Alaska Honey Harvest: Raise your own sweet

For the past few years, our four hives have produced a total of 11-17.5 gallons of delicious and useful honey each summer (depending on weather and hive population). And to my delight, each year's harvest tastes different:  2016 tasted deliciously like caramel and 2017 offered a wonderfully floral flavor.  This year's low production (because of all the rain?) is tasty but without the extra quality of the prior two years. What will next year bring?

Lots of bees making honey!

To someone who thinks of honey as a topper only for an occasional biscuit, our homestead production volumes may seem excessive.  Me, too, at first. The harvests inspired me to find many uses for that delectable golden syrup.  I learned that food is only one end product.  Below are various frequent uses as well as information about the bees we raise and how we extract the honey.

Hygiene:
Honey is a humectant, so it attracts water molecules in the air, as a natural moisturizer. It can soothe sunburn or windburned skin as well as dry hair.  I give myself a honey facial and hair treatment 2 or 3 times a month.  Imagine how lovely that smells!  I simply dilute a few tablespoons of honey and slather it all over my head and face, letting it rest for about 20 minutes.  It rinses out (easily) in a bath or shower, leaving soft skin and fluffy hair with healthier looking ends.  I have made moisturizing bars with honey, beeswax, and lanolin for friends, but at home, it is easiest to spoon the honey straight out of a jar. If you have a pint in your pantry, give it a try.

Medicine:  Honey tempers the sting of a burn or bug bite, and its anti-microbial properties have  been known for thousands of years to protect cuts and scrapes from infection.  Many people add it to hot liquids to calm a cough or sore throat, and to render strong tasting medicines more palatable. For example, some people soak garlic cloves in honey and pop those to ward off pesky colds.

Regular hive check

Alcohol:  I have made several batches of mead.  For some reason, the straight honey/water/yeast mixture ferments less reliably for me than those mixed with wild plants and their natural yeasts. So I favor the latter.  Raspberry mead is my favorite.  The results have been dry with a gorgeous color, a fruit forward scent and a lingering nutty aftertaste. I have also flavored mead with elderflowers which impart a delicate flavor.  Maybe I will try a cranberry mead this fall.

Alaska Black Bear for Food and Warmth

We don't really mind bears that just pass through our remote and wooded property.  After all, we moved into their neighborhood. I've passively watched one play with a sheet pulled off the laundry line. Another watched me from behind a tree as I walked in and out of various sheds.  A third chased a moose through a meadow.  But curious bears that linger or repeatedly return have proved to be a menace. They have knocked over our beehives and burn barrels, tried to break into the chicken coop, chewed plastic hoses and rubber tires and even pulled plywood planks out from under our cabin. We are meticulous about reducing garbage and cook scents, but bears will be bears. They are curious and resourceful creatures.

So my husband maintains a current hunting license, and every year or two one of these destructive black bears ends up in my pressure cooker, providing dozens of flavorful and nutritious meals.

AVIAN WARNING SYSTEM
To my surprise, our hens and ducks are excellent indicators of not only A predator but the TYPE of predator in the vicinity.  (As low as they are on the food chain, I guess this makes sense).  They chitter at tiny but carnivorous weasels, make a throaty sort of chicken growl and raise one eye to the sky when circled by an eagle or owl, and go radio silent for bears.

Three times this summer, for several days each,  the hens' behavior alerted us that a bear was hovering nearby, just out of sight.  They remained on the roost long past schedule, started hiding eggs in the ferns far from their usual nesting boxes, and stayed close to us, wherever we were working or sitting.  Sure enough, each time we encountered evidence of a bear in the yard, such as piles of scat or a punctured wheelbarrow tire.  Early one morning last week, Bryan caught a glimpse of a big bruin that he thought could be the same bear returning on a nearly predictable three week circuit, which, Fish and Game wardens have learned from tagging live bears, some do. So, right on schedule, when the hens again warned us of a bear, Bryan checked his .338 rifle and set it by the door.

THE SHOT
At 7:30 am the next morning, we heard the bells jingle on our burn barrel lid. A large black bear had nosed it ajar, but, finding nothing of interest, he ambled past the locked chicken coop, through some trees, and out to a meadow next to  our cabin. I watched long enough to ensure that he was alone (so a boar) and not trailed by cubs (not a sow), while Bryan retrieved his .338.  He shot the bear from the front porch at a distance of about 100 yards through the shoulders/chest while it was walking.

L-R: .338, .44 magnum,
 .44 magnum (spent/recovered)

The bear rolled over, moaned, and staggered into an adjacent alder thicket.  We waited for it to bleed out and then tracked the blood on the damp foliage to where he lay, about thirty yards away from the shot, in a patch of prickly devil's club (of course).  Bryan delivered a coup de grace shot with a .44 magnum revolver and then poked him with a 2x4 board to ensure that he was not napping.  The stiffened limbs suggested that the bear had died right after the shoulder shot.

Now what?  An adult male black bear can be 350 lbs, and 5 feet from nose to tail.  This fellow was at least that size, and it was drizzling, prickly, and buggy where he lay.

BEAR PROCESSING  (Trigger warning: two photos of dead bear below) 

Civil Air Patrol Couple in Alaska Makes Living Off Grid Look Easy

Please enjoy a recently-published article from the Civil Air Patrol about our homestead (link here).  It is a good overview, of what life is like here.
Most of my other blog articles focus on  "how to" topics, like food, power, and water. 

Cost/Benefit of Raising Food Animals in Alaska Winter

Animal husbandry in cold, dark winters is challenging and expensive.  From a cost/benefit assessment, it is unsurprising that autumn has historically been a time for butchering animals - they cost a lot more to feed and warm through winter than in the summer, and in the case of birds, they lay fewer eggs, too.

Insulated bee hives in winter

Below are some of the seasonal problems we have encountered raising honeybees, chickens, ducks, and rabbits, and the costs/benefits we estimate.  Perhaps this will help others considering raising food animals (and insects) during long cold seasons.

Problems, costs, and benefits:
HONEY BEES   Winter: Almost all of our honeybee colonies die in winter, despite insulated hives, so we have to buy nucs (nuclear colonies with one queen and a few hundred Buckfast or Italian bees) every spring, for about $250@.

Costs: So  (after buying the initial boxes and equipment), our annual cost to produce 17 gallons of honey from four hives is about $58/gallon, or $0.91/oz, which is in between the prices of store bought regular and organic honeys.  This volume may seem ridiculous to anyone who only uses honey on an occasional biscuit, but we use the honey in place of sugar in many recipes (can't grow sugar up here), including beer and mead, and for hair conditioner and facials.  We also use the beeswax in furniture and leather polish, lip balm, and skin moisturizing bars.  I don't know the weight/volume we accumulate,  because we store it in bits and pieces, but I read that a pound of beeswax sells on-line for $10 – 15/lb.

Alaska Homesteading Winter Anecdotes

Outsiders may envision Alaska's long winters as all very similar, but that is not so.  Each year's differences offer variety and alternating advantages and disadvantages at our remote home.  This year, our firewood stores have benefited from low snow and high winds, our beeyard has suffered from a moose, and our entertainment has increased by visits of a curious marten to our hot tub.


THE CURIOUS MARTEN:

Martens are described, in one source, as “nature's most adorable assassin.”  Isn't that an evocative description!  Related to weasels/ermines/minks, martens are the size of slim dachsunds.   They have short legs, a long body wearing a glossy brown coat, a fluffy, fox-like tail, small, rounded ears, a short nose, and bright eyes in a restless, alert face. They are really cute.  It is entertaining to watch them dash lightly across the surface of the snow, jump up, and then dive deep to a subnivean nest of voles. They grab one for dinner, and then dash off to some quiet picnic spot.  One day, my husband was sitting in the soaking tub where his splash aroused the curiosity of a marten.  The little critter bravely bounded not only to the tub, but also up two stairs!  Cute they may be, but their sharp teeth and claws are not condusive to close acquaintance.  Bryan splashed at the creature, who decided to retreat in favor of smaller meat or perhaps less water.

MOOSE and BEES:

For some reason, we have had more frequent moose visitors this winter.  We watched one with a damaged rear leg struggle through overflow on the lake, have viewed others nibbling birch branches in our yard, and sighed over the depredations to our apple trees.  The animals' heavy footfalls punch deep holes through the soft snow and even along our hardpacked snow paths.  Saturday night,  a moose banged through the 4.5 foot high wire fence that encircles the bee yard, totally ripping out some of the lines and then, stepped over the rest with his 5 foot long legs.  I don't know why; tracks indicate that he was walking, not running.  Maybe the appeal of a straight line?