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You are here: Home / Archives for how-to

Requeening honeybee colonies with cells

July 9, 2019 by Jason Leave a Comment

In this video, I am pulling queens from hives that are not performing to my standards. Reasons range from poor laying patterns, aggressive behavior… anything that I don’t want to see in my colonies. There are many philosophical views on this, but for me, making up new splits or re-queening poorly-performing colonies helps ensure I have several good hives going into the next season. I consider them my honey-making hives. A young, vigorous queen can help prevent swarming, help mite control, fast build-up in the spring and many other “ailments” to a hive.

I don’t just re-queen automatically… but I do select the colonies that are not performing the way I want them to. I’ll let these hives be queenless for at least 24-hours to help them more readily accept the new queen cells. Another thing I do not mention in the video is to make sure you search for any queen cells left in the hive as well. A couple of hives already had supersedure cells in them (meaning the bees had already planned to replace their queen) and we don’t want these queens emerging and destroying the new queen cells we’re putting in the hives.

Do you ever replace queens in your colonies? If you do, I’d love to know why in the comments below.

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Filed Under: beekeeping, homesteading, how-to, videos Tagged With: beekeeping, homesteading, how-to, videos

Transfer honeybees from trap to new colony

May 27, 2019 by Jason Leave a Comment

In this video, I show how to unload a busting swarm trap into a new colony. Unfortunately, the phone overheated and cut off midway through (before I got the second deep on). It still had enough good info to achieve the intention. This trap had combs built off the bottoms of each frame that had to be cut and rubber-banded into additional frames. Overall it yielded about 6 to 7 frames of brood and eggs. It’s a colony in a great position to build right now (during a great nectar flow here in SE Indiana). I’m happy to answer any questions I may have left anyone hanging with.

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Filed Under: beekeeping, homesteading, how-to, videos Tagged With: beekeeping, homesteading, how-to, videos

Wild Ramp Chip Dip

April 29, 2019 by Jason Leave a Comment

We generally eat pretty healthy around here… but when we’re looking for creative ways to use up our healthy foraged edibles, splurging a little on some junk food seems OK for the occasion.

Ramp chip dip isn’t an invention of mine. In fact, I found the idea as I was surfing the net looking for things to make. The ramp harvest where I am is very generous each year and I’d like to think it’s because we pay close attention to sustainably harvesting them.

So when there are ramps, we dehydrate them, make dinner sides, make a sort of kraut with it, and for the next performance, create a chip dip. Let’s call it our version of a green onion chip dip. I found a number of approaches on the internet, but this one is fine-tuned to my style.

I added my maple sugar to the skillet since it was kind of caked together

I took about 8-10 oz of green ramp leaves (both the tricoccum and the burdickii varieties) and chopped them up into 1/8″ pieces. Slop 2 tablespoons of real butter in an iron skillet. Once melted add in a clove or two of minced garlic and just when it starts to brown, add the chopped ramp greens and stems. Prepare the following:

  • 2 tbs. of maple sugar (or a sweetener you like)
  • 4 ozs or cream cheese (half a pack)
  • 8 ozs of sour cream

The above amounts are not strict, cut down on the sweetener, or omit it altogether. I produce my own maple syrup and sugar and so I use that. Mix the above together and get it well-integrated in prep to dump the ramp greens in at the last step.

When the ramp greens are wilted and starting to brown, add 3-4 tbs. of your favorite vinegar to deglaze the skillet. Of course, I use Mad House Vinegar every time I can. Once done, add the greens to the cream cheese mixture and stir well. Salt and pepper to taste… but I ended up using my smoked ramp salt that has both powdered ramp greens, and garlic in it too. Grab your chips and dig in, but I’m making sure to save some for using on top of my next baked potato.

  • Chop your ramp greens
  • Saute the ramp greens in the butter and a little S&P
  • I added my maple sugar to the skillet since it was kind of caked together
  • Mix the cream cheese and sour cream. I also added some ramp salt
  • Mix the greens into the sour cream and stir well
  • I like corn chips for dipping

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Filed Under: food/culinary, homesteading, how-to, recipe Tagged With: food/culinary, homesteading, how-to, recipe

Wild Ramp Kraut

April 23, 2019 by Jason Leave a Comment

Yet another application for the wild ramps. I have been reading about kraut and kimchi. I love both, and as I thought about all the ramp greens I had, it made sense to get some of this going. Of course I’m not inventing anything new, but thinking about how delicate ramp leaves are, I envisioned the greens withering down into a soft green mass after salting, pounding and stuffing tight into jars.

I grabbed a head of cabbage and shredded just as I would when I make sour kraut. Then, I chopped all the ramp greens into 1-2″ pieces and mixed well. I specifically wanted to have more ramp greens than cabbage. The cabbage was just there to add structure and crunch. I had a total weight of 2843g of ramp greens and cabbage, and to that, I settled on 3% salt.

Shredded cabbage, and chopped ramp greens.

I put everything into a 5g clean bucket to pound it down. The idea here is to bruise everything up and get it to create its own brine. There should be no need to add any water. I made two variations. The first was cabbage, ramps and caraway seed. The other was the same, plus some shredded carrots and dill.

Give everything a mix and make sure the salt is evenly distributed. The brine will release pretty quickly, so it also helps to get things integrated. Finally, pack everything tightly into jars. I save a few whole cabbage leaves to use on the top, just under my weight. The idea is to keep everything under the surface of the brine. This prevents mold from growing. If you do this right, it’s one of those things you’ll be able to set and forget until it’s done. I do use the special lids that have an air vent in the top for wide mouth mason jars. This particular set comes with 4 lids, 4 glass weights and a tamper to pack the kraut down in the jars. Crocks are great, but for smaller test batches of stuff, using wide mouth jars is less maintenance. I always have a jar of kraut ready to open. Having it in multiple jars keeps the smell and bugs down… and I NEVER have any problems with mold starting. Here’s the same set without the tamper and slightly cheaper.

  • Ramps, leaves only harvested in bucket.
  • Shredded head of cabbage.
  • I collected a single ramp with its bulb just for showing. It’s these bulbs and their roots that we want to leave in the ground.
  • Pounding down the cabbage and ramps to make a brine.
  • Two variations… ramps, and ramps + carrots.

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Filed Under: food/culinary, homesteading, how-to, recipe, Uncategorized Tagged With: food/culinary, homesteading, how-to, recipe

Wild Ramp Salt

April 23, 2019 by Jason Leave a Comment

Here’s a pretty clever thing you ramp harvesters can do when you’re wanting to prolong the magic of the season, so to speak. I have a culinary bone that needs constant feeding, and when I grill or smoke, I have an assortment of rubs that I tend to have ready-made. I’ve ground the dehydrated tomato skins left over from my sauces to make a tangy tomato powder base for other rubs. I’ve also dehydrated halved garlic cloves to make my own powder. Well, it just seemed downright necessary to make a ramp-based salt or rub with all these ramp leaves. It’s easy.

Clean your leaves and lay them out to dry. I put my leaves in a dehydrator… and they readily dehydrate. It only took a couple of hours with a little heat added. You can also cold-smoke the leaves initially if you want to add a bit of natural smoke but you’ll see how I faked it with the smoked salt in a moment. You’ll eventually add some kind of salt, and I’d suggest either a kosher or sea salt… basically, something with a course grind.

Grinding dried ramp leaves and salt a portion at a time.

I have a stash of applewood smoked sea salt that I used to blend in. This particular salt is almost overly smoky so I thought skipping the cold-smoking was prudent this time around. I took the dehydrated leaves, crunched them up and stuff them in my spice grinder along with a certain amount of salt. I like to grind the salt with the dehydrated leaves to help integration, and by the time it’s done, you really can’t see the salt. It leaves a nice, earthy, salt blend, ready to sprinkle right on food… use as a rub, or used in the other curing applications. Later on, I did manage to add in some of my homemade garlic powder. I can’t wait to get this into some charcuterie.

If you have any other clever ideas on making salts and rubs, I’d love to hear them. In the meantime, here’s a few pics of the process.

  • Ramps cleaned and drying.
  • Dehydrated leaves crunch up easily.
  • Sifting to get a consistent blend.
  • Ramps ready for the grinder, and the resulting mixture.
  • This does have the salt in it and it was sifted into a slightly finer powder.

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Filed Under: food/culinary, homesteading, how-to, recipe, Uncategorized Tagged With: food/culinary, homesteading, how-to, recipe

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About AllMorgan

AllMorgan started as a family blog to keep extended family and friends around the world apprised on what's going on at the Morgan Ranch. Over the years, it grew in to something so much more.

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Welcome to AllMorgan

AllMorgan started as a family blog to keep extended family and friends around the world apprised on what's going on at our Indiana homestead. It always been a cross between a family diary and photo … Read more

Did you know?

The queen bee doesn’t decide what happens in a colony. The workers do. They adjust her feeding to make her do what the majority says. The queen can’t feed herself.

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