. . 

What do food labels mean?

So many terms appear on packages foods today few people know what they really mean. Below is a list of ones that actually have meaning and OTHERS that can mean anything.
We are constantly frustrated by finding that the goods we do buy are in fact not what we thought. This goes for everything from butter,  honey, beef, veggies, etc. You have to talk to the producer directly to discover the truth.
What to do? Know your farmer and buy from him. I see no other way.


Here is the list:

Grist Mobile

Adding Honey Production to our farm

One of the decisions we came to the Mother Earth News Fair to explore was "should we raise our own bees?".  The decision is a resounding YES!

Bees are of course a necessary part of any plant growing operation. You simply cant have productive plants without the helpful work of bees to pollinate. Bees also generate an income stream in the process of doing work.. honey, beeswax, and propolis. Each of these is valuable in the market today, especially if you abandon conventional thinking and follow the practices of sustainable and organic beekeeping.

We will be installing 3 to 5 bee hives this year, and hopefully being in production by next summer (it takes about a year to have sell able products from new bees). Our hive of choice is Top Bar Hives, Kenyan style. These hives are as close to nature as we have today, and allow for mostly unattended, organic, chemical free, disease free, parasite free beekeeping. The health of the bee and hive is preserved through the natural defenses and systems of the bees, by allowing them to do their work their way. As everything else we have learned in farming, the more man has tried to improve on nature, the more delicate and unhealthy the results are. Bees are no exception.

Have you heard of and followed the controversy over Colony Collapse Disorder? ( The recent and disturbing "disappearance" of bee colonies for no apparent reason). Well, while the scientist are scrambling to find the "one reason" for this phenomena, it seem perfectly clear and natural to wise beekeepers what is going on. It is simple, man has corrupted beekeeping in a number of ways in our attempts to increase production and profits, resulting in generations of non-sustainable bees, Much like hte poultry, swine, and cattle industries, the bee industry has fallen prey to nature trying to destroy the defective result of years of man's faulty wisdom. I will be putting more  details on this in the coming days. The bottom line is simply this, there will not be found a single reason behind this, because it is a combination of man's "improvements for selfish gain" that causes the conditions whereby bees can not survive.

So, once again man has corrupted nature in our selfish attempts to improve on it for financial gain. This, in turn, has opened a door for small scale farms to actually benefit both financially and morally by returning to the natural methods to "save the world" and produce a superior product in the process. It is very fulfilling to be part of the segment of society called "sustainable farming" that takes on the mission of fixing what is wrong in the world while others are trying to understand it in their limits model of things. The "niche" market we serve as a small scale farm is actually regular people like you seeking to find decent food that improves health instead of degrades health. Is that a niche? If it is, it will not be for long. More ad more people are learning that their own health and quality of life is directly tied to the foods consumed. And ONLY small scale farmers are capable of producing that food.

Bees are coming to Little Sprouts!