This is the 4th issue this year of our monthly newsletter and we hope to keep you up to date on all farm activities.

Although the U-Pick part of our farm is only open September to Mid October - our website is open all year!   At our Candle Shop you can purchase candles and honey products any time you wish.

 

To view past issues of our newsletter, please visit our Newsletter Archive.

---

Candle Care & Use, New Gift Card Link.

 

Candle Care & Use. Useful tips from the National Candle Association.
The story .......

 

We have added a link to a new "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.  Details .....

Our Candle Catalog

---

Pruning time in the vineyard, MSU course in viticulture, Interesting links, April grape recipe.

Common questions people ask us are:

Do you really have to prune every year?  What do you do - Just "cut them back"?

Yes! Some people think you can plant vines and just let them "grow up the wire". You see this in back yards all the time - A concord vine growing all over the place. To maintain a healthy vine and good crop every year the vines need to be pruned, leaving only a trunk to support the vine and a certain number of "buds" from last years growth.  pruning details .....

 

MSU course in viticulture - this months posting:
W.C. Paetz / HRT333 / Wine Judging / September 16, 2002
Varieties - NY Muscat, Concord, St. Peppin, Sangiovese
To continue this story ........

More details about the MSU program and additional articles .....

Interesting links

Goodsmall oak article about Evaluating maturity via grape tasting

Red Wine headaches - Harvard Medical School

Geneticaly modified wine with a hangover cure!!

A teetotalers' guide to social drinking (funny)

Recent Research on Barrels and Alternatives

April grape recipe - Pasta Salad With Green Grapes
The recipe .....

This Month in the Vineyard

---

Winter Damage, April Honey Recipe - Puppy Chow

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.

 

April Honey Recipe - Puppy Chow
The recipe .....

This Month at the Honey Farm

---

This is a section for comments/questions/recipes from our readers. Please read the comments & feel free to put your 2 cents worth in.

Please send me your comments ......