Raising Honey Bees in Alaska, Harvesting Honey

Every year, we add a few new projects, as we endeavor to increase our self-reliance. This year, in the arena of animal husbandry, we added ducks and honey bees. Since I have written in a prior article about the former, this article will focus on the latter.

Honey bees are absolutely the lowest maintenance creature we have raised, but obviously some special equipment and instruction are necessary first.

To get started, my husband enrolled, along with about 60 other people, in an informative, two part class in February, held in Eagle River, AK, and taught by Steve Victors (Alaska Wildflower Honey), a 20 year, local beekeeper and vendor of beekeeping supplies.

In addition to useful, Alaska-relevant considerations, Steve summarized the history of beekeeping (the Mayans and Egyptians both domesticated them), medical uses for wound management and mummification, and the fascinating culture of the hive, with its queen, workers, and drones. I wish I had attended, too!

After the class, Bryan was enthused and decided to go forward, so he bought a bee suit and

Astronaut or beekeeper? 

disassembled hive boxes. The suit looks like something an astronaut would wear, made of thick white cotton and nylon, with sturdy elastic around the ankles and wrists, and a double layered, framed net head dress. The boxes are made of white pine. Each hollow hive box is about 20” long x 16” wide. The depth of the boxes varies from 6 - 10”, depending on whether they are intended for housing bees (deeper) or storing honey (shallower). In the South, most bee hives I have seen are white, which is to keep them cool. But Alaskan beekeepers paint theirs dark colors, to keep them warm. Ours are forest green, to match our various outbuildings.

The green honey boxes are shallower
than the unpainted brood box below

Raising Meat Rabbits in Alaska (Part 2)

Breeding: 

We have all heard the description of some prolific procreators (of any species) as “breeding like rabbits.” So I thought that putting a male and female together would be easy. However, like most things in nature, we have encountered great variability in the rabbits we have raised. Some females are natural mothers; others don't know what to do. Some females successfully evade the efforts of males by speed or by aggressive biting, scratching and pushing; others are passive.  Some males are natural sperm donors and others just want the exercise of chasing a female around, followed by a meal and a nap. (Sound like any people you know?) A congenial mating pair can potentially produce about 4 kindlings (litters) per year, yielding 16 – 32 kits (babies).  A male with two females can possibly double that.  

We have experience with two breeds over two years: Flemish giants and satins (medium size).  We plan to buy additional medium sized breeds in the future, to see which ones work best in our setting and produce the most efficient feed:meat/care ratio.  

Raising Ducks in Alaska

For several years, we have raised chickens and enjoyed their company, eggs, and insect eradication quite a bit.  Last winter, my husband suddenly thought, “Let's raise ducks, too. How different can it be?”

Well, four ducks later, I can tell you: VERY DIFFERENT.

Our chickens (Plymouth Rocks and Araucana) are analogous to quiet, diffident librarians, delicately “sipping tea and nibbling scones” in a warm, dry place, before going to bed early.

By contrast, the ducks (harlequins) are like big footed, gangly, noisy, messy teenagers, who strew their stuff all around, taking up space, spewing food and water everywhere, and wanting to stay up all night. When my husband first flew them to our property, in a tall pet carrier, I thought they were geese - they seemed so large.

Ducks leaving the lake, heading home

The woman in Palmer, AK, from whom we bought them, asked us to take a mating pair together, whom we named Mr. and Mrs. But because Mr. bonks the other two females with equal frequency (on land, in the snow or holding their heads under water – it doesn't matter), I can't say that I have observed any of the fidelity so famous in swans and loons. The other females we named Dora (because she was always the early explorer) and Daylate (which in retrospect is not well deserved, but at first, she always seemed “a day late and a dollar short”).

I found that raising ducks involved both “good news” and “bad news” - at least in our setting.

Remote Property Skills You Need to Acquire...before you move there

My earlier article,“Want to Buy a Remote Property? Think Again or Think Ahead,” has attracted more readers and follow-up questions than almost any other (besides those about raising chickens).

Some readers have contacted my husband and me to ask for additional advice. One man said he wanted to buy 300 acres in Montana and asked what he should do first. When we asked what experience he had with some of the relevant skills and information below, his answer was virtually none of them. It was our letters to him (and others) that have resulted in this posting.

I decided to pose this as a questionnaire/checklist that you can use to develop a priority list, time line, and budget to acquire some additional skills, tools, and information before committing to a remote location. I hope it will help you be more effective and efficient than we were!  (Note:  Please let me know any other suggestions that should be included here). 

The content is organized in labeled sections followed by numbered questions and then notes from our experience.

HEALTH:

If the answer to any question below is “no”, make an appointment, take a class, or start pumping iron.

1. Do you exercise? Build upper body strength.

2. Have you had a full physical exam recently? Get copies of your dental and health records. Ascertain any allergies (to elements in your target location, by going there at various times of year).
3. Have you assembled a good medical supply kit, as recommended by your doctor or other sources for a remote location? Keep supplies both at your remote home and in your vehicle, in case you get stranded.
4. Have you taken any recent Red Cross, Scout, FEMA, CDC or State courses in emergency and wilderness preparedness? Do you have relevant reference books? Do you know about the medicinal properties of plants on your property. 

Notes: Living on a remote property is physically demanding. We find that we use our back, shoulder, arm and core muscles more for projects on site, and our legs for hunting and hiking. Chainsaws, .30-06 rifles, and axes are all heavy and pull on your dominant side. Let's face it: many people age-out of a remote lifestyle when health or strength problems interfere. The better shape you are in, the longer you can do it and the more things you can do for yourself.

Ski Plane Flying in Alaska

Click here to download an audio version of this blog in MP3 format (12 minutes, 11.4MB)

In Alaska, the percentage of residents with planes is higher than anywhere else in the U.S.

An Alaskan Commute

This makes sense, since distances are vast, the terrain so varied, and the entire, huge state has only 3 highways – well – we call them highways (four or more lane roads). It is often faster AND cheaper in gas to fly between two points than to drive a circuitous route around a mountain or body of water. Since my husband and I live off-road, we too, have a plane, a 1954 red and white Piper PA-20, that lands on our lake, on floats, in summer, and on skis, in winter. I've written elsewhere about summer time “Float Plane Follies” so here, I will describe a typical trip with our ski plane, starting with the pre-flight checks, the flying, and then the landing.

Pre-Flight:

In winter, as anyone without a heated car garage can imagine, we need to pre-heat the plane. Part of the engine is constructed of steel, and part of aluminum (to save weight). Since these two metals expand and contract at different rates in extreme temperatures, we need to warm the engine so that the metals are closer to the temperature ranges they were designed for. My husband generally parks his snowmachine next to the plane on the (frozen) lake, carrying a 20 lb propane tank and a Red Dragon torch. The vehicle's battery provides power and the propane the fuel to heat the torch, which looks like a something in a household HVAC system, with a metal, corrugated tube (blower), about 2 feet long and 5 inches wide. He sticks the blower tube up into the engine, inserts the plane engine's exhaust manifold (pipe) into it, and thus heats both the engine compartment and the internal piping. This takes about an hour. Meanwhile, he goes through a 42 point safety checklist.

When we are ready to leave, we remove the cowl cover (from the nose cone), which looks

Cowl Cover. Photo taken April 1.  (Our shower house back left) 

like a giant, padded bra for one boob, and the (fabric) wing covers (red tags for the port side, and green tags for starboard because those are the colors of the respective navigation lights). These covers protect the plane from accumulating ice weight in two ways. Since they are black, they tend to heat up and melt any accumulated snow when sunny, and since they have padded baffles that stick up along the front edge, they shake and shiver in the wind, deterring ice formation. For short trips, we generally take the cowl cover with us (it will keep the engine warm for several hours) but we stow the bulky wing covers in a little plastic sled under the cabin, out of the wind.