Homemade Honey Mustard Sauce

I want to share a great recipe that my wife found, when our son wanted some honey mustard with his chicken fingers. It is super easy, and if my wife can make it anyone can:

1/2 a cup of mayonnaise
2    Tbl. Yellow Mustard
1    Tbl. Dijon Mustard
2    Tbl. Honey
1/2 Tbl. Lemon juice

Mix all ingredients together and enjoy.

 

What dose a beekeeper do on a 80 degree March day

Can you believe how warm this March has been.  So, when it reached 81 degrees here in Chicago, I took the time to do a full inspection of all my hives.  Right now, I only have 7 hives in my back yard which really doesn't bother most of the neighbors, but those 7 hives can take anywhere from 20 to 40 min. depending on how detail you want to go.  Since, this will be the first inspection of the year I will need to go deep into the hive, and make sure the queen is alive and well, check the brood pattern, check to see how much pollen they are bringing in, and lastly do a reversal on the hive body.

Making sure the queen is alive, checking brood, and pollen are all done at the same time.  Even with the weather being so nice, I was amazed to see that my bees are doing so well for this time of year.  Upon opening up the hive I noticed that their was a lot of pollen and brood, plus some nectar that was being cured into honey.  I found all the queens in their respective hive, they all seemed like they where doing well and laying eggs. 

   

As you can see from the above picture the bees have a nice tight brood pattern in the center of the the frame.  When you move out from the capped brood you will noticed what looks to be open cells, but I can tell you they where full of nectar.  If you move out from there you'll notice the capped honey that was probably left over from last fall.

       
This first spring inspection went really well as I closed up the hive, I thanked God that it was such a mild winter here in Chicago.  Since it was so mild, I didn't end up losing all my hives like the previous winter.  Unfortunately I did lose two hives and have one that is weak, but should make it well into summer.


 

 

The question I am always asked... Why?

I started beekeeping back in 2008, while I was still attending the University of Illinois at Chicago. It really started out as a joke, you see my wife has an insect phobia and I just wanted to mess with her. So after she called my bluff I was forced to buy a book called "Beekeeping for Dummies", which is a good starter book but doesn't go into enough detail, so that you can be truly successful at beekeeping. It worked for a few weeks, but once again she tried to call my bluff, which turned out to be a big mistake on her part since I don't like to lose and will go to any lengths. Unfortunately by the time I had made up my mind to start beekeeping it was late July, and impossible to get bees. Plus if I had been able to find some bees they wouldn't have survived the winter since they couldn't get their numbers up fast enough.

So in the spring of 2009, I was able to purchase one 3 lbs. package of Carniolan bees, which I figured would suit me best since I live in the city of Chicago. That first year was a blast. Now I did make some mistakes, but the bees survived the winter and I acquired two more hives. After working and watching the bees I decided that this would a great business opportunity. After that Chicago Sweet Stuff was born.