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March in the CandleShop and Honeyfarm

 

 

In the Candleshop   Useful tips from the National Candle Association on Candle Care & Use. National Candle Association (NCA) -- Clean and shine solid candles with a soft cloth or a piece of nylon. -- Store taper candles in a cool, dark, dry place, lying them flat to prevent warping. -- To prevent fading, never put candles in a window or directly expose them to bright outdoor light or indoor spotlights for long periods. -- To remove wax from washable fabrics, scrape off excess wax and run boiling water through the material. -- When cleaning a glass candleholder, avoid scratching with a metal object because scratching the inner or outer surface weakens the glass and could lead to breakage. -- Votive candles will clean easily if you add a small amount of water to the glass before inserting the candle.   Source: National Candle Association (NCA), 2002 For more information and safety guidelines, visit www.candles.org ************************************** We have added a link to our "Gift Card" page in the link area at the top of our catalog. It makes it much easier to add a card to your orders when you ship a gift to a friend. We can edit the "to" and "from" information just the way you want it. Our catalog pages are "powered" by a service called "Bigstep" and it automatically sends you a message that your order has been received and when it is shipped and it works very good. However sometimes it is not as flexible as I would like so we also have a page called "Custom Orders." We handle the processing of these orders manually and can really do anything that you want and can ship anywhere that we have a U.S. Postal address along with a valid credit card. We are continuosly in the process of refining and improving these custom order pages. We can "Special Order" many things such as: sending gifts to many different addresses with just one order, send part of your order to your home and part to a friend, or create different gift boxes that are not listed on our site. These are all done through our "Special Order" page.   **************************************   At the Honey Farm   Well, I finally finished checking all of our colonies and found we have about a 50% winter loss, which is very high (10% is good). The long and cold winter certainly did not help the honeybees but varroa mites caused the most damage. Varroa mites are a small mite the size of a pinhead that can weaken and kill the colonies. They hurt the bees but do not damage the honey at all. It seems like every 3 to 4 years we get a lot of damage and many bees die off over winter, then the next few years the winter loss is much smaller. Last year's loss was only about about 5%. We are using a multiple pronged approach to controlling mites at our farm. Using grease patties with wintergreen oil is one treatment we use. We also are trying to improve the genetics of the queens in our honeybee colonies with our queen breeding program. Every year we purchase 2 artificially inseminated breeder queens that are more resistant to varroa mites. We will use these queen mothers to raise new queens for our colonies this year. What do I do with this kind of winter loss? Usually I make "splits" by taking colonies, split them in half and adding a new queen cells to the new one. This year I also purchased some packages from Georgia and they will be shipped here in late April. They are sold by the pound - in 2 or 3 lb packages - they look like shoe boxes with wire mesh on them. I will have some pictures about how we install page bees for next month's newsletter. Click here for more information about "smart" queens. Click here to see how we install and raise new queens.   What do I do with this kind of winter loss? Usually I make "splits" by taking colonies, split them in half and adding a new queen cells to the new one. This year I also purchased some packages from Georgia and they will be shipped here in late April. They are sold by the pound - in 2 or 3lb packages - they look like shoe boxes with wire mesh on them. I will have some about how we installing page bees for next month.

Candle Dipping at Honeyflow Farm Wicks for 6 pairs of candles are on a frame and dipped into hot wax.   6 pairs of candles half finished. The frame is split in half & only 3 pairs are now dipped.   The candles are hanging in a rack to cool between dipps.   The finished product.