Jesse Glessner

S Windlass wrote:Calendula tincture, diluted with clean water, 1:20 (one drop of tincture to 20 drops of water)
Store it in a jar with a lid and dip in a cotton ball to apply it to any skin wound - abrasion, cut, etc.
This stuff is simple and amazing.

I tried growing Calendula last year with not much luck. I did get flowers but not like all of the catalogs show.
I did buy more seed and will try again this year and grow in different spots in the garden to see what happens.
IF I can get some nice healthy flowering I will try the tincture.

All of you seem to go to an extraordinary effort to get the job done. I just pull out a bandaid, slather some honey on it, and stick it on the wound. It is amazing how quickly a wound will heal with that.

And, YES, I also use other things besides honey. It depends on how big and bad the wound is.

John C Daley wrote:I use cloth hankies all the time.
I am annoyed when I see people using the others because I just see trees being cut down for single use items.

I always carry a cloth handkerchief in a back pocket, however, I use the half-sheet paper kitchen towels. I usually wind up using at least three of those almost every morning when my sinuses drain. And I fold several of those up and stick in a jacket pocket or pants pocket when I go shopping where one gets a LOT of different smells going through different stores.

What would we ever do without the trees to make those?!

Mike Barkley wrote:

On top of the frames themselves there will be another layer of tight fitting boards.

I advise caution with that. The moisture from winter condensation needs to be able to escape or it can will kill bees.

Yes, do watch that! On the Layens hives the frames fit together without boards being on top. But we also use a "pillow" of a blanket of some sort on top of the frames. However, there is also a 3/4" plywood panel that has pushpins in one side. That side is at the bottom next to the last frame of honey left for the bees when preparing for winter. SO, there is a huge hollow space where the bees can still get into but I've never seen that. And there is still good air-flow inside the hive with the "pillow" catching any condensation plus covering any cracks between the frames.

Ahmet Oguz Akyuz wrote:Hi there! I have two Layen's style beehives, which I built mostly by following the instructions at https://horizontalhive.com/. This was the second winter for one of the hives, and it was the first one for the other. At the end of October, I thought I was winterizing my hives by putting several layers of fabric on top of the frames including clean undershirts and towels. In one of the hives, I even put a small cushion. All of these materials were placed above the frames and underneath the lid. The lid has two side ventilations and the hive has a screened hole at the bottom to allow airflow. After collecting the honey and making sure to leave the bees a generous amount, I removed the empty frames and put an insulation board to tuck the bees in to one side of the hive (to the side where the entrance is). Finally, I reduced the size of the size of the entrance slit to prevent unnecessary heat loss.
Oguz

Did you insulate the hive with wool or 2" thick poly foam insulation board during the build? With wool is how the purchased hives come. Even with that, with my Layens hive, I put 3/4" thick foam board up around the sides and on top. What caused the wetness is the heat rising, concensing on the metal top, and then dropping back down on the frames area. I had an old fuzzy light weight blanket that I folded into 4 layers and laid that on the top of the frames. I always leave 10 frames of honey for the bees and install the divider board, leaving the empty frames out of the hive. This allows the bees to produce the heat needed to keep them through the winter, yet allows the larger hollow to be colder. That has kept my bees through 3 winters!

Do you know that towards the end of Fall that the Queen produces some larger, stronger bees to last through the 3 months or so of winter? Then in early Spring their eggs produce normal sized bees again? ALSO, people say NOT to feed the bees sugar water in Spring, however, I see bees flying around looking for food before trees and other growths have food available for the bees. I give the bees a boost by feeding through 2 or 3 sacks of sugar water. I use a 4 lb sack of sugar, 9 cups of water, and heated only to 120 degrees F, let cool down and then pour that into a 5 gallon bucket tilted to a 45 degree angle with winter dried stems of lilies as floats for the bees to land on and consume the sugar water. It works great! But, as I say, it only goes through 2 or 3 fills of the mixture and then it is done for the Spring.

I did lose an entire Langstroth hive this past Fall through much of my own fault. I couldn't get out enough to see what was happening due to a hip replacement. The bees left and others raided the hive - completely! SO, I'm finished with the Langstroths hives any way and will have a second Layens hive this year.

Sorry about your loss! I too lost all of my first years' bees in the Langstroth as I did not have a blanket inserted at the top to catch the moisture and my bees froze. Later years I had a blanket and no problems with that. This past year I think the whole hive just disappeared.

Good Luck this year! Happy BeeKeeping!

Carla Burke wrote:Great video!! I subscribed to her channel, after watching it, and perusing her other videos. Just wow!

And YES, thanks for whomever shared this video.  This is a hoot!!! :-) I also subscribed to watch another of her videos when I need a good chuckle!
I could ALMOST live with some wacky person like her - and maybe even give the person a key to my Man Cave Shop to play with my mechanical toys.

M Ljin wrote:I have eaten Dioscorea polystachya aerial tubers, which are a different species but same genus—they taste like tuber-bulrush! (Which in turn tastes like yam) Or similar to the white part of cattail shoots. And starchy of course.

I'm going to try "air growing" just normal potatoes the "Amish Way" this year. I already have the 2 five gallon buckets (no soil) and the PVC to set up with drip sprayers. The potato sits in a basket on top (in a basket in a hole in the lid) with the roots growing in the bucket, being kept damp/wet with the drip irrigation nipples plugged into the PVC tubing.
I do at least ONE crazy experiment each year and this is it for 2026!
I do have another one, not quite so crazy, growing tomato plants up a rope hanging from an arbor.

IF you have eaten the Sweet Potato / Marshmellow dish at Thanksgiving Dinners you probably are NOT really a Sweet Potato aficionado, BUT try the following and you actually may like this style of cooked Sweet Potato.

Sweet Potatoes Made Edible!  Buy a medium sized Sweet Potato, clean it good with a scrub brush, put it in a microwavable dish covered with a wet paper towel (not dripping wet, wrung out). Set the MW on high for from 5 to 7 minutes. Pull out of the MW and uncover. Cut in half length wise and add a little butter on top. No need to re-dish this. Just eat it out of the thick skin from the MW dish. CAREFUL, it will be hot. You may have to let it rest for a couple of minutes.

Jorja Hernandez wrote:

Cj Verde wrote:

Jorja Hernandez wrote:
Is it necessary to harvest the honey at all?  

I think the issue is that if you don't harvest the honey, the bees run out of space to make more bees and if that happens the bees will swarm.

Ah! Yes, that makes sense. Thanks! I can't imagine honey is too hard to get rid of seeing as how I'm the only person I know who hates the taste, LOL.

Messages above condensed to save space.

BeeKeeping has changed radically just since I started keeping bees about five years ago!
I started keeping bees in one Langstroth (vertical) hive, losing the first years' worth of bees and honey to cold weather problems. Also in the third had great success and at the age of 76 years I was harvesting honey from the Supers - 60 lb Supers at 5 1/2 feet, lifting it down to my garden cart. I just thought to myself that something better needed to be investigated. I did my research and found  "horizontalhive.com" , went to a 2 Day seminar in Missouri plus a day to drive out and a day back.
Just a quick caveat! I do not receive any compensation from any source for writing about hives.

It was worth every penny I spent on the trip, including the price of the horizontal hive and swarm trap horizontalhive and swarm trap that I bought and shoved in the back of my vehicle. It really opened up the world of beekeeping and honey returns for me. The frames are LARGE and do NOT fit the the standard Langstroth associated Extractors. The frames, when full will weigh up to 10 lbs each, much easier to handle, and the hive opens up to expose not bees, but the tops of the frames. Also, the bees are much calmer than in the Langstroth hive I kept using.

The old Langstroth though was in poor condition. I'll be asking around to see if anyone wants it for a startup hive. But, I will be making another horizontal hive using plans from the  "horizontalhive.com" website. Be careful if you are interested enough to go to the site and look at the plans. They have TWO sets, one set for the Layens Frame sizes and another set that uses the existing Langstroth LARGE frames.  The Layens frames are even larger than the Langstroth frames. I did buy the Extractor and I will build a new hive based on the Layens frames. The Extractor will take 3 Layens Frames or 6 Langstroth frames in one fillup.

These horizontal hives have double walls with 2 inches of insulation between the plywood walls. Even with that I still hang some 3/4" blue compressed foam on top and around the 4 sides of my hive. I've had NO problems with cold weather yet.

In the group of BeeKeepers that I'm associating with several of the members have started using the horizontal hives as well because most of them are getting up in age as well.

SO, are you interested in BeeKeeping? Learn as much as you can BEFORE you start! It is a bit expensive to start as you need the beehive, the frames, the standard equipment, and a good, well fitting bee suit. I've found the white welding gloves at Harbor Freight are a great substitute for the heavy, thick leather gloves offered on BK supply sites. You can build your own hive from the plans or have someone build it for you. But it would be very handy to have whatever size of FRAMES you're going to use handy for whomever builds your hive. AND, you can buy your hives from the  "horizontalhive.com" web site and have them shipped. (A not on shipping rates! It cost me $37 to send two pounds of honey to my daughter in Texas from where I live in East Central Indiana. BEWARE OF THE SHIPPING COSTS!).  You could always attend a seminar and take a hive home with you. OR you could order a hive on-line and make the drive to pick it up.

This past fall I lost all bees and all honey in my Langstroth hive! I had hip replacement surgery and could not get out to take care of the hive. But my horizontal hive rendered 37 pounds of great honey, with a nephew helping with the extraction. And even with the 10 frames that honey came from, I still left 10 frames in the hive for overwintering.

GET INVOLVED! JOIN YOUR LOCAL BEEKEEPERS MEETINGS! READ EVERYTHING YOU CAN ABOUT BEES! CHECK OUT WHAT IS ONLINE ABOUT BEES! CHECKOUT THE NECESSITIES AND KNOW PRICING BEFORE YOU BEGIN! HAVE A HEARTY TABLESPOON FULL OF HONEY EVERYDAY! AND DON'T TELL YOUR NEIGHBORS ABOUT KEEPING BEES OR THEY WILL BE ASKING FOR HONEY TOO!
ENJOY LIFE!!!

Bryant RedHawk wrote:  I am glad you like these threads, it means that I am reaching the audience that will gain the most benefit (if you have MS Word or another write program, use your copy/paste features and build the book, all of this information is given free to you here. Redhawk

I've read a few of your articles here in "permies" but just never got around to doing much of anything other than just a couple of items. I did insert some purchased charcoal into my "raised beds" (concrete blocks) and haven't noticed any extra growth. I also built four compost piles and haven't spread that out either. And I did add some antennas on 10 PVC pipe and down through my garden beds only at about 5-6" deep. In a couple of places those did seem to work to benefit some of the plants.

SO, what would be best for distributing my compost out onto the garden? Just mix up the 4-5 year old stuff with whatever sifts through my fork and maybe put a shovel full or two around my fruit trees and the rest at maybe three foot intervals down through the garden beds. Would a half-shovel full of compost at that distance be enough to have the benefits of that addition spread through my 15 ft long beds by Summer time? OR will it take years to spread out to the full bed length and width?

The past 3 years it just seems that the only things that grew well in my garden were Tomato plants and Elderberry bushes. This year even the tomatoes seemed not to do so well, but I did get those out late!

Kevin Olson wrote:

Carla Burke wrote:
Yup, and if it's too big and bulky, you are likely to jettison it to make room for paying freight, and then not have it in an emergency when you really need it.  Better something that can slide behind or under the bench seat of a standard cab truck, into the trunk of the family sedan, etc. /quote]

Even in the home one could still cook IF they have a campstove and fuel for that. A good way to do that is to cut out a large rectangle from a 3/4" piece of plywood that will fit fully over the burners of your regular stove. Round the edges so you get NO splinters. Set the board on top of your cook stove and then add the Camp Stove. This gives you a large, flat, stable work area to help prep and cook meals inside your house! BEWARE!! LIKE ANY OTHER OPEN FLAME STOVE YOU'RE GOING TO LOSE OXYGEN. MAKE SURE YOU MONITOR THIS SETUP VERY CAREFULLY. EXTINGUISH THE FLAMES AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. YOU MIGHT EVEN HAVE TO OPEN A WINDOW FOR A SLIGHT BREEZE AND FRESH AIR!