Jason

Make Venison Landjaeger

November 30, 2014 by Jason 1 Comment

20140827_155922 — Venison landjaeger v1. I made my first batch of landjaeger closer to traditional. That is, pressed into square links just larger than a slim jim. I also wanted to heat it up, so I used dried, crushed tepin pepper. The result was one of the finest venison products I’ve made to date.

Lately, I have been curing what’s in season, and right now, it’s hunting season so this series of posts will feature venison. All of these products are cured. It requires an environment where you can reliably control temperature and humidity. Once you have the environment, and the basic knowledge of safely curing meat, the recipes are up to your imagination.

Here, we’re talking venison landjaeger. See also, cured deer heart, and venison bresaeola.

Venison langjaeger v2. This is my second attempt. The first, seen at right, was excellent and it was made using Hank Shaw’s recipe. This time, I wanted a larger caliber sausage and I also wanted to play with the ingredients. Instead of the hank casings I used in v1, I tried beef middles. The larger caliber and weight required me to truss them up. And last, I doubled the batch to 10lbs. since I had a lot of venison.

8lbs. venison chunks
2lbs. pork fat back diced (Stick to fat back here, and save your leaf fat for the lard.)
76g kosher salt
30g dextrose, or white sugar
12g pink salt #2
2 tsp. garlic powder
2 tsp. caraway seed
2 tsp. ground coriander
1 tsp. celery seed
4 tbsp. ground black pepper
Optional: 2 tsp. ground habanero powder
1 tsp. T-SPX starter culture (Diluted in 1/2 cup distilled water. Important, chlorine-free water.)

20140731_143432 — Lean venison and pork fat back.

Just like fresh sausage making, you want to have your equipment (stuffer, grinder, trays, etc.) and the meat and fat very cold! Your venison should be trimmed and cut into chunks along with the fat back.

Take your chosen casings and soak them in lukewarm water. I’m using middles in this recipe, and I took more time to clean them out by running water through them multiple times.

In a cold tray (I prefer metal trays to help stay cold from the freezer) mix the venison, fat, and all of the spices, but HOLD OUT the T-SPX and water. Put everything into the freezer until it starts to freeze, but not frozen. The colder the better.

When ready to grind, grind through the course die. This is really a preference but I don’t want to overwork the forcemeat. I’m also looking for a courser texture in the final product. Once ground, place back in the freezer to chill it up again. It should be cooler than 42 degrees F.

While the forcemeat is chilling, prepare your starter culture by mixing it with the distilled water. Let it sit for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Remove the forcemeat from the freezer and add the starter culture, mixing very thoroughly. If you have a meat mixer, use it. Otherwise, use your hands, and fold it over and over until you notice the formation of the pellicle (this is when the meat starts getting sticky, and binding together)

20141207_152812 — Grind the meat and spices through your course die. Notice how cold the grinder attachments and trays are. The colder, the better throughout the entire process.

Now it’s time to load your stuffer and stuff into casings. Whether using hank casings, or beef middles, stuff them and tie off each link with hemp rope or twine. Using beef middles, tie two knots between each link because these will need to be separated and hung individually due to their weight and size.

Prick your sausages thoroughly and massage the air bubbles out of them. If using pork casings and the smaller caliber, the traditional step to take here is to place the sausages between two trays (traditionally wooden) and press them tightly together so they form more of a square chub (like the picture above.)

Now, we will ferment the sausages. We want to let them sit between 75 and 80 degrees F for 24 hours… up to 48 hours if you want to. This let’s the starter culture get to work. During this time, you need to prevent case hardening by keeping the casings moist. I use a spritzer bottle and spray and turn the sausages several times during the process. Another thing I tried this time around was to pre-mix my Bactoferm Mold-600 with distilled water to fill the spray bottle with. I use Mold-600 on most of my sausages in the drying chamber just to give the sausages a head start on developing the good mold and I had this handy. Update… it does work. White mold started pretty quickly, even as it was sprayed during cold-smoking.

20141208_194238 — Trussed up in larger beef middles and monitoring cold smoke temperature with an instant thermometer.

After fermentation, it’s time to cold smoke. I suppose you could skip this is you want, but after my first successful attempt, I require it. I used cherry smoke this time around and I smoked for 4 hours. The idea of cold smoking is to give your sausages smoke flavor, and not to cook the meat. I keep my smoker between 80 and 90 degrees F, and never hotter than 100 degrees F. This usually requires the use of a cold smoke generator as it would be difficult to keep your hot smoker under 100 degrees F. I made this cold-smoking device and I use it in my hot smoker.

Finally, it’s time to dry your sausages by hanging them in your drying chamber… or the proper environment. My dryer runs at 60 degrees F, and 80% RH. Of course, if you are using smaller casing, such as hank casing, it could take anywhere from 2-3 weeks. A larger caliber will take longer, and also require more careful monitoring of the casings to make sure they do not get too dry and hard. Case hardening is a critical issue in all meat curing. If the casing is left to harden and dry out, it looses it pores, and does not let water moisture escape through the casing. The result can be botulism.

After mixing the meat, fat and spices, I lay out on trays to put back in the freezer. This helps is get closer to freezing, faster.

The stuffer was frozen too to keep everything cold.

Because of the size and weight of beef middles, I opted to truss them.

Trussed venison in the smoker, cold smoking.

Landjaeger v1… stuffed into hank casings.

The final product from v2 (larger caliber)

Cure and dry deer heart

November 13, 2014 by Jason 2 Comments

Freshly harvested and cleaned deer heart

This post has been edited and updated with subsequent pictures and info that I have gleaned over the years.

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Hunting season means deer hearts are plentiful. It’s common for friends to drop off their hearts to me and tell me to do with them what I may. My original article wrote about curing what’s in season, so the series of posts featured venison. Here, we’re talking deer heart. See also venison landjaeger and venison bresaeola.

All of these products are cured. It requires an environment where you can reliably control temperature and humidity. Once you have the environment, and the basic knowledge of safely curing meat, the recipes are up to your imagination. I’ve added one below.

Now, I always aim for the lung shot to preserve the sacred heart. While I don’t chomp into it during the field dress like some traditions, I do let none go to waste.

I cut my teeth on grilling hearts. Just like your other venison cuts, don’t over-cook it. I figure there’s a window of about 2 minutes that separate just perfect… and ruined. But let me step back a bit. I myself was a hunter who didn’t think they’d ever eat a deer heart. That changed when I saw what the inside of a deer heart looked like. Give it a chance. If you’ve never prepared a heart, harvest it if it’s not all shot up. Take it through the process of cleaning it… you can always toss it, or give it to someone else in the end. However, you might find a new-found passion as I did.

Since I’m curing and drying this heart, here’s what I do. Take your fresh heart, and run clean water through the valves, squeezing and massaging any clots out. Empty the water and refill, repeating the process a couple times. It’s OK to leave the heart soaking in salt water for several days in the fridge until you can make it around to it if you need to. I prepare a salty brine to soak it. When the water becomes bloody dump it and change out. A few changes, and it’ll be clear. When ready, cut it open in a manner that leaves the heart lay flat and in one piece. I plan to roll and truss the heart later when I go to dry it. The inside of a heart is… empty, with white fibrous webbing (or strings) that operate the chambers and valves. Trim this webbing out as best as you can until the heart looks like the pictures below. Give it another rinse and prepare your spice mix.

After cleaning the heart, and cutting open to clean out, you'll see that it's a beautiful piece of meat. — After cleaning the heart, and cutting open to clean out, you’ll see that it’s a beautiful piece of meat.

I make subtle variations in the spice mixes each time… making notes so that when I hit a grand slam, I can come back to it. I have rolled tight like a pancetta, and cased it in a beef middle (sometimes, I’ll cut hearts in to two pieces to do this,) and then truss it. I’ve also rolled up and netted. Here is a spice mix idea.

To a 350-450g heart (average weight of whitetail hearts I’ve cured)

15g kosher salt
2g pink salt #2
7g brown sugar
1/4 tsp. dry thyme
1/2 tsp. crushed black pepper
1 tsp. caraway seed
1 tsp. dried crushed jalapeno powder
1/4 tsp. paprika
1 tsp. fresh crushed garlic

Deer hearts, cut in two pieces, cured, rolled, trussed and cased in different ways.

In another variation, I omitted the garlic and brown sugar, and crushed 1 tsp. of juniper berries. I also substituted the jalapeno powder for habanero powder.

Just like all other cure jobs, massage the spice mix into the heart and put into a zip-lock, or a vac bag making sure to get all the spice mix in with it, including any spice mix left in whatever you mixed it in. We want to make sure to get the proper amount of pink salt in the bag. Now seal it up, and put it in the fridge. Leave it for 8-10 days and flip it over every other day.

Once done, remove from the bag and rinse off the cure. You can use water… or wine. I rinsed one of them with wine. Now, cold smoke if you like for 2-3 hours, remove, and put into your dryer. Here again, watch for case hardening. Spritz as you need, and make sure you environment has 70-80% RH. It should take around 3-4 weeks to fully dry. Don’t rush this process… or you will dry the outside too fast and trap water content inside. The idea is to keep the outside soft and pliable during the drying process. You are looking for approximately 30% weight loss.

Deer heart vac sealed with spices for curing.

The other deer heart, using different seasonings.

This deer heart is trussed up inside a beef middle.

Weighing the heart before the drying time.

Washing off the cure with a 1982 Cabernet! I felt so important!

Thanks to my good friend Debbie. I used it sparingly and drank the rest.

Deer heart after being cold-smoked for 3 hours.

The second deer heart was netted for drying.

Various drying ideas… some trussed, some cased.

Deer hearts, cut in two, and stuffed in beef middles

Hearts, cut in two pieces and prepared to dry in various ways.

Some white and green mold on the casings. Just wipe it off if you don’t like it.

They say you generally don’t want to see fuzzy molds, but when you are familiar with your chamber, and you stay up on a little maintenance, it’s not a big deal. Use a paper towel and a little vinegar, or salty brine to wipe off unwanted molds.

This is a cased heart with mold on the outside.

Here’s the same heart, with the casing removed.

This heart was unrolled mid-way or so throug the process because it seemed to be taking a while to dry. It dried for about 7 weeks.

This heart was cased. I was happy with the tightness of the rolled heart. I did re-truss mid-way through the drying process to tighten it.

Venison heart on an impromptu salumi plate.

Prosciutto, or dry cure country ham

August 16, 2014 by Jason Leave a Comment

I tread lightly on this terrain as this is the first prosciutto I have ever made. Not only that, but there are so many styles, and so many beliefs when it comes to drying a whole ham. You apparently can’t just call a ham a prosciutto (singular for prosciutti) because a real prosciutto starts with the right pork, is made in the right area, and handled in the proper way. The rest of us call it country ham, or dry-cured and air-dried ham. Whatever it is, I’m trying it. This ham went into the cure in March of 2014 so I’m rolling up near a year here soon! Eighteen months around the time I’ll start watching closely for maturity. More on how we’ll do that in a moment. Let’s start from the beginning.

20140318_154807 — Remove the aitch bone and try not to stab or slice up the meat around and behind it as that will be the face of the prosciutto.

Remove the aitch bone

First, the ham needs to be trimmed up tight. This entails carefully removing the aitch bone, and trimming the face of the meat as round and smoothly as possible. Take your time with the aitch bone. The more you stab up the meat, the more you have to remove. We don’t want punctures or other air pockets where bacteria can more easily hide during the curing and aging process.

After I cut the ham trotter and hock off, I removed the aitch bone leaving as much on the ham as I could. See more detailed pictures below in the gallery.

Also, try not to knick the ball of the hip. This will stay on the ham while it dries and is often exposed to the air during the process. Of course, bacteria can also hide in here if there are slices and knicks in the ball joint.

Trim up the face of the ham

Here, we carve the ham as smoothly as possible We want a smooth transition from the meat to the fat, to the skin. The hip bone will protrude out beyond.

You can see I had a little valley from the hip down around the underside. It was likely due to my un-perfect aitch bone removal The scraps I trimmed away were sorted (fat from lean) and into the other stacks that were heading for other products.

I have the ham in a meat lug and will keep it in here during the entire pressing and curing process. It will catch the brine and hold the juices while I re-salt and massage it.

I have seen some demonstrations where they will encase the entire ham in salt while pressing it. This ensures salt is always in contact with the face during the curing stages.

I worked and massaged the ham every day, even a couple of times a day during the process and kept it in my wine cellar. Weigh the ham and note the date in your logs.

Adding the spice and cure

20140319_212635 — Cure and spices on the ham.

The spices are only limited by your imagination, but if you have some great quality pork, as I do, then less is more!

I used kosher salt, cure 2, pepper, paprika, rosemary, bay and garlic. I also added t-spx starter culture into the initial cure to be drawn in with the brine.

The spices and cure mix are rubbed over the entire thing… favoring the face and the exposed hock end. I massaged the leg trying to express all the blood and liquid out as possible. This was a regular thing I did daily during the curing phase. I covered the lug with Saran wrap, and a used a plastic cutting board with weights on top to press the ham. See more detailed pictures in the gallery below.

Periodically, I’d uncover it, massage it some more, rub the spices and cure back on the face, and even add more salt as needed. Of course, a lot of brine was coming out. I left this brine in for now only emptying it towards the end of the curing stage.

Rinse and hang the ham to dry

20140403_180626 — After two weeks, the ham was rinsed and hung up in my wine cellar.

When the ham comes out of the cure, you’ll rinse and dry it with some clean paper towels and hang it up to start drying. Weigh the ham and note the date in your logs. This weight will be your starting weight. We’re watching for 30% weight loss before we stucco the face of the ham.

For 2-3 weeks, I moved the ham between my during chamber and wine cellar trying to dry it, but not too fast. It’s nice and flat now from being weighted during the cure. The ham is dried from a few days of open air and it’s starting to firm up… but it has a long way to go.

Because I’m a novice, I got a little ahead of myself and ended up stucco’ing the ham before the proper weight loss. It was stucco’d for about a week or two when I un-stucco’d it to let it dry out the full 30%. It took another month and a half before it had the proper weight loss before stucco’ing it again.

Now the skin has indication of fine white mold, and there’s clear signs of dehydration, including some cracking along the meat and fat lines. This is normal.

Washing and drying

20141016_113145 — By the time it lost 30% of its weight, it was molded up on the surface and had to be cleaned.

By the time the ham lost 30% of its weight, it was molded up quite a bit on the surface. I had moved it between my chamber and cellar a few more times just based on feel.

I had to clean it off real good before stucco’ing it. For this, I use a dedicated, clean nylon stiff bristle scrub brush. In the sink, I ran lukewarm water and used the brush to scrub the face clean again. Once clean, it was hung back up to dry.

You don’t want to stucco the ham while it’s wet from washing. In my case, I washed it, hung it up for another week or so, and waited until the surface looked and felt dry.

Of course, all the while, I’m hoping that the right amount of cure made it inside the ham since there’s no other way to tell from here.

While the appearance is quite ugly, it’s also kind of beautiful… if you know what I mean.

Stucco the ham

I render my own lard from leaf fat I get from the pigs. It’s an easy crock-pot thing you can do during a day you are milling around the house.

The lard, pepper and rice flour and mix together to make your stucco. To make the stucco, use a 50/50% lard rice flour mixture. Add some black pepper to help keep flies at bay. We do this so that the meat on the ham does not dry out so much that it penetrates deep into the ham. The face of the ham will be trimmed off when it’s time, but we want that to be a minimal amount.

Stucco applied. — The ham with stucco (lard, pepper and rice flour).

After a week or so hanging with the stucco on it, I moved the ham into my drying chamber. Here it’s 80% RH, and that may be a little too high. Hence the reason I tend to move it from the dryer back to the wine cellar. I really go by feel. The feel of the skin, and how it compresses when I squeeze the thickness of the ham.

Mold was starting on the stucco. I plan to leave it go for a while since I see mold on most of the prosciutti’s I see aging. I suspect if it gets too bad, we could clean it off and re-lard, but for now, I’ll let it be.

I have procured a osso di cavallo that will be learning how to use. It’s a horse bone… specifically the shin splint from a horse. Traditionally, it is used to puncture the ham through the lard and pull out the aromas that are happening within. This of course is a learned art, and I am on the beginning of it. I have the bone, but have yet to shave and polish it to the proper finish to begin using. Check out the pics. After 15 months of drying, see the sliced result below.

Preparing the ham to remove the aitch bone.

The ham is weighted to press out juices and blood.

I cover just to keep our debris and flies.

Mixing up the lard, rice flour and pepper.

Surface of the ham developed mold and had to be cleaned before stucco.

Skin of the ham has fine mold. This is OK.

There are small critters called “ruffini” that clean and scrub the surface of the hame in the chamber. They are known to “dirty the floor”. They are apparently beneficial in the regard.

After 15 months, here is the result. Also pictured is a hand-cut salame.

Processing meat chickens at home

July 21, 2014 by Jason 1 Comment

More and more, I try to find ways to produce my own food. We have a ways to go before we’re completely self-sustaining, but through each experience, I feel more informed, more prepared… and just more satisfied. For me, meat from the store has been just plain disappointing. I question everything from how commercial animals are raised, handled, the ingredients and preservatives within, and even labeling. When I cut open a package of chicken, I sigh not knowing anything about it. After processing my own deer, and hogs from local farmers to make my own pork products, processing chickens seemed to be the next logical step. While I’ve not yet had the experience of raising my own meat birds, I am in my second season having egg-laying chickens. I am also setting up to allow more space for meat birds in the future.

In the meantime, my very good friends at Funny Farm and I shared a collaborative effort. Collaborative meaning, they raised them, and kept track of the expenses. Later, we split the costs and teamed up to work on slaughter day. It’s my intention to document our experience here. This is not a detailed step by step tutorial. If you want that, this is a great book, and I use it for other animals too. Here, I simply mean to educate the first-timer, or one who’s been thinking about setting up and processing their own meat birds.

Whether you have layers, or meat birds, ideally, you have some space to let your chickens run around. My layers are still in a coop, mainly for protection. It’s been a goal of mine to fence in some space to raise these chickens right. In my case, the fencing is to keep other dogs and animals out. Meat birds also take a different kind of feed than layers and there are many philosophies on feed from one person to the next. Backyardchickens.com is a great resource to answer many of your questions.

To prep for slaughter day, prepare the area. You need designated “dirty” and “clean” areas. This is important. I always clean as I go and take sanitation during any animal-processing effort very seriously. Stopping and cleaning up an area periodically when needed should be part of the process. I’m more used to handling big game, so cleaning up during and after chickens isn’t as much of a chore. Although, I admit, I was busy parting up chickens when my friend worked the outside clean up.

Preparation for slaughter day starts a day, or even days ahead of time. Adjustments to diet, and withholding of food to make the chickens not as full are key. Hopefully, they are not stressed, and of course, raised in a happy environment. As more people begin keeping chickens, and other livestock, I’d like to think that the happiness of their animals is always paramount. After all, we have the luxury of doing it our way, the human way, because the only quota we have to meet is our own.

Next, our happy chickens find their way into the killing cones on slaughter day. We catch them, hold them upside down by their feet and lower them into their cone. The birds turn quite still once upside down. My best understanding is that the blood rushes to their head and makes them dizzy.

My friends allowed me the honors of taking the first bird… which coincidentally was my mean roo, Mr. Rooster. Sometimes I ask myself how the bird commanded enough respect for me to call him Mr., but… it was a running joke about him being so mean to me that I would see him in a stew pot… and that day finally came. I have to admit, it made it easier to take him out. He’s on ice right now, and I plan to make a special recipe with him. That’ll be another story.

Lining up bins of ice water, towels for wiping, and various stations for certain tasks is critical. My hosts did a fine job, and the addition of the Whiz-bang chicken plucker similar to this one was a time-saver.

Here’s the process that we followed to process 25 chickens.

1. Place the bird in a killing cone (see pics), and cut the jugular(s). We didn’t pith the birds this time, and we just let them bleed out. Pithing is said to relax the follicles and make dry plucking easier. Since we were working towards efficiency, we used the whiz-bang. I can see doing this once or twice a year, so it was important to refine a repeatable process.

2. Once the bird bleeds out, it will stop moving. From there, we moved it to the scalding station. Here is where your water is heated to approximately 132 F. Dip the bird in head first, and move it up and down for 2-4 seconds, and pull out (like a tea bag) and then dunk it again and so the same. Bring it back up and do a test pluck. The feathers came out easily each time for us. (Note: On one bird, I let the water get a little too cold and did my dunks. The feathers didn’t pull out easily, even after I heated the water up again and repeated the process. This bird in particular was difficult to pluck. So, maintaining the right temperature is important).

3. Next we moved the bird to the whiz-bang. We turned it on, put the chicken in, and sprayed it with the hose to wash the feathers down as they came off. It worked beautiful. You only need to run it for 5 seconds or so. You don’t want to beat the bird up, so stop it and check the progress. One or two 5 second runs, cleaned all the feathers off well. (see pics)

4. Give the bird another quick wash with the hose and drop it in the prepared bin of ice-water to chill before evisceration. Move to the next bird.
When all birds are on ice, we move to evisceration.

5. We first cut off the feet using a meat shears. across the hock joint. This is easy to separate using either a shears, or a knife. We cut off the preen gland that is near the tip of the tail. We removed the head, and cut a slit down the neck to remove it. We separated the crop and esophagus, then the bung and the intestines. We toss the livers, gizzard and hearts in a designated cleaner bucket for later. We removed the remaining entrails, lungs and were careful not to break the cloaca. After a couple of birds, it felt very natural, and reasonable for anyone to do. Experience makes you better and I found myself in a process after a few birds.

6. The bird gets another rinse, and then it goes back in to a different, cleaner bin of ice water until parting. While the birds are in the ice water, it gives us time to clean up, properly sanitize, and prepare for the next step.

7. Now we clean the gizzards, hearts and livers. There’s an easy action to slice open and peel out the lining of the gizzard. A final soaking in salt water will keep them until they are rinsed, froze, or sent to where they’re going next.

We now move from the dirty area, to the clean area. Here’s where we line up the vac sealers and a couple cutting boards to finish parting out and getting them ready for refrigeration. Of course we left however many birds whole for roasting. Others were separated in to thighs, wings and breasts. Carcasses are great for boiling down into stock. My vac sealer allowed me to compress several carcasses in one bag. I also saved the feet for stock. I cleaned, blanched and peeled them before vac sealing and freezing for later. Apparently, there’s more you can do with the feet, but I’m satisfied just not letting them go to waste.

Important: Do not freeze the birds until after 12-24 hours. The dryer you can get the birds, the better. You can lay them out on racks, and even set up a fan to blow on them. Once dry, keep them below 40 degrees F. It allows the skin to tighten, and decreases the amount of water uptake. All this contributes to more tender chicken later, and also reduces microbial growth. If you do not have the space to hold at 40 degrees before freezing, then leave them in the cooling tub for 6-8 hours.

While the process sounds like it would be a bloody, nasty mess, it was quite the contrary. As you’ll see in the pics, the most blood you see is from the initial cut of the jugular to bleed the bird. The squeamish may have more issues than blood, but knowing the quality of the food you are making and consuming makes it easier. It’s also nice to get a couple of people with the same interests together and share the work. For me at least, it didn’t even seem like work. I look forward to doing it again, and I thanks my hosts for taking me through the process.

Enjoy the pics below!

Mr. Rooster was first to meet his maker.

The layout for processing birds… from the dirty area to the clean area.

Mr. Rooster. There’s a long story behind this guy. He finally got his.

Cleaned and dropped in ice water until further processing.

Parting out wings, thighs, and drum sticks.

After slaughter meal prepared by my hosts..

Peeling chicken feet after dipping in hot water for 10 seconds.

Chicken feet, peeled and soaked in salt water.

The whiz-bang chicken plucker makes short work of plucking.

We rigged our plucker with PEX tubing to wash the feather away.

Chicked feet waiting to be peeled and soaked.

Staging area ready to go with “clean” and “dirty” areas.

Our whiz-bang plucker looks kind of like a time-machine.

Scald water is 156F with a little dish soap in it.

The hens have been properly finished preparing for the day.

Bee colony cutout from a historical home

June 3, 2014 by Jason Leave a Comment

On Sunday, myself and two others executed a honey bee colony cut-out that has been in the planning for a couple of weeks. The colony was in a historical home on Cincinnati’s west side. The home owners said the bees have been in there for as long as they can remember and the mailman told them he’s watched bees come in and out since the 70’s. Sure, the colony has probably ebbed and flowed and maybe even went vacant for a stint… but where there is easy access to a dry space that smells of bees, and has plenty of comb in the walls, more bees are sure to eventually move in.

Behind plaster and lathe, and in 12 foot uninsulated wall cavities, we eventually found a colossal colony that took 5 hours to remove. The home owners lived with the bees… that found their way in to the house but flew towards the light of the nearest window… which was the beautiful stained-glass window you see in the pics. The bees stayed near the window until they eventually died and cleaning up dead bees under the window became a daily task for them. They were apparently willing to live with the bees for quite a bit of time (which was really cool of them) but after the birth of their child, they decided it was a problem that needed to be dealt with. They spoke to many beekeepers before us and no one was interested in getting them out since it was going to be nothing short of a messy job.

We decided to go over and take a look. Using a stethoscope on the walls inside, we were able to identify a wall in a closet on the other side of the wall that we could enter to access the bees. What we didn’t know that we were about to uncover an entire wall of bees. We ran through the options with the home owners, explaining that a trap-out was possible, but it was a lengthy process, and in the end, all the comb and honey is left in the wall. All holes would need to be sealed so that future bees wouldn’t find their way in. In retrospect, we now know there would be over 100 pounds of honey left sitting in the wall… something everything from ants and roaches, to mice would find.

After identifying where we would enter, we got to work. We tapped a hold through the lath, and were happy to confirm we hit the right spot as a few bees emerged. We blew a little smoke into the holes we found outside to calm them as we cut a square access hole inside. We use a bee vac that can safely vacuum bees into a special box that collects them. We cut a little more, and vac’d a little more. The combs just wouldn’t stop. We cut down to the floor the width of three studs, then we went upwards. The ceilings were about 12 feet high… and we ended up cutting all the way up. We gently vac’d bees, and cut out the brood frames first. These are the frames that hold eggs, and young larva that will grow in to adult bees. The brood frames are puzzle-pieced in to frames and rubber bands are used to hold the combs in. We’re in effect, rebuilding the bee combs in a standard bee box so that we can remove and inspect the frames later as the colony is managed. Of all the comb in the wall, we were able to build about 4-5 brood frames (many with pollen and nectar stores as well)… but all the rest was capped honey comb that broke our heart to have to tear out. We asked the home owner if they wanted to new comb to eat and use. They did, so we laid the best stuff on a plate for them to take to the kitchen. The rest was oozing out from removing the plaster lathe from it. Rather then waste all the honey, we put those combs in plastic garbage bags to take back to the apiary and lay them out on sheets for the bees to come rob out.

In the end, we took home a very nice colony of bees, all the honey comb that became free bee food, and we left some very happy home owners who were thankful the bees have finally been properly removed, safely, effectively, and free of charge. They went out-of-the-way to thank us and tell us we did them a huge favor. For us, it’s just another fun day playing with the bees. We’re happy to help someone out especially if we can help save the bees. We also gave the colony to a new beekeeper in our group who needed them. It’s nice to help a new beekeeper get a hive set up with little to no cost as well.

Enjoy some pictures and videos below… and if you need help with bees in the Midwest, drop me a line.