Strumelia's Blog

First Honey Harvest!

2011-10-11T14:13:00.004-04:00

My first small honey harvest at "Wayward Girl Apiaries"...lol!...
One afternoon last week I put a triangle bee escape in place under the one half-empty medium honey super that I had on my biggest hive since mid summer (after they successfully re-queened themselves from eggs). The nights are dipping into the 30's and 40'sF now on and off, so I figured I needed to pull that super off and be done with it before super cold weather sets in here. A day and a half later I took off the super and brought it into the garage, where I shooed about 5 straggler bees out before bringing it into my kitchen.
Those triangle escapes work quite nicely! They are like a maze where the bees can leave the honey super but they can't find their way back in, or at least they can't figure it out for a day or two. No need for those stinky chemical bee repellents to clear the bees out of honey supers. Low tech rules.

The 10 frame medium super had been foundationless, with popsicle stick guides. I hadn't really expected the bees to build it all out from nothing in mid summer, but they did complete a few frames and started a few others. I had 4 frames that were mostly all capped honey on both sides, and two more frames that had about half their areas capped....so a total of about 5 frames of mostly capped honey, a little bit empty around the frame edges where the comb floats free.

I picked off only about 6 dead bees- there was no brood in the comb either (I had placed a queen excluder after they started capping honey several weeks ago)- nice clean new honeycomb! I would have made some jars of chunk honey IF I had had a bunch more, but I wanted as much liquid honey for my tea this winter as I could get. With a knife, I cut the slabs of capped comb into a big bowl. Then I used my hands to squeeze and break up all the comb into a mush...that was fun! I think being careful about squishing every little chunk of comb up yields the most honey in the end. This is the 'crush and strain' method of honey harvesting, for people who haven't bought a frame-spinning extractor machine yet.

I had bought a 5 gallon double stacking bucket setup for straining and draining honey, with a fine strainer net and sieve and a honey gate spigot. I didn't really have enough honey to justify using the big bucket set this time, but I wanted to test it all out anyway so I'd be an old hand next year when I (hopefully) get a good Spring harvest.
The bucket strainer setup was very nice and convenient. After thoroughly squishing the comb and honey with my hands into a mash about the consistency of thick apple sauce, I used a rubber baking spatula and scraped every last bit into the net mesh in the top bucket. Right away it began to drip into the bottom bucket, which was gratifying!
I sat the bucket stack on a table in the sunny windowsill to make it as warm as possible. I let it continue to drip through the sieve-net for 48 hours. During the day the sun warmed the draining buckets by the window, and at night I threw a tablecloth over it and the nearby lamp to keep the whole thing flowing, since our house is about 65F at night now. Honey flows better when it's not cool. The lamp kept the buckets at about 75-80F. You never want to actually heat honey, which destroys some of its health benefits... but a nice warm room temperature keeps things flowing and draining nicely.
I set the empty messy honey super outside, and the bees have been happily cleaning it up for me- they remove every speck of honey and leave only the carefully cleaned comb for me to then store in the basement til Spring.

After two days dripping from the netting bag, it looked like I had about a GALLON of pure honey in the lower bucket- way more than I thought I would get!
I used the spigot to fill various clean jars I had been saving. Honey can be stored just as is in clean jars- no need to 'can' it or process it. Pure honey honey doesn't spoil. Sort of a hodge-podge of jar sizes and shapes, but no matter- the honey tastes WONDERFUL!!! Very potent 'honey' taste, nothing like sugar syrup for sure. I can't detect any distinctive floral notes, but it was made during a time when the Japanese Knotweed and goldenrod were in full bloom around my neighborhood. It does look to me as though we got just about a gallon of honey all told.

After cleaning the buckets and bottling area of the kitchen, I placed the leftover grapefruit-sized clump of wax crumble-goo into a doubleboiler saucepan, with about a cup of water. It was quite gooey, but you couldn't really squeeze any honey out of it anymore. I gently heated it in the double boiler til the whole thing was liquid. I stirred and scooped a little strainer through it to remove the brownish globs of pollen residues that had been in some of the comb cells. As soon as it cooled, a beautiful bright yellow disc of pure beeswax formed and floated on top of the now dark honey-water. The two layers were perfectly separated. When cool, I merely lifted the hard wax disc off the top and you can see how lovely it is- enough to make about three votive candles I'm guessing! I think I'll order some wicks, I'll need them next year anyway. Once I took off the beeswax, I put a cookie tin out in the vegetable garden and poured the leftover honey-water in it for the bees to drink- They can evaporate and recycle it into honey for their own winter use. Before I had even finished pouring it into the cookie sheet, two girls were already at the edge of the pan, drinking! I lay some pine branches in the liquid to give the bees places to crawl out and not drown. Nothing went to waste.

I love knowing that there have been no chemicals at all added to the hive or treated on my bees. I can't control the things my bees may get into out in the surrounding neighborhood, but this honey is from completely untreated bees foraging food all on their own, and that means a lot to me. We live in a small rural village surrounded by many farms, fields and hills of wild flowers, forests, etc. Plenty of bee forage of all kinds here.

If you click on a picture it was enlarge.

In my 3 seasons of keeping bees, I think probably the most profound thing I have learned is this:

A beehive is not a permanent thing. Colonies survive and die, all workers die within 8 weeks and are replaced by an entirely new population of bees, queens get replaced or swarm off... your boxes may stay there appearing unchanged, but in reality the bee colony inside is a work in progress that is constantly evolving and changing, with or without your actions. So have fun with your boxes of insects and learn cool stuff by creating and un-creating new colonies!
Think of all your colonies with less than 10 frames as 'experimental temporary holding boxes'- they can be viewed as not actual hives. Call your nucs 'comb producing boxes' or 'brood booster boxes'. That way, you can keep claiming you only have 3 hives in your backyard and you can have fun with various other 'experimental colonies' piled here and there. ;D Then in the Fall some will have faded out and the healthiest ones can be consolidated or just disassembled if you choose and used to boost your REAL hives for the winter. Or bundle them up against the wind and see if any survive the winter. If you go into winter with a couple of extra cards up your sleeve, you are more likely to have survivors in the Spring to work from. This is the most valuable thing I have learned so far.

My bees in September

2011-09-25T17:57:00.001-04:00

Here are 4 of my 5 honeybee colonies in late September on a nice sunny day. I also have one more large hive down the road not shown here.
These are two full sized hives and two 5-frame nucs (baby hives). I am hoping to bundle the two little nucs together and attempt to overwinter them.
It was quite a busy day for them, all in a mad rush bringing in nectar and pollen. Our area is in the midst of goldenrod bloom right now.

Spicy Dill Pickles with Peppers and Garlic

2011-07-22T16:28:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I made my second batch of pickles for the year. I'm getting a lot of pickling cucumbers from the garden right now. This time I added some garlic cloves, spices, and pepper strips to each jar, including a sliced whole small hot green pepper. I wound up with a total of 27 quarts' worth, and it took most of the day. I haven't tasted them yet, but they look pretty good. Sheba (aka "Boo-Boo") investigated the jars before I stored them away. (click pictures to enlarge)

More red cabbage salad

2011-07-17T19:56:00.000-04:00

We ate up the first batch of cole slaw pretty quickly.

With the other half of the giant red cabbage from the garden, I made a sort of Mexican style vinaigrette slaw and added black beans, corn, cilantro, red peppers, onions (including their scallion tops), and chipotle sauce.

Red Cole Slaw and first Green Beans

2011-07-15T15:29:00.003-04:00

I cut the largest head of red cabbage from my vegetable garden and made cole slaw. Also from the garden I added to it shredded carrot, chopped kale, and red onion. A touch of chopped store bought yellow pepper added some pretty yellow color. I made the slaw dressing with mayo, yogurt, mustard, lemon juice, vinegar, salt, black pepper, celery seed, and dill.
That head of cabbage was about the size of a volleyball, and only half of it made a BIG bowl of cole slaw. Now I'll have to decide what to do with the other half. Then there are three more cabbages growing... but happily they are maturing a various rates so I'll be able to harvest them over the next month or so.

I also picked the first batch of tender green beans. We'll have them steamed and buttered, alongside wild rice for dinner tonight...
The Vidalia, red, and white onions will need to be pulled and dried for storage soon- their tops are flopping over, but are still green. When the tops begin to turn yellow the onions have stopped growing and should be harvested.
(click photos to enlarge)

Dill Pickles

2011-07-11T15:51:00.002-04:00

Today i made my first batch of pickles for the year- dill spears. I picked a whole sinkful of pickling cukes and they made about 14 quarts' worth of dill pickle spears. Used up the 12 quart jars I had pretty quickly, and some extra pint jars too.

Brian likes dill spears, I prefer sweet pickles, so next I'll make a batch of sweet chunk pickles for me. After that, I will need to make some cole slaw from the big heads of red cabbage growing in the garden.

My cucumber vines look like they'll be giving me 2 or 3 more batches for pickles equal in size to this one, so I'll need to buy more quart jars and a couple more gallons of vinegar. My bees are doing a great job pollinating the cucumber blossoms- they are buzzing all over them all day long.

A new Queen

2011-07-05T13:35:00.002-04:00

I managed to get a couple of quick pictures of the new queen honeybee whom I've named "Calico". She came from a queen cell that I swiped from my Old Queen's hive to a new small 5-frame hive 'nuc' with. She emerged in her new nuc, took her mating flight last month, and has been laying wonderfully. I've been taking out frames of her eggs to give to my other hives now, for them to make new queens from as well. She seems like a winner, and it was hard to get a photo of her because she kept running so fast to the other side of the frame I was holding up for the photo- she was trying to get away from the bright sun. She's quite a golden beauty!

(click on the photos and you'll see them bigger)

kitties in the sun...

2011-05-25T16:54:00.001-04:00

The Old Queen, and a New Queen cell...

2011-05-16T16:11:00.002-04:00

I split my main 2nd year beehive four days ago. I took out the queen and put her in a new hive along with several frames of brood, bees, and honey. I left the main hive where it was to let them raise their own new queen from eggs.

Today, four days later, I checked in to see how both halves were doing...

In the new hive with the old queen, I located her, looking healthy and regal on a frame of capped worker brood. In the second photo, note how the other bees surround her attentively, like Ladies in Waiting!

There was plenty of healthy looking capped brood on the frames in the old queen's new hive...

Here is a short video I took of the queen while i had my camera in hand. Once in a while I point to the queen with my gloved finger so as not to lose sight of her amongst all the other bees:

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Next... I closed up that hive and then looked for newly made queen cells in the now queenless original hive. See the one large queen cell at the top of the hive frame here:

Here you can see the queen cell. You can just see the butt end of a worker bee inside it, attending to the young queen larvae. Nearby you can see a few cells with regular worker larvae in them- the white larvae curled up in the bottoms of the brood cells.

If you look carefully inside the queen cell, you can see a large soft white larvae curled up in a "C" shape inside the queen cell, bathed in royal jelly. In a few more days the cell will be closed up and the new queen will finish her pupae stage for another few days and then emerge as a new virgin queen, ready to take her mating flight.

New hives for Spring

2011-05-06T22:39:00.003-04:00

Today my bee buddy Peter and I got our two new Spring honeybee colonies in the mail. We installed the bees in two new hives at Peter's house, side by side. Mine is the green hive, Peter's is the brown hive.
Everything seemed to go well, both queens look healthy, and we'll be checking in on the hives several times over the next few days as they get established.
I still have my other hive at my house, which I hope to split into two hives in another week or two when drones are flying and the colony looks strong.
Peter and I had fun installing the new bees, and we didn't even get stung!

Little horn-faced bees mating!

2011-04-26T19:19:00.011-04:00

Last winter I ordered a few cocoons of the little 1/4" long solitary 'Horn Faced' mason bee, (Osmia cornifrons) from Dave at Crownbees.com. Along with my two other species of solitary mason bees cocoons from last summer, I kept them cold all winter and only a few days ago I put them out to emerge as new adults, ready to immediately mate and start pollinating and nesting. (see my other posts about my mason/solitary bee nesting houses)
The weather has finally warmed up and dandelions are blooming at last! All my little mason bees have begun emerging from their cocoons. The males usually emerge first, and hang around the nest boxes waiting to pounce on the females when they hatch out of the cocoon tubes. Today was my birthday, and it was also the birth day of many of the little solitary bees in the nesting boxes on my kitchen porch.

I was lucky enough to get some good photos today of one pair of my new tiny horn faced bees mating! The female has two small 'horns' jutting straight out from her face, she uses them to pack mud into the nesting cavities, thus making an individual chamber for each egg she lays.

Here are two pictures of the amorous couple, the smaller male positioned on top. Click on the pictures and you'll see nice big close ups:

I watched as the male performed some strange moves repeatedly. First he would hike his abdomen very high in the air...

Then he swung it back down and curled it tightly into a very hunched position...

He repeated these odd up/down 'hand stand curls' many times while holding the female still. I couldn't see that he was even making any sexual connection during all this, but I suppose he must have been taking care of business somehow- lol! After a while they stayed still for a while as in the first photo. Then the male unceremoniously flew off. A 'one night stand'. I watched to see what the female would do next...

Right after the male flew away, the female dragged her behind and squirted out this cream colored droplet and walked forward a few steps. She cleaned her face for a moment, then flew off too. This droplet reminded me of watching bees poop, but the mason bee poo I have observed is gray, while honeybee poo is orange-brown. The mason bees poop immediately upon emerging from their cocoon before they go anywhere, and this female had probably already done that before mating.

This was a thinner liquid, and almost white. At any rate, she seemed satisfied with her birthday's chain of events and went on her way. See her little face horns? She also has shorter antennae than the smaller male. She's off to find food, pollinate flowers, and starting nesting!

Birthday chocolate mousse cake

2011-04-26T18:27:00.009-04:00

Today was my 57th birthday. I was taken out for a lovely breakfast by my wonderful Brian. Afterwards, I worked a couple hours at the food pantry, then came home and did some gardening- the weather was perfect!

Our friend Madeline DeLosh, pastry chef extraordinaire, came to visit and brought the most beautiful and mouth watering chocolate mousse cake that she made for me. Here are pictures, before Brian and I devoured half of it. Look at the oval white chocolate plaque with her delicate writing in chocolate! I have no idea how she managed to make the magically striped sponge cake around the bottom. Click on the pictures to see them enlarged...

HERE is Madeline's website in case you want to order some of her masterpieces for yourself! We consider ourselves very lucky to have Madeline and Eddie in our small town community.

April Spring hive bringing in pollen

2011-04-11T20:12:00.003-04:00

Took a little video of my active hive today. i painted all my hive components a nice soft dark spruce green. The bees have only been finding pollen over the past few days. (The hive on the left has no bees right now- just storing some honey frames in it.)

Ladybug on the window

2011-04-03T14:09:00.003-04:00

Suki and Sheba in my office.
Then Sheba spies a ladybug on the window glass...
(click on photos to enlarge)

Breakfast at Ralph's Cafe

2011-03-05T12:16:00.000-05:00

A mighty good breakfast in our little town, at Ralph's Pretty Good Cafe...

Sheba

2011-02-24T21:10:00.001-05:00

Sheba...our very own Egyptian Goddess...

Sheba's learning to fetch

2011-02-17T14:19:00.002-05:00

February 2011

2011-02-06T18:52:00.002-05:00

It's been a cold snowy winter so far. My two beehives went into this winter in good shape, lots of bees and lots of stored honey. But now it's looking like I may have lost one of them, but I can't be absolutely sure until close to Spring when temps get back to 50F in the daytime. Seems to be plenty of healthy activity from the hive on the right though, on the rare sunny days we've had. Nothing much else to do but wait and see. I'm glad now that I had ordered one new colony for this Spring, just in case I had a loss. Seems lots of folks are experiencing rather heavy hive losses this winter so far.

UPDATE: Feb. 14th Valentine's day-

This video shows the first winter day to hit up to fifty degrees F and sunny.
It shows that the hive I suspected had died is indeed dead, but the other hive is very active and seems quite strong and healthy. Only another two months or so of winter to go- hope they make it! They sure enjoyed the warm day today- everyone was able to go on 'cleansing flights' to relieve themselves!

Cats

2011-01-26T16:13:00.004-05:00

Sadly we had to say goodbye to our beautiful kitty Pearl last month. Pearl was such a sparkling light in our lives, and we loved her dearly.

We'll miss our gorgeous sweet Pearl:

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Shortly after Pearl passed away, we adopted a new homeless kitty from the local animal shelter. We've named her Sheba, and she is quite a beauty. She looks a little ocelot-like, with unusual markings. She's still only about 7 months old, so she is quite a feisty kittenish girl. Our other cat Suki has been very patient with this new impudent upstart.

Sheba:

Rosemary Garlic jelly

2011-01-26T15:50:00.000-05:00

It's January...long past the season for making fruit jams and pickles, but it was easy enough to make some garlic rosemary jelly this week. All you need is fresh rosemary and fresh garlic bulbs, vinegar, sugar, and pectin. I love this jelly alongside any kind of roast chicken, pork, or lamb. The hardest work is peeling all the garlic cloves (about 6 large heads' worth per dozen 8oz. jars of jelly), but it's worth it. The house smells really good when making this jelly. I wound up making about 22 half pints from 12 large heads of garlic and a bouquet of fresh rosemary sprigs. That's enough for over a year of eating plus a few gift jars.

November beehives

2010-11-17T22:57:00.003-05:00

One of the last sunny days above 40F degrees, and the bees are busily doing their last minute winter preparations. The metal mouseguards are tacked in place on the lower entrances, to keep mice from trying to nest in the nice cozy hive during the winter. Soon I will wrap a single layer of roofing paper around the sides of the hives to provide a little extra protection from winter winds.
A quick view of the dwindling chilly vegetable garden too, with some frost hardy spinach, kale, scallions, chard, and bok choy. Only the hardy growing things remain, and the trees are now mostly bare.

End of year solitary bee nests

2010-11-09T14:17:00.006-05:00

Well it's November now, cold enough to take down my solitary and mason bee nesting blocks and store them in the unheated garage for the winter. There they will be protected from ice, freezing rain, winds, and mice.

My top wooden mason bee nesting block has about 10 tubes that are either partially or completely filled with cocoons and capped with mud...

The middle nesting site consists of two 'cans' of nesting tubes. As you can see, the bees really liked the lower can and filled almost all the 60 tubes with cocoons and mud. They used a few of the tubes in the upper can too, but only after the lower can was basically full. My best guess is that because the morning sun hits the lower can first in the chilly Spring mornings, the bees may have liked that warmth...

The bottom wooden block was specially made with smaller diameter tubes of 1/4"- I was experimenting to see if that would attract the smaller leafcutter bees, which I have read like slightly smaller tubes than the blue orchard bees use. I didn't see much action there this year, but I did put the box up a little late in the season.
However, late in the summer there was one single very small bee who kept coming and going there, and it managed to fill just ONE tube before it disappeared. I noticed the tube was not capped with the usual brown mud. Instead, it was capped by a strange dark black-green mash that seemed like dark green tar. It looked to be a paste made from chewed leaves or vegetation. Because it didn't appear to use any neatly cut leaf pieces, but used a paste instead, I am wondering if it is something different from a leafcutter bee.
I'll be asking around to try to figure out what kind of bee uses this capping. The bee itself was a bit hard to see when it was working- somewhat non-descript and very small and fast moving...but it did look appear to be a bee rather than a wasp. I will be watching this tube very carefully next Spring!...click the picture for a close up view:

In all, I started my first Spring of mason/solitary bees with six bought tubes of blue orchard mason bees....and wound up with two or perhaps three species of solitary bee cocoons, filling between 60-70 tubes. I estimate each tube has anywhere between 3 and 5 cocoons in it, so that will be around 180 to 350 new little solitary bees emerging next Spring to populate the neighborhood! :) I will have to add at least one more nesting box, for sure. I may try to get a neighbor or two involved.

Apple sauce, Halloween 2010

2010-11-02T23:31:00.002-04:00

We made apple sauce all day on Halloween this year. We bought a full bushel of Jona Gold apples at a local orchard and set up our kitchen assembly line. Brian peeled and cored the apples on our little hand crank coring machine, and he got each big pot of apples cooking- stirring, adding about 1/2 to one cup of water, and a few dashes of cinammon.

My job was to fill the sterilized pint jars with the finished apple sauce, process the jars in the boiling canning bath for 15 minutes, then give the lids a final tightening and let cool, making sure they sealed properly. I like to hear the little metallic "ping!" of each lid as its vacuum dimple pops in while the jars cool in stacks on the kitchen table. I think of it as little temple bells ringing.
One bushel yielded 38 pints (19 quarts) of really good apple sauce. We figure if we eat an average of one pint per week (and don't give away more than a couple of jars), this will last us into next June, when fresh fruit will again be available locally.

Fiddle and Banjo

2010-10-29T21:50:00.003-04:00

Double Rainbow

2010-10-22T20:07:00.006-04:00

Last month in September after an autumn rainstorm, we saw an incredible, once-in-a-lifetime double rainbow arching completely over the field right behind our back yard. To say it was breathtaking is an understatement. It lasted about 20 minutes. The best part was how it divided the whole sky into dark and light in a strange shimmering way, splitting the entire sky perfectly into dark and light. The hill and trees underneath the rainbow were similarly split between deep shadow and brilliant sun.

My little digital camera could not capture the vast spread of it across the sky, so I had to take photos of the left side, right side, and middle, and then piece the parts by hand into a composite panorama, the result of which you see here. We'll never see anything like this again. Click on the photo to enlarge it to full size.

A friend of mine who was down the hill right in the village on Main Street at the time, told me a crowd of people came out of the local restaurant and marveled at the rainbow in a crowd on the street. My friend's companion commented that it looked like it was directly over our house, and indeed that's how it seemed to us as well! It was magical.

The virtuous radish

2010-09-29T11:41:00.007-04:00

French Breakfast radishes alongside their cooked green tops

Now that the heat of summer is over and the cool Fall nights have begun, it's time to plant new seed of cool-loving vegetables and greens. These are many of the same veggies that thrived in cool Spring.
About 3 weeks ago I began planting new little rows of spinach, carrot, bok choy, radishes, beets, and new baby kale and swiss chard. I also have been trying out new types of seeds for various Asian greens to see what they do.

My favorite radish is the long French Breakfast radish.
The trick to radishes, since they grow so quickly in cool weather, is to plant a new row of seed about once a week, with only about 15 seeds in the row, one inch or so apart. This provides a steady source of fresh young crispy radishes, rather than having too many radishes ready to harvest at once, or worse yet getting older and fibrous in the ground while waiting too long to be picked. Treat your seeds like the precious treasures they are, and space them out carefully in succession for the best freshest supply of delicacies.

When radishes are still young and fresh, their green tops can be cooked quickly in a very small amount of water and eaten like spinach. Incredibly nutritious! The slightly furry-prickly leaves quickly soften and shrink in volume by about two thirds when cooked, just like spinach does. I like to cook a whole large bowlful in about 1/2 cup of water, add a small pat of butter and a little sea salt at the end, and consume the nutritious broth right along with the radish greens.

From the garden

2010-09-21T17:36:00.006-04:00

Today I picked a big bowl each of carrots, cherry tomatoes, and string beans from our vegetable garden.
This is about the fourth bowl of green beans and the second batch of carrots we've gotten from the very small patches I sowed- each only about one square yard's worth of garden space.
We've had lots of cherry tomatoes for several weeks now, but tomatoes are winding down. The single large tomato in the photo is our last of the large tomatoes- we've had a drought and the tomato vines are giving up the ghost.
The carrot variety is "Royal Chatenay", a short fat carrot. I like the shorter carrots since I don't have to dig eight or nine inches down to loosen the soil when sowing the seed. Instead, five inches with a garden fork will do them nicely. I probably should have pulled these carrots when they were smaller, but I was busy with other things. Some of the carrots were one and a half inches thick! They taste wonderful anyway, like all fresh grown carrots do.
The green bean is a Blue Lake bush type. I like the bush beans rather than pole beans for my situation- they won't grow in a tall climbing shape that might block the sun from other plants. My protected vegetable garden space is not limitless, so I have to plan carefully.
We'll be having carrots and green beans with mashed potatoes for dinner the next couple of nights.
The large single flower is Tithonia, or Mexican sunflower. A friend gave me three tiny seedlings of it. The plant gets quite big and has large showy bright orange flowers. This stem blew over in the wind and broke so I put the flower in a glass of water.

Crazy Comb

2010-09-16T21:38:00.005-04:00

I put a box with no wax foundations on top of each of my hives a few weeks ago, to see if they would build some straight comb and fill it with honey. When you give bees space with no foundation, you have to keep an eye on them to discourage them from just building wild wavy honeycomb every which way. One frame had a nice straight comb started, but on another frame there was this beautiful 'art comb' begun. The last photo shows how it was oriented when hanging from the frame's top bar. Keep in mind that all the curves on this piece of comb are exactly how it was built by the bees- there was no sagging or bending to create these undulating folds. It's like a delicate coral.
I had to remove it because if it got larger I wouldn't be able to remove frames later on at all. In the wild, bees naturally construct comb shaped like beautiful hanging leaves.
It was a shame to have to cut this comb out, but it's certainly a lovely delicate and mysterious thing to have in the living room to show people. It smells wonderful too, pure beewax.
Hopefully the bees will try drawing some straighter comb next time.

August garden flowers

2010-08-25T20:57:00.005-04:00

The summer garden is winding down, getting ready for the Fall garden again. Tomato and cucumber plants are soon to be exhausted, and I'll be planting new seed for cool-loving radishes and spinach again.

Late summer flowers around the house...

New purple coneflower (Echinacea)

Anise hyssop blooming in the front, nestled with leeks.
String beans at center, and kale to the right.

Beautiful sneezeweed (Helenium, or Helen's flower)
against Russian sage.

A bumblebee enjoying the sneezeweed this morning.

Playing old-time music at the farmers' market

2010-08-13T19:07:00.004-04:00

This was a couple of weeks ago. Some of us friends were playing old-time music at the farmers' market in our little town. We call our farmers' market band "Mixed Greens".
The young man has been my banjo student for the past few years. Now he has moved away and I miss him. Here at the market he sang a rousing version of "Old Joe Clark" and the crowd just loved it.

My bees doing their washboarding thing

2010-07-19T19:54:00.002-04:00

I happened to notice one of my honeybee hives this afternoon having a 'washboard day'...really going to town on it. Washboarding is a bee behavior that is not entirely understood yet. You can see the bees move forward and back rhythmically, shuffling their front feet around on the surface of the hive, usually near the entrance. Perhaps they are merely cleaning the area, or perhaps they are applying some scent or substance and polishing it onto the surface.
I love to watch them do this.

July 5th

2010-07-06T13:48:00.003-04:00

I played my banjo yesterday.

It was about 95F out, hot as blazes. Brian and I went to a friend's house to jump in their pool while they were off on vacation somewhere. Nothing like swimming in someone else's pool. After cooling off we played some fiddle tunes in the cool basement kitchen there with a guitar playing friend, and ate the salad I picked fresh from our vegetable garden just two hours before, topped with slivers of purple kohlrabi and neon orange nasturtium blossoms reminiscent of fireworks. Went home just before dark and my bees were bearding in the heat, hanging in a bee trapezesque glob from the hive, wings frailing in a blur like a million tiny exhaust fans hard at work.

The end of June

2010-06-27T19:38:00.011-04:00

Well it's just about the end of June now, Summer is here. The vegetable garden is bursting full. Here, the bee's borage is stealing the scene at the front of the middle bed, a three foot high constellation of pure twilight colored flowers, looking like blue shooting stars cascading from stems of furry pink...

Hard to believe that this previous photo was from May 13th, a mere six weeks or so ago:
Everything except the tomatoes was grown from seed planted directly in the ground.

Back to today... A view from the far end of the garden. Along the left rear bed are tomatoes, cucumbers, and sunflowers all supported by stakes.

Today after breakfast I spent a couple hours pulling out some patches of lettuce, radish, and spinach that were way past their prime and just beginning to get tough and bitter. Into the compost bin it all went (a giant wheelbarrow packed full), and I hoed up the spaces and planted various new seed. It was rejuvenating in a spiritual sort of way.
Years ago I never could have brought myself to yank all those greens out if any of it was still remotely edible. But I've changed my ways...I'm ruthless now! Of course knowing that it gets composted and thus cycled back in again makes it seem less awful. The reward is the joy I get from planting tiny new seeds with my bare hands...tucking them tenderly into the soil like tiny babies, gently patting a fine coverlet of soil over them.

I have small green tomatoes growing now, sunflower heads forming, tiny 1/2" baby cucumbers on the vines. I am getting to know some of the lettuce varieties better, so I know what I will plant more of next year and which types I won't repeat. Definitely more purple kohlrabi next year!

This was yesterday's dinner...
Adding little fresh chevre or mozzarella is the final touch along with the dressing:

The honeybees continue to expand their population and stores, so I added the first medium honey supers on top of each hive a few days ago. I am for the first time using foundationless frames in the new supers, and hopefully the bees will soon begin to draw all their own comb in the new frames, using just the popsicle stick guides I glued in along the tops as a base to start comb building from. We shall see!

My garden after a misty rain

2010-06-16T21:47:00.007-04:00

I went out into my vegetable garden to take a few photos right after a morning rain. There was a beautiful intensity to the light, and everything was wet and sparkling. Click on any picture to see it bigger.

Purple kohlrabi.

I took a picture of this tiny yellow fly. It wasn't until I looked at the photo close up that I saw that it had pink eyes.

This is the beginning of a sunflower bud.

Variegated nasturtium leaves.

Kale leaves with rain drops.

One of my honeybees on a calendula blossom.

A ghostly dew-covered spiderweb on speckled lettuce.

This beautiful emerald green visitor comes by regularly. I think it is a small bee species, but I'm not quite sure yet.

My borage is starting to bloom. Twilight blue stars covered in diamonds.
I planted borage for the bees, so far it is attracting bumblebees.

'Divina butterhead' lettuce.

'Bull's Blood' beets.

'Quatre Saisons' French lettuce.

A purple finch made a nest right in a hanging basket of lobelia on our kitchen porch.
Sadly, when the eggs were only about a week old the nest was robbed and completely empty, and the mother finch had left. I suspect bluejays.

Checking bee pupae for mites

2010-06-03T20:44:00.012-04:00

Ok some might find this a little gross or even heartless, but it's for the overall good of the bees.

My honeybees came from a 'natural minded' beekeeper who doesn't treat with pesticides for mite control or antibiotics for disease control. They seem pretty healthy and I've had them about six weeks. But one of the biggest problems honeybees face these days is varroa mites. Just about all hives in the U.S. have them now, or else they get them from nearby hives, so it's good to periodically get an idea of just how many mites there are amongst your hive population. Monitoring mite levels can give you a warning when something is going wrong and give you time to correct it in various ways.

To check for my hives' mite load, I first put a frame of specifically sized drone (male bee) foundation in each of my two hives. Varroa mites particularly target the larger drone cells in which to breed, attaching themselves to the drone larvae and pupae, sucking on them while the pupae develops in the capped cell, and emerging already attached to the adult drone bee. The affected drone bee is weakened and sometimes deformed by the mites, and the mite reproductive cycle continues.

Yesterday I removed the two 'mite bait' frames of capped drone brood from my hives, put them in the freezer overnight to quickly kill the larvae and whatever mites might be there, then I thawed the frames today to examine them.
I was delighted to find almost no mites at all on the drone larvae and pupae. I pulled about 30 dead drone pupae from their cells, and among the 30 I found only one lone varroa mite.

In this picture you can see the capped drone brood still on the frame in the background, and on the paper towel a few grub-like drone be larvae, and some immature developing drone bee pupae with darkening eyes. I removed the single little red mite I found on one pupae and placed it on the paper towel to the right in the photo so you could see it. It looks like a shiny little reddish-brown bead with tiny legs.

When these varroa mites run rampant they can destroy a whole hive of bees. But if their population remains modest the bees have little trouble living with them.
My drone pupae examination was very encouraging! I needn't worry about combating mites at the moment. I put the thawed drone frames back in the hives where they had been. The worker bees will quickly clean out the dead pupae, repair the comb, and the queen will lay new drone eggs in it. I will now let the bees raise the next couple of batches of drones in peace. I'll probably check the mite levels again in about 6 weeks.

If there had been a lot of mites, I would start more regularly pulling and freezing those drone frames when they are capped, since that is where the varroa mite concentrates its breeding activity. Some beekeepers use this mite 'bait frame' method to keep mite populations under control instead of using miticide/pesticide applied inside the hive to kill the mites. I would much rather freeze some drone pupae than apply pesticides to my hives. The bees do raise additional drones on the edges of 'regular' brood frames anyway, so there will always be some drones in the hive to mate with nearby queens.
But for now, I can relax... my bees are doing well on their own.

Vegetable garden...June 1, 2010

2010-06-01T13:52:00.013-04:00

A few photos of my vegetable garden on June 1st. (click on any picture to see a larger view) We have been eating an abundance of various lettuces and salad greens. The colors and textures are so beautiful on a cloudy morning...

A general view of the garden. Tomatoes and cucumber vines are staked all along the right side bed.

Borage in the foreground. Bees love the little star-like blue flowers. Veronica is blooming in the background.

Speckled trout back lettuce

Purple kohlrabi

Black seeded Simpson, and Red Deer Tongue in the foreground.

Front to back: Swiss chard, Red deer tongue, Black seeded Simpson, and scallions.

Spinach and cilantro.

French Breakfast radishes.

Pickling cucumbers.

Red deer tongue and Quatre Saisons lettuce.

From top left corner down: Bull's Blood beets, then lettuces romaine Tin-Tin, Speckled Troutback, Red deer tongue, and Quatre Saisons lettuce. (green lettuces on the right are unknown volunteers from last year.)

Nasturtium, worth growing just to look at the leaves.

Rouge Grenoble lettuce.

On the left, Buttercrunch lettuce.

One of my honeybees on the Veronica.

A Tri-colored bumblebee on Veronica blossoms.

Movin' on Up...

2010-05-26T17:26:00.005-04:00

Today I added a second large brood box on top of each of my two hives of honeybees. A few days ago I inspected most of the frames and found my two colonies had almost filled their living quarters in the first deep brood boxes. You don't want your queen to run out of places to lay, and you don't want the bees to become overcrowded, or they will begin to make swarm preparations. That will lead to losing half your bees! So when they become crowded, you either add more brood space or you split your colony into two or more hives.
Most hives in northern cold winter areas need the equivalent of two large brood boxes for overwintering, so today I added the second brood boxes. I shifted a couple of frames between the bottom and top boxes to encourage them to move back and forth between the two boxes.

The hives look so tall now! You can also see the nifty new ventilated inner covers I bought, with screened ventilation holes all around and a dead air space inside. I can use this in the winter with foam insulation as well, which will help ventilation and reduce winter condensation. Those are the chairs I have for sitting and meditating on my bees, also for the braver guests. ;) Click on the pictures for larger versions.
With all the manipulating of frames around today in both hives, I was lucky not to have been stung!

Hives a' hoppin'

2010-05-14T17:44:00.001-04:00

Here are my two new hives, 15 days after installing 5-frame nucs into them.
Things are really busy now! Last weekend I took one frame of brood and nurse bees from the stronger hive ("Aurora", the one on the right) and put it into the slightly weaker hive ("Esperanza", the one one the left), and now the two hives seem to be pretty equal in strength. It worked well!

When it's a warm sunny day the air is thick with buzzing bees. Gives you a healthy respect for 'the power of bee'. They are bringing in pollen like mad, and next week I will go in to see how much comb they have made and check the brood pattern.

Guests and gardens...

2010-05-13T16:23:00.002-04:00

We had guests last weekend- my brother and his girlfriend, Joy.
Joy loves taking pictures and she took these photos of my vegetable garden and the salad we made for dinner.
You can see the garden is really just getting started for the year, but already we've been harvesting enough to make a nice salad from the carefully cut young leaves every other day or so.

This salad was really a wonderful dinner for the four of us one night. It had spinach, leaf lettuce, kale, bok choy, and French breakfast radishes picked fresh from the garden. To that I added some chevre cheese and a cucumber that I bought, and some black pepper. Note the pink hard boiled eggs!- last winter I pickled a whole lot of beets, and when the beets were eaten I saved the pickling brine (which of course had turned intense pink from the beets) and filled jars of the brine with hard boiled eggs and let them pickle slowly in the fridge. The pickled eggs take on the pretty pink color and look a bit like a sunset with the golden yolk.

First big inspection of the new hives

2010-05-11T17:53:00.006-04:00

So today my bees have been in the two hives for 12 days.
I had a few hive chores to do, so I did a full inspection today. Full inspections are not done often or it would disturb the bees too much.

First I removed the sugar syrup baggie feeders and switched the shim and the inner cover in order to remove the extra space over the frame tops while keeping good ventilation going. There seems to be plenty of pollen and bloom so I am quitting the syrup (which is commonly given to brand new hives to give them a little jump start). I have last year's honey still in frames to give them anyway.
The bees love the big upper entrance and I've widened/chiseled the entrance of the inner covers to 2" wide.

Then I checked to see whether they had eaten any of the honey in the frame of old honey I had placed inside on the edges, honey from my hive last year that died over the winter. They hadn't touched it yet, but I left the honey frames in since there were several frames still undrawn for them to expand into, so no harm in it.

Did a thorough inspection of every frame very slowly and carefully. I was determined to move slowly and gently so the bees and I would all stay calm. Both hives are very packed with bees on their original 5 deep frames each of nuc they came on. Both are beginning to build comb on the two neighboring wax foundation frames on either side, but not on the farther out frames yet. I'm fine with that since it's only been 12 days.

I couldn't see any eggs, there were so many solid-packed bees covering the capped brood frames that it was really hard to get a look at what was there under the nurse bees- I did however see white larvae in worker sized cells in both hives! And they looked to be no more than 7 days old, still not that big, so they must have been laid as eggs after the queens were out of their cages. From the timing, couldn't have been laid before the nucs arrived 12 days ago, or they would have been pupae by now.

Best news- I found the queens in both hives! And they looked wonderful...active and large with very long abdomens. One abdomen was reddish brown and the other was a little more golden. So cool!!! It was important to find the queen in the strong hive since I wanted to transfer one frame of brood and nurse bees from there over to the weaker hive. Sure wouldn't want to accidentally transfer the queen!
So I found the queens and was careful to immediately take a brood frame packed with nurse bees that was located far away from the strong hive queen, and while smoking everyone lightly I transferred the brood+nurse frame into a side brood slot in the weaker hive. I put an empty wax foundation frame from the weaker hive in its place in the strong hive (to the side of the brood area). Nobody seemed to make a fuss at all. I really think this one frame switch will help even the hives out and give the weaker hive a needed boost. Now they'll be on their own.

Overall everything looked terrific- active queens, worker larvae, no burr comb, lots of bees covering five deep frames in each hive, and no signs of disease or anything suspicious.

It was a real confidence builder for me. Now I feel good about leaving them alone for a while...they seem to be in good shape. Mission accomplished!

Did I get stung? Had good layers of regular comfy cotton clothes with the pants tucked in, my long beekeeper WalterKelly gloves, and a good veil and that was fine. No one could get to me at all, though the girls stayed pretty calm through the whole long ordeal...I was very gentle and slow.
HOWEVER....before I even got started in my preparations at all, I casually went to see what activity was going on there at the hives (like I've done a million times, just watching them peacefully from a nearby chair) and some nervy girl just nailed me on the back of the neck for no good reason at all! What a nerve!! She got me good...scraped off the stinger. It was very unlike them, they are always so laid back when I go sit by the hives. Maybe they knew I was planning to 'rock their world' later on in the day. lol! Good news is it doesn't seem to be hurting or swelling too much. Thus, sting #2 from my girls. Considering all the fussing- more than one typically would once things are established, I think that's pretty good. ;D

Mason bees laying and nesting...

2010-05-05T15:07:00.002-04:00

Just a little video showing the wonderful progress that has been made in my solitary mason bee nesting houses. 24 tubes filled with brood chambers and sealed up with little mud doors so far! A lovely warm sunny May morning...

The serenity of hummmm....

2010-04-30T22:08:00.002-04:00

We were lucky to have a nice sunny day for my new bees' first complete day in their new hive homes. They spent a lot of time today getting their bearings and flying close around the hives, though some were already busy bringing in pollen. This is a little video just to give an idea of the pleasantness of watching and being around bees. Please excuse the unevenness of the sound volume- I must have blocked the microphone holes with my finger on the camera for a little while.

The new honeybees are hived.

2010-04-29T19:56:00.005-04:00

Today I installed the two 'nuc' colonies of honeybees into their waiting new hives. My friend Cris helped me., and he was not afraid. We weren't sure what kind of mood the bees would be in when we pried open their shipping boxes, so we had the smoker ready and had veils and gloves on just in case the bees were unhappy about having been cooped up in a little box for 2 days.
As it turns out, the bees were unbelievably sweet natured, and our precautions seemed a bit overdone. Neither Cris nor I were stung despite handling thousands of bees on the ten frames that had been shipped to me in the two nucs.
Here we are, installing the frames of bees and brood into my waiting hive boxes along with some new frames as well, to fill the spaces out. Click on each photo to enlarge and see it better. The nucs came with lots of nice looking brood in capped cells, developing into new young bees which emerge over the coming days. The top picture above shows a nice patch of capped worker bee brood being covered and cared for by nurse bees.
We did get to check the two queens which were in their little queen cages and active. Over the next couple of days the worker bees will continue to chew off the little candy 'door' on the queen cages and release the queens each in their own hive. By that time the bees will be familiar with their new queen's scent and will accept her. In a couple of days I will check to see whether the queens have been released from their cages yet.

Me and Cris (on the right) having lots of bee fun. :)

After getting the frames of bees and the queen cages safely situated in the two hives, I made sure they each had a full frame of honey (saved from my old hive) and also some sugar syrup as a tonic for them after their journey of hundreds of miles rumbling down the highway to get to me from down south in Georgia. My thanks to Don Kuchenmeister, the "Fat Bee Man", for shipping such wonderful healthy bees to me!

I named the hives Esperanza (which means Hope) on the left, and Aurora (which means Morning) on the right. They are named after two of Cris' sisters, all of whom seem to have been blessed with lovely names...

The new Honeybees are here!!

2010-04-28T21:40:00.006-04:00

I am SO EXCITED!! My two nuc/colonies of honeybees have arrived, unexpectedly early. It's a good thing I had already gotten everything prepared ahead of time. Each of the two boxes contains five frames full of bees plus a queen in a little cage for her travel protection. Literally thousands of honeybees.

I will be installing them into their brand new hives tomorrow afternoon once the day warms up. Meanwhile, they remain in their travel boxes overnight on my kitchen table....humming quietly and waiting to start their new adventure tomorrow.
Here is a little video I took today to capture the fascinating sight and sound of the boxes full of bees. If you click on it and watch it directly on YouTube, it will be a nicer sized (uncropped) view...

I've got stinging nettle

2010-04-26T11:15:00.006-04:00

A few days ago i was surprised to find a young new scattering of wild stinging nettle growing near the lilac bush, amongst some other 'weeds'. It was already about a foot high. I've never had stinging nettle in my yard before. The next day I had the opportunity to ask my herb-wise friend Lauren about how to use and prepare nettle for both eating and making nettle tea. Nettle is supposed to be a very beneficial herb and tonic, also a highly nutritional green. I knew Lauren had been using nettle for years and loved it. Here is an informative Wikipedia page on stinging nettle and its uses.

Lauren gave me a lot of good information about how to use stinging nettle. Of course one must be very careful when coming into contact or harvesting nettle, for the tiny barbs are quite painful- I knew this from experience years ago! Once the nettle leaves and stems are steamed, cooked, or dried for tea, they completely lose their ability to sting.
I plan to try drying some nettle for use as a tea, and also hope eventually to have enough harvest of the tender plant tips to try cooking it like a Spring green, in the manner of spinach. Apparently the taste is delicious to some people and not to others. We shall see.
Unfortunately, before I had a chance to caution my husband about mowing the nettle down with the lawn mower, they were already mowed! However, being a weed I am sure they will grow up again in the same spot if allowed to, and I also found a few more undamaged shoots nearby that had escaped the mower. These I photographed...

tiny sprouts in the garden

2010-04-22T19:05:00.009-04:00

This is one of my favorite things about the garden... when the seed has sprouted and fresh green shoots appear with their first tender bright green leaves against the black soil. I love how completely distinctive the plant varieties are from each other, even at this early stage.
I couldn't resist taking a few 'baby portraits' in the vegetable garden in the afternoon sun.

Spinach...

Black seeded Simpson leaf lettuce...

French breakfast radishes...

Borage... (especially planted for my bees)

made bread today

2010-04-21T19:27:00.004-04:00

Today I made bread. I rolled in some chopped calamata olives, sun-dried tomatoes, and browned onions with garlic. A simple flour dusting and slash pattern on the crust. It came out well- fluffy, with a nice crispy crust. (click on photos to enlarge)

First mason bee nesting tube is full!

2010-04-21T13:33:00.003-04:00

A nice warm 70F sunny day today, and the solitary bees are very busy. Today is a special day, April 21 2010... today the very first mason bee nesting tube was filled and sealed with mud! I watched the female bringing in balls of mud and putting the finishing touches on the outermost mud plug...

The leafcutter bee block is up...

2010-04-14T20:16:00.008-04:00

I asked Dave of Dave's Bees to make me a special nesting block for leafcutter bees.
Leafcutter bees line and seal their egg chambers with circular pieces of green leaves that they chew off with their precise mandibles. This is different from the mason bees, who use mud to seal their egg cocoon chambers. Leafcutter bees supposedly like slightly smaller and shorter tubes (1/4" diameter x 4" length) than mason bees like (5/16" diam. x 6" length). They also do their nesting just a bit later in the Spring than the mason bees typically do, from what I have read. So Dave made me a really nice nesting block with the requested sized holes (lined with parchment so as to discourage mites and fungus by replacing the liner each year).
I put it up underneath my other two boxes. The new leafcutter bee box is at the bottom in the photo, on our back kitchen porch post. The morning sun shines right at the fronts of the nesting blocks, warming up the bees nicely on chilly mornings for a couple of hours. Again, I stapled on chicken wire to keep any hungry woodpeckers from getting the bees or cocoons. It will be very interesting to see who, if anyone, moves into the new bee block with the smaller holes. (Clicking the blog pictures will enlarge them)

Here just before sunset today I got a couple of shots of the Osmia taurus mason bee going in and out of one of the tubes. This little bee must be living around here and discovered the nice nesting tubes and moved in right alongside my blue orchard mason bees! They seem to be getting along just fine. It's nice to have two different species to watch. The first photo shows her flying in, the next photo is when she emerged from the tube to do another pollen run. It's very hard to photograph them, as they seldom seem to stay still for a second, unlike honeybees who often laze about photogenically. ;)

And here is my first video of my solitary bees using the nest boxes on my kitchen porch!:

Fabre and my dreams as a 12 year old girl

2010-04-14T16:37:00.007-04:00

Too often I find that in garden discussions, the subject of insects is limited to referring to them as 'pests' and subsequently discussing practical ways to kill insects in one way or another. I find this attitude a bit odd.
Consider that experienced gardeners seem fully aware of the direct relationship between their healthy plants and the soil conditions and nutrients that directly effect them. They recognize that plants do not exist in complete isolation from their natural environment, that there is in fact an ecosystem that is best kept in healthy balance if one desires optimum results in the garden. Yet beneficial garden insects are rarely given a thought, except for the usual advice on how to get rid of garden pests.

In reality, most insects in our gardens are beneficial and work tirelessly to contribute to a healthy ecosystem despite our best efforts to destroy them at every turn. Airborne insects and soil dwelling creatures pollinate our flowers, fruits, and vegetables, they fertilize and aerate the soil and help break down waste and bacteria. I feel a healthy population of industrious and beneficial garden insects and invertebrates of various kinds are important to garden health in the same way that healthy soil is important.

When I was a young girl I used to read the wonderful writings about insects by French naturalist Jean-Henri Fabre. Fabre's lifetime work ever since boyhood was observing and studying the habits of all manner of nature's creatures in the wild and in his immediate surroundings, insects in particular. His field studies were written in a very enjoyable and accessible style- The Mason Bees, The Life of the Spider, Insect Adventures...

I can still find my young 12 year old signature on one of the worn library books in my hometown here, books written by naturalist authors Fabre, Edwin Way Teale (Grassroot Jungles, Dune Boy), Konrad Lorenz (King Solomon's Ring), and Gerald Durrell (Birds Beasts and Relatives, My Family and Other Animals). Musty books even back then almost 45 years ago, that I avidly borrowed from the library and read as a young girl, dreaming about becoming a naturalist one day myself. Life had other plans for me, and I never became a naturalist, though I never ceased studying and observing insects, plants, and all manner of animals with a passion.

One can peruse a very delightful sampling of Fabre's writings and observations on this wonderful website I recently stumbled upon, wholly dedicated to his work: http://www.efabre.net/

When we study and understand the lives of insects and other tiny hard working creatures in the garden, we can better appreciate the vital part they play in the natural world around us, and in our garden too. We then see the garden environment as a whole picture instead of the strange partial view we've adopted by mentally filtering out what we might consider to be the 'undesirables', in other words every creature less superficially appealing than butterflies, chickadees, cute toads, and hummingbirds.
Let's try to learn little ways of providing hospitable insect habitats within our gardens and yards, providing water and shelter, especially avoiding the use of poisons on our plants and in our soil, allowing some areas for protective tall seeded grasses or brush, letting a hollow tree or rotting log remain in place a bit longer to house animals and birds and even bees, perhaps allowing bees to enjoy the pollen of 'weed' flowers such as dandelions (a bee favorite). The whole concept of an artificially sterile lawn devoid of all wildlife is getting so old.

Let's stop viewing insects merely as pests to be ruthlessly eliminated. Indeed, if we did successfully kill off all the insects with our continued obscene use of pesticides and herbicides...our planet (ourselves included) would die along with them.

Solitary bees are discovering the nesting boxes...

2010-04-09T11:04:00.010-04:00

I'm quite excited! Yesterday was a beautiful warm sunny day, and things are really hopping at the solitary bee boxes.
First, I was able to see another blue orchard mason female bee emerge from the cocoon tubes I had purchase. So things are still happening in that department.
But even more exciting is that over the past two days there have been quite a few female mason bees coming to the boxes and going in and out of the new nesting tubes!

Here are two blue orchard mason bee females using the tubes in my drilled wooden nesting block made by Dave at Dave's Bees:

Here is a blue orchard bee going into tubes in my 'can' nesting unit... it's easy to identify the blue orchard mason bees by their beautiful metallic blue sheen and black body:

I was amazed to see a second species of mason bee coming and going to my nesting sites. This other species is a soft warm brown color and has a fuzzy overall look, clearly a different solitary bee altogether than the blue orchard mason:
I asked on a bee forum what species this might be, and it was suggested by a knowledgeable person that it might be Osmia taurus. After looking at many online images I agree that this is likely Osmia taurus. This solitary bee species has no common English name...yet. I think I will invent one for my own use!. It is not one of our native solitary bees, but was imported to Maryland in the northeastern U.S. from China and Japan many years ago and is now established here all over the northeastern U.S. where I live. Unfortunate that there are introduced species around, but not much I can do to change that ...so the welcome mat on my little bee inns will remain for all little bees who need an abode. In that same photo you can also see the black feet of a blue orchard bee (Osmia lignaria) peeking out from one of the other tubes.

Here is an Osmia taurus bee-girl peering out happily from her chosen tube...
Click on any picture and it will enlarge.

Kitties.....

2010-04-08T22:52:00.003-04:00

Just thought I'd put up a couple of pictures of our beloved kitties...

nine year old Pearl, the 'prima donna' silver Main Coon cat is on the left. She mostly puts up with the rambunctious

Suki, on the right, who was adopted from the Humane Shelter only a few months ago.
Suki likes to really 'get in yer face', as you can see here.

My mason bees are hatching!

2010-04-02T22:26:00.004-04:00

My solitary mason bee cocoons are hatching!!
After 4 days of over 50F in the nesting box out on my kitchen porch, this morning I noticed one of the little mud caps was missing on one of the six cocoon tubes, and I could see the empty chamber. The mud cap had been there intact yesterday. I could faintly hear little clicking noises from the tubes...somebody was inside the tube trying to chew their way out!

Shortly after that, I saw a couple other mud caps coming off in little chunks. I took a flashlight and a magnifying glass and I could see the fuzzy brown movements of a wiggling cocoon inside. By hanging around the box and checking every few minutes, I was able to watch two new adult mason bee males emerge from their cocoons! I had to be very quick with my camera, because once they exited the tube they only sat for a few moments stretching their wings before they took off flying to parts unknown! Here I thought they were supposed to hang around the box waiting for females, but no, they seemed to have an agenda. Maybe they were thirsty or just doing orientation flights?

Anyway, I'm pretty excited to know I was responsible for adding some new little mason bees to my neighborhood. I feel lucky to have seen at least two being born and to have gotten any pictures at all!
I think the rest will likely hatch later today and tomorrow. I hope to see the bees come back and hang around the nesting boxes soon. I'll be watching the garden flowers and the nesting boxes over the coming weeks...

I love that in the close up you can see a little bit of blue metallic sheen on the abdomen of the first male...and look at his little antennae sections! Click on the photos and they will enlarge to see more details.

More seeds into the ground

2010-04-01T18:09:00.002-04:00

Today was the start of our mini Spring heat wave, a forecast of a whole week of temperatures in the 60's and 70'sF and sunny.
I went out in the vegetable garden again to hoe and plant seeds in a second nine feet section of my 3 foot wide first bed.
Today I added a couple of short rows each of:
Rainbow Swiss chard
Divina butterhead lettuce
Really Red Deer Tongue lettuce
French Breakfast radishes
Calendula flower
Scallions
Bok Choy

Still not seeing any sign of sprouting from my first planting a few days ago.

I also started seeds of Heavenly Blue morning glory, and Only the Lonely tall white nicotiana, in little peat pots indoors

Time to put out the mason bee cocoons

2010-03-30T22:49:00.002-04:00

Yesterday, I put my 6 tubes of cocoons out in the lower mason bee box, alongside the two 'cans' of nesting tubes, inside the box for protection.
Tomorrow will be in the mid 50'sF, followed by about 9 more days predicted in the high 50's through the 70's (!!) Surely it will be hatching time if the cocoons I bought are alive.
If not, then I will have to wait and hope for the wild local solitary bees to find my boxes. I have high hopes.

My two boxes are right on the back porch near the kitchen door, and several visitors have already been examining them and asking about them-

First, Jim the mailman who delivers our mail to the kitchen porch. Jim loves to photograph flowers close up, and he also got a kick out of delivering my composting worms last year for my worm bin, so naturally he loved hearing about the new little bee condos.
Then, the milkman who delivers our milk in glass bottles every week to the milk box on the porch there. I caught him peering right into the boxes this morning trying to see what the heck was in there. lol! He loved my explanation and seemed fascinated.
Also, the lady who comes to cut my husband's hair every 6 weeks or so. She runs a 4H club, and she actually got all the kids to do a worm composting bin project last year after she was inspired by my worm bin. Today I told her maybe their next 4H project will have to be native bee nesting boxes. She seemed mighty interested. ;)

First plantings of the year

2010-03-25T14:06:00.009-04:00

Lettuce seedlings from my garden, last year (2009)

Tomorrow night will be that last deep freeze- predicted about 18F. After that, I don't think there will be any more nights colder than 25F degrees or so. So today I got out in the new vegetable garden and began some modest direct seeding of some of the cold weather loving Springs veggies.
I used a garden fork to do some deep soil loosening to a depth of about eight inches, then I sprinkled some organic fertilizer and hoed that in, then made furrows and began to plant a few small rows of this and that. My method will be to practice succession planting of seeds directly in the ground- one or two 3 foot rows of any particular thing, and then planting more short rows as the season progresses. This gives a more constant supply than simply planting one or two main patches at a time, of say beets or carrots. Greens do especially well with seeding small amounts more often.

Today I began with a couple of short 3 foot rows each of:
Chatenay carrots
Winter red Russian kale
White Russian kale
Rouge d'hiver lettuce
Nevada Batavian lettuce
Japanese bunching onions
Springer spinach
Gigante inverno spinach

Later on I'll plant Swiss chard, leeks, chioggia and bull's blood beets, some other lettuces, bok choy, radishes, and purple kohlrabi. Then I'll wait a couple more weeks before planting seeds of veggies that respond better to slightly warmer temperatures.

I learned from experience that I should sprinkle the seeds more carefully and slowly, really one seed at a time along the furrow. Last year I had to thin out way too many seedlings of lettuce, beets, carrots, radishes, ..it was a sad lesson to pinch out those poor adorable extra seedlings and basically waste precious seed. Now I will only plant a few things on any given day, preparing the soil and planting the seed with more care and precision.

This weekend I will also put out my blue orchard mason bee cocoons into the nesting boxes. I can't wait to see if they hatch out in a week or two!

Spring

2010-03-20T21:56:00.004-04:00

Today I was out in this rare warm sunny Spring day, doing the last of garden cleanup. I will be planting seed of the cold-loving chard, kale, carrots, beets, radishes, and spinach in another week or so- finally!
Honeybees were flying about, their gentle humming very mesmerizing in the sun while I turned the dark garden soil with my hoe, picking out last year's remaining dried stumps of kohlrabi and leeks.

Mason Bee nesting boxes are up

2010-03-18T15:57:00.007-04:00

Today Brian helped me get the two new nesting boxes up for our native pollinating bees- the blue orchard mason bees.

The upper box is a solid block of wood drilled with long tunnels, in which the mason bee female will lay her series of cocoon chambers in sequence, separating each cocoon with a little wall of mud ('bee masonry' if you will). All the tunnels are lined with parchment paper which will discourage the accumulation of mites, fungus and such. The paper liners get replaced every Spring.
The lower box contains two 'cans' which are filled with cardboard nesting tubes, each of which is also lined with parchment paper.
The boxes are facing SE to catch the morning sun, and I installed chicken wire guards to keep woodpeckers from trying to get to the bee larvae in the nesting tubes.

It's still too early to put out the actual mason bee cocoons I have hibernating in tubes in the refrigerator alongside the cucumbers and alfalfa sprouts in the vegetable drawer. Another big cold snap is in the forecast for next week, so I'll likely put the cocoons out right after that. I hope the boxes will also attract some of the mason bees I have seen foraging in my garden in past years. I know there are some nearby somewhere. Between watching for local native mason bees and getting new honeybees, it should be an interesting season!
In the photos, you can see a few purple crocus blooming on the lawn, but that's about the only thing blooming yet.

Gardens and bees....

2010-03-08T16:59:00.029-05:00

Even though there is snow on the ground and it's in the 20's F at night, I'm still getting excited about Spring almost here. I see in the forecast that daytime highs are now going to be in the 40's and 50's rather than the 30's and 40's. Big difference!

My food gardening plans include planting a few dozen blueberry and raspberry bushes, in addition to being able to utilize the big new veggie garden for a whole season for the first time starting this Spring. My last post detailed the seeds I received in the mail.

My Compost bin of eisenia foetida composting earthworms are doing just fine in my basement. Their metabolism has slowed down during the cool basement winter temps, but as Spring progresses the basement will be warmer and they will speed up again with the kitchen scraps, eggshells, and cardboard/paper roughage I feed them. There are several thousand worms of different developmental stages in the bin, working various of the three tray levels. I have a couple of gallons at least of pure castings already waiting to add to the garden, and more is in the works from the hard working little worms.

My honeybee plans for the new year are to rev up to between 2 and 4 hives, depending on how things go. I did order some new bees in the mail, and of course I worry about them in transit, but things usually go smoothly. I also will be attending bee club meetings and/or a short 'bee school' course, both offered by local beekeepers.
Those mail order honeybees will not arrive until first week of May. But there is plenty to do in the meantime, inspecting and cleaning up my current hive and building new frames and settin gup the additional new empty hives in preparation.
I also plan to set out a 'swarm bait' small hive box, with used comb, bee pheromones, and lemongrass oil- all of which are irresistable to swarm scout bees out looking for a new home to move into.

The other thing I have looked into and ordered are nesting supplies, houses, and some cocoons of our local native bees- the blue orchard mason bee. Honeybees are actually European imports. Our U.S. native bee pollinators are solitary small bees who do not maintain a hive society, do not sting, and do not make honey. But they do pollinate trees and gardens like mad, are beneficial to our planet in many ways, and are cute as a button as well. What a great little bee to encourage and keep in your garden or yard, especially for those who are not able to keep honeybee hives where they live.
I know they are in my area, because I saw some on my flowers during the past two summers. I plan on providing ideal nesting tube houses, water, and a source of nest-building mud for the little blue mason bees to thrive on so they hang around my house and garden. Learn more about providing nesting and housing environments for solitary native bees: HERE. I ordered mason bee supplies and houses from HERE, and HERE.

Here is a mason nesting box i bought from Dave's bees...it came complete with paper tube liners all set up for the first year:
And go HERE to watch Dave's video in case you'd like to build a mason bee nesting box yourself!

We should all consider providing for our beneficial insects and other wild animal friends who are struggling. I ordered a bat house as well, which we will attach to the eaves of the house.

More cool links to sites about solitary native bees and mason bees:
Pollinator paradise
Solitary Bees
Knoxcellars
Crown Bees
Dave's Bees
Seedcake.com
Foxleas.com
WildBienen
Freshdirt
ncsu.edu
Bee Species photo collection
Jean-Henri Fabre's The Mason Bees
Wings In Flight
Native Bees info
French solitary bee blog
xerces society
pencilandleaf.blogspot

Spring seeds

2010-02-12T09:25:00.006-05:00

My garden seeds have arrived for Spring 2010, and I'm excited! I ordered them from John Scheeper's Kitchen Garden Seeds.
For our big new vegetable garden, there are carrots, Swiss chard, pickling cucumbers, Russian kale, kohlrabi, leeks, bunching onions, beets, spinach, and many kinds of interesting lettuces, mesclun, and greens. For my honeybees, there is borage, anise hyssop, nicotiana, and calendula. I always buy my tomatoes as plants since the season is so very short here and I don't start seed indoors.
Seed sowing time is still many weeks away....patience.

Coventry Carol on the double bowed psaltery

2010-01-13T12:25:00.003-05:00

Still struggling along after two months of practice in playing my bowed psaltery using double bows. Getting slowly better in tiny increments each week. I've always loved this old tune, Coventry Carol.

First bread of the new year, 2010

2010-01-05T20:05:00.005-05:00

I made two white boules today- the first bread of the new year 2010. I topped one with sesame seed and one with poppy seed. They came out nicely!

December harvest

2009-12-15T16:07:00.004-05:00

Amazingly, I am still harvesting some good eats from our new vegetable garden, even in mid December. We've had lots of nights below freezing and even a few in the teens, and mostly daytime highs in the 30'sF...yet I'm still getting some very lovely carrots and turnips that seem not to have minded much at all.

After today's harvest, I believe there are only some more carrots left in the ground. If I'm very lucky, I may be able to pull some of those in early January- it will be interesting to discover. I like the short fat varieties of carrot I planted.

Winter

2009-12-05T15:09:00.004-05:00

I was able to look in under the top of my beehive yesterday, and the bees were acting calm and busy and in a good mood. This, I am told, might indicate that there is a queen in residence. Even if there is a queen, however, it will remain uncertain until Springtime whether she was able to mate and is fertile, since all males have been dead and gone for almost two months now in the cold autumn weather. I have to hope for the best. These particular bees are pretty amazing and they might just surprise me.

We are having our first snow now. Here is a picture looking out my office window a few minutes ago.
I'm glad I pulled up all the little beets in the garden yesterday, and hoed those patches. Less work for me in the Spring when the ground is wet and heavy. Nice to see the fresh earth all fluffed up, waiting for next year's seeds.

The mailman brought my big order of strings for my dulcimers, banjos, and bowed psaltery. I order strings every few years in one large batch and they last me for several years. I was running low. Now I will have no more excuses not to restring that rusty psaltery which has...32 strings! Hmmm...I had better set aside two or three hours for that little project.

Tonight I am going to a contra dance in town just down the hill.
"We're fools whether we dance or not, so we may as well dance." -Japanese proverb
that about sums up my contra dancing skills. Oh well, good exercise.

The Queen is dead.

2009-12-04T10:46:00.007-05:00

Well this is a rather upsetting post to make, and hard to know exactly what it means for the future.
Yesterday morning I found my queen bee lying dead outside the hive on the ground. here is a picture of her in the middle, surrounded by a few dead worker bees for comparison (click the photo and it will enlarge):

After discussing this with experienced beekeepers on two forums, and also with the most excellent 'natural' beekeeper who is my local mentor, it's hard to know what this event actually might mean.
The death of this queen can be distilled down to three possible current hive situations:
1) For some reason the queen died and now there is no queen. I'll have to wait 'til Spring to replace her with a new bought queen from somewhere.
2) The bees made a new queen who replaced this old queen. This is pretty unusual this late in the year and the virgin queen would not have any drones left now to mate with. A virgin queen emerging now would not likely be in vigorous enough condition by Spring to mate and start laying. There have not been any drones (males) left for over a month now. All drones get kicked out of the hive to die once the chilly weather sets in. There are no males left around for mating with.
3) This third is the least likely explanation, but is still slightly possible- Occasionally when a new queen is raised, the hive will allow the old queen to coexist until she finally dies off naturally. Some beekeepers have told me they had a two queen hive of mother and daughter for a couple of months. One showed me a photo she took of her two queens calmly going about their business side by side in her hive. If this happened, then perhaps that new queen hatched six or eight weeks ago when there were still drones around and mated and is fertile. If that's the case then all is well, but I tend to think this is the least likely explanation.

In any case, I won't know for sure what the hive status is until Spring, when I can check for eggs and larvae. Having to wait for four months without knowing is of course very difficult, but I have little choice. Meanwhile, to maintain my sanity through the long winter, I choose to resolutely believe in the optimistic explanation #3 above.

This morning I sat by the hive for a while and watched the girls. It's a sunny day and they are coming in and out, doing normal bee things.... removing dead workers from the hive and discarding them, cleaning 'washboarding' around the upper entrance, some bees were even coming in from the field with little bits of pollen on their leg baskets. They seemed to be acting as though nothing was wrong at all. ??
I take this as a good sign, since people tell me bees get agitated and act upset when there is no queen. Today is warm and sunny enough so that feel I can peek in under the top cover later this sunny afternoon to give them a quick visual check without disturbing them. It'll be interesting to see if they are in an agitated state or if they are as calm and genttle as they usually are.
UPDATE: I did open the hive and examine them a bit this afternoon. The bees were acting happy and normal. Again I was told that this might indicate there is indeed a queen in there. Apparent bees in a hive know within 24 hours that there is no queen and they act agitated and confused and a bit aggressive, making more of a buzz 'roar' than the usual mellow hive buzz. I saw none of those described 'queenless' signs and it must have been at least 48 hours after that queen died, so I will keep hoping through the winter.

Digging out the old bowed psaltery

2009-11-29T22:22:00.004-05:00

I felt some holiday spirit this week and dusted off the bowed psaltery that I had bought twelve years ago and never gotten the hang of.This is the first real tune I have played on it, and I decided to try adding a harmony by double bowing it. Not easy! I obviously need a lot more practice, but the bowed psaltery has such a lovely haunting voice, it is very forgiving.

Crummy camera angle and some rough bowing yet, but here it is- my second day's work on the beautiful old carol "Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming". One of my favorite winter tunes...

Mother/daughter bee time...

2009-11-27T22:13:00.007-05:00

We were very lucky to have beautiful 55F degree sunny weather on Thanksgiving Day, right when my older daughter was visiting us! Unusually warm nice weather for late November here! She has a degree in entomology and has done honeybee research at Cornell U., so I felt very fortunate to have her take a peek inside my hive. I also felt she would bring 'good bee karma' to my hive. This day I planned to remove the last syrup feeding and put in some dry sugar as a little extra insurance against my bees running out of their stored honey supplies during the coming winter. Soon it will be too cold to open the hive at all until Spring.

My daughter is the younger one in the red skirt, working the smoker.... ;)

I was so happy to have this pleasant little time to be a mother and daughter 'beekeeping team' together. I was so proud to show her my bees! She said they appeared to be healthy bees and they looked to have some good honey stored up for the cold winter ahead.
Here I've already removed the old syrup baggie feeder from inside the hive, and we have gotten the bees to retreat a bit so we could lay a sheet of newspaper on top of the frames and pour some dry sugar on. I chose to give them this extra sugar food supply for this winter because the hive has recently been consolidated and moved to my house, which must have caused some amount of stress for them. In future winters I anticipate that they will have full larders of honey stored and will hopefully not really need such sugar feedings. But I wanted to give them every chance to survive their first winter here in their new location.

After pouring in ten pounds of sugar, I trimmed the newspaper that was sticking up at the edges. Notice I left gaps in the front and back of hive so the bees could maneuver in and around the frames, sugar, and top entrance. Then I sprayed the sugar surface down with some water to which I had added a small amount of lemongrass and spearmint oil, so they would view it as food rather than as debris to be carted away grain by grain. Bees are very fond of lemongrass oil.

Here we have successfully finished our little hive chore and the bees are basically set for the winter.

The only thing left for me to do is to wrap some tarpaper around the hive to protect from cold wind drafts. I'll do that when it gets a little colder and we no longer have any 50 degree days.

distractions...

2009-11-21T14:10:00.008-05:00

Suki wants to make sure all work is carefully monitored and checked for Quality Control.

Inside the hive...

2009-11-15T15:26:00.006-05:00

Today the weather was unusually warm for mid November- 62F and sunny. I went into the hive to do a couple of things. First, I moved the boxes off so I could face the bottom board vent opening towrds the sunny front side of the hive, thus avoiding cold winds passing through the hive diagonally through the bees' winter cluster. Now the bottom open vent and the top vent/entrance are both in the front, on the warm side. Air will now hopefully vent straight up that front side and out without chilling the central cluster.
While I was in there I checked on their consumption of the sugar syrup feeder I had inside the hive...about halfway consumed, which is good.
I took some closeup photos of my lovely bees, who were extremely good natured about all my annoying in-your-face interference. If you click on each photo, it will get much larger and you can see the bees up real close. It's so nice and honey-cozy in there, and I just love the smell of beeswax.

bizzy bizzy.....

2009-11-08T18:19:00.005-05:00

Today was 58F and sunny- the warmest nicest day since we moved the hive to my place.
My bees were a'hummin' bigtime, and out in full force all day. :clap: I think today's weather really got them energized and busy. Me too!...

I cleaned out the small side garden and hoed the weeds out of it in preparation for a Spring planting of raspberry bushes there. It was previously my veggie garden but we outgrew that and installed the big vegetable garden this summer, and plan to make the old garden into a raspberry patch instead. It's about 6' x 15'.
After every 20 minutes or so of pulling out old tomato stakes, weeds, and hoeing, I need to stretch and rest... so I'd sit in my little burlap alcove and watch my bees....how relaxing and pleasant! You could smell the beeswax in the air and hear the nice humm...

I watched as they'd run off a yellow jacket every few minutes. Sometimes they'd get into a rolling ball fight, and bee & yellowjacket would tumble off the ledge together in their struggle, and continue grappling on the ground. Each time they'd eventually break up and both would fly away.
Bees were coming in and going out like crazy, checking each other out thoroughly too, touching and communicating to each other in mysterious ways.
Several seemed to be working on the seam where the two deeps meet, trying to seal it back up from when we moved the hive, I imagine. There must be a lot more of that going on inside the hive.
I noticed there was a small chunk of old propolis lying on the landing ledge near the entrance holes. It was almost the size of a grain of rice. I thought to myself "hmm....I'm surprised they don't get rid of that piece of debris..." and just as I was thinking that thought, a bee walked up to it and just sort of punted it right over the edge...ka-POWIE! It was so cute!

First warm sunny day at the hive....

2009-11-02T15:57:00.007-05:00

I went into the hive all by myself yesterday, after the bees had settled for a couple of days here in their new home. It was a nice warm day and I had to reverse the bottom board, so all boxes got moved around briefly! I had my smoker going and my veil and gloves, etc. I was nervous but the bees didn't seem to be attacking me, they were just flying about confused while I was moving the stack of boxes and doing stuff. I also nailed on the metal entrance reducer/mouse guard, and put a gallon baggie of 2:1 sugar syrup inside the top of the hive, with an added 2" shim to allow clearance for the bag. That was yesterday.

Today, it was 55F and calm and sunny, and as you can see the 'girls' were all out and about today, busier than ever since their arrival. They seem to have no problem getting in and out of the smaller entrance holes now. That metal entrance guard will keep mice from trying to nest in the hive over the winter- they would make a big mess inside, and we do have lots of field mice here in the yard. Plus, there are yellow jackets nearby nesting, and the reduced entrance will make it much easier for the honeybees to defend their hive if the wasps try to raid it for food.

See how cute that you can see some sweet little bee faces peeking out the holes just before they come out? ;D (The pix will enlarge if you click on them.)

My bees are here! :D

2009-10-30T13:55:00.009-04:00

The young beekeeper met me at the hive that I was to get yesterday afternoon and we took the whole 3 deeps box older hive apart to inspect it/consolidate it. It was a beautiful 55F sunny day.

Nothing but GOOD news to report-

No evidence of disease, few mites, found the queen and she looks lovely and active, and found some new eggs too. Managed to remove enough empty comb frames to consolidate to two deep chambers instead of the three, put on a new top cover and new bottom board/screen combo. We decided not to change the 2 boxes since they were in ok condition. I could always change them for new in the Spring.
More good news is that he told me they have stored up enough honey to get through the winter (unlike a lot of other hives in our area which have done very poorly this rainy summer and may not have enough honey to make it through the winter).

Plus, the beekeeper said they were about the gentlest bees he's ever worked with (he has about 300 hives!)- he didn't wear gloves or even a head veil, wore just a flannel shirt and used only a few light puffs from the smoker... yet he took the whole 27 frame hive apart frame by frame, prying and scraping propolis- and all the bees did was gently fly around us, no stinging at all! "Such wonderful bees, I'm envious!" he said. :D He handed me a chunk of honeycomb to eat.
He showed me a lot and I learned from watching him go through the hive.

In the end, the hive was consolidated down to a good snug winter-ready 2 deep box size without any wasteful empty frames, queen was safe, got it strapped securely, and the hive was ready for us to go back at dusk and load it into his truck and bring it to my house.

We returned at 5:45 just as one or two last stragglers came back to the hive and then all was quiet and it was just getting dark. He and I had no trouble now lifting the double box strapped hive into his truck and securing it for the 30 minute drive to my house.
We set up the hive on its waiting cement blocks in the cozy 'bee nook' in back of my garden.
Poor bees woke up in a whole new universe! =8-o

I put some grass temporarily to reduce the entrance since we have lots of yellow jackets around- but in the next couple of days I will tack on the metal mouse guard and reducer into place instead. Didn't want to do too many drastic changes at once.

Today is chilly, windy and cloudy so I will wait till a calm day to put in the sugar syrup baggie to give them a little boost. Hopefully tomorrow...

And to compare- here's a picture of the hive in its previous location, before we consolidated it and put new cover and bottom:

new empty beehives

2009-10-22T17:26:00.004-04:00

I plan to get some honeybees soon. Here are the new empty hives. I painted the sections in different colors. A friend has offered me her older hive of active bees, but the trick will be to transport it over here to our yard. We'll see. If that project proves impossible, then I will just have to wait until Spring to get the honeybees and queens.
At least I have their new homes ready!

Pearl sleeping...

2009-10-08T14:27:00.007-04:00

I caught Pearl sleeping by the window curled up on top of the big round scratching post. See her soft soft swan's down. Click on a photo to get even closer to the Puff Fest...

first carrots

2009-10-07T13:20:00.002-04:00

I pulled my first young carrots from the new garden today, along with some turnips, parsley, and scallions. They all went into a big crockpot of vegetable soup for tonight. Added to the chicken broth were some local friends' broccoli, kale, tomatoes, celery, and red cabbage. Some store bought onions , red pepper, and garlic too. I ground some black pepper to top it off and started it simmering....

an apple sauce day

2009-09-28T13:57:00.003-04:00

Yesterday Brian and I put up some apple sauce.
Around noon, we bought a bushel of nice Paula Red apples from a local orchard, 'Love Apple Farm' (gotta love the name). Brian used our old fashioned hand-crank countertop apple peeling-coring machine to peel and core the apples, and he made the apple sauce in a big spaghetti pot, one pot at a time. Brian makes great apple sauce.
Meanwhile, I sterilized the canning jars, packed them with apple sauce and processed them in boiling water in another spaghetti pot, four pints at a time for 20 minutes.
We had a regular little assembly line going.
By evening we had 35 lovely pints of fresh chunky apple sauce. The Paula Reds were so perfect we didn't even need to add any sugar at all...just a touch of cinnamon.

a pickling day

2009-09-22T19:16:00.003-04:00

A generous friend let me pick a whole slew of pickling cucumbers from her garden. I gave her some of my lettuce and scallions. I also had a bag of beautiful striped pink Chioggia beets we had gotten from the local organic farmer's market as a thank-you for us playing music there. So I decided to pickle them all today.

I made 16 pints of sweet bread and butter pickle slices. I had enough beets for four pints of pickled beets. The Chioggia beets are pink and white striped on the inside, not the usual dark inky red. They look so pretty in the jars, with a soft golden pink glow.
After canning and processing the 20 pints of pickles and pickled beets, I had about 3 cups of pickling brine leftover. I hard boiled 12 small fresh eggs and packed them six to a jar into two clean pint jars, then filled with pickling brine. Those I won't bother to process, I'll just put them in the fridge to mellow and eat pickled eggs over the next few weeks. :) A good way to use up the leftover brine!

Lots of lettuce...

2009-09-13T11:55:00.003-04:00

Well it's been such a rainy cloudy summer mostly this year here in the Northeast- a poor year for tomatoes, but a great year for lettuce!
Here is the new garden (about two months old now, formerly just backyard lawn) and you can see all the wonderful lettuces we are now harvesting. I had planted most of the lettuces in the back bed that runs along near the trees, since lettuce dislikes intense mid-summer sun. I love the various shades of green and maroon, and the interesting ruffly leaf and head shapes. Getting some great scallions, and I am almost ready to harvest some nice big turnips- my first turnips ever. You can also see some fluffy carrot tops, and the small scallion and leek patches.
The key is to keep planting seeds in succession, in short rows, so that nothing matures all at once.

Yesterday we were given a big bowlful of organic tomatoes (in exchange for our playing music at our local farmer's market), and from our own garden I picked cilantro, scallions, and parsley. To all this I added chopped onion and spices and made a nice big batch of fresh salsa. One valuable thing I learned this summer is that for my needs I should wait to plant my cilantro seed in July, because then it matures at just the right time for me to use during tomato season to make salsa, and in the early Fall to put in my black bean soup. Those are my favorite uses for cilantro, so it doesn't make sense for me to plant it in the Spring. Best to raise a crop of Spring lettuce on that spot and then when I pull the lettuce, hoe some compost in and plant with cilantro seed. That way I can use the same spot to get two crops, one after the other.

Still planting seeds....

2009-09-08T11:06:00.003-04:00

This morning I planted a few more rows of seed in my vegetable garden....ever hopeful to harvest more before the frosts! Lettuce and spinach is good for that since they don't have to be totally mature to get good leaves from them for salads.
I planted a little three foot row each of about 5 different kinds of lettuces, the last of my spinach seeds, and several kinds of radish. I was also able to hoe a couple gallons of my kitchen earthworm casting harvest into the ground as I prepared the seed rows. Later today I will turn the 'regular' compost bin for the first time with a large garden fork.
By October 1st the first frost should be threatening, and I plan to set up a clear plastic tarp over the long bed in the garden where most of the lettuce is planted, to try to keep them going as long as I can into the cold weather. My goal is to keep harvesting greens until Christmas day.
Right now in my new garden (which was put in and planted during mid-summer) I am getting lots of lettuce of various kinds, scallions, a few string beans, and odds and ends radishes. I see little turnip and beet bulbs forming here and there, and I'm hoping the carrots will hurry up and form soon. Of course at this same time next year I will have more to harvest because I will have been able to start things earlier, in the Spring.

Young banjo player

2009-08-18T21:44:00.003-04:00

A bittersweet day today...
My wonderful little banjo student of the past two and a half years came for his last lesson today. I sent him off with his last lesson under his belt, my two favorite banjo books, and my favorite banjo CDs under his arm. His family is moving across the country to the west coast, following a golden opportunity that will be wonderful for their whole family. His mother takes mountain dulcimer lessons with me, so she will be gone as well.

It has been a true privilege and to know and teach this absolutely delightful young man. I will miss him deeply, but I'm happy for him too- their destination is a place with many wonderful things to offer and many fine musicians and artists.Goodbye and God speed, my dear little friend!

Little visitor

2009-08-14T16:37:00.007-04:00

This morning as I started to work in my upstairs home office, something caught the corner of my eye. A little brown bat was peacefully hanging from my office window curtain. I'm not sure how he got into the house, but I was happy to get the chance to photograph him briefly.

I loved his soft looking shaggy lion's mane, and his little dog snout. After the last photo closeup, he took off flying about the upstairs rooms. At one point he landed on my banjo hanging on the wall, clinging to the strings. That would have made a great photo, but he took off again quickly and landed on the floor. That's when I dropped a towel over him, gathered it up gently, and escorted him outside. He was making those wonderful bat sounds in the towel- squeaking and clicking. I opened the towel out on the kitchen porch and away he flew, happy to be free again.

morning garden

2009-08-10T17:15:00.002-04:00

Here are some pix I took of the new vegetable garden this morning, before the sun was all the way up.

Here you can see our little kitchen back porch on the left, down the little hill from the garden:

A view from the far end of the garden. The bed in the forground will have blueberry bushes next Spring:

It makes me happy to see the little bright green rows of baby seedlings:

Vegetable seedlings in the new garden

2009-08-09T12:05:00.005-04:00

New 'baby pictures'...

Butterhead lettuce:

Carrots:

Beets:

Spinach:

Radish:

Multi-colored Romain lettuce:

Of compost bins and bee baths...

2009-07-25T18:31:00.006-04:00

Bees are good. Bees and countless other creatures tend to have a hard time these days what with everyone mowing down wild grasses, wildflowers, and meadows into stunted useless wildlife-unfriendly lawns. The rampant use of herbacides and pesticides compounds the problem.
One day I would love to have our own bee hive or two, but we currently have our hands full with all our other projects right now.
In the meantime, I read about ways to make one's back yard a little more 'bee friendly'. One big way to attract bees is to provide them with drinking water. So today i bought this simple ceramic bird bath, which I laid upon flat slate in my garden and filled with fresh water. There is a stone in it to provide footing for any bees or other insects that accidentally fall in and need to crawl out. Not only will birds and bees and other insects enjoy it, but I find it pleasingly meditative to look at. Look how prettily the crabapple tree branches are reflecting in the water's surface!

Today I also bought two compost bins and set them up in back of our shed. I've already put about 8 inches' worth of pulled weeds in the first one. It'll be great when the autmn leaves fall, and also when I do the Fall garden vegetable cleanup. I'll still put my prime fruit and vegetable parings in my worm compost bin, but these traditional compost bins will handle the bigger yard loads of green stuff. I'll need to get a little manure now and then to add into the mix, I think.
They are very well designed and made from recycled plastic, and I think they will last us many more years than the usual home-made circle of mesh or wooden pallet arrangements. I like that they can be unstacked and restacked as you fork the contents over to the new spot to turn it. There is no bottom, it just gets stacked right on open ground. I like that too.
In the photo, the bins are behind our shed, and you can see our house and kitchen porch in the background on the left, and the new garden's fence just showing on the right.

Two kinds of sprouts this week

2009-07-24T11:35:00.003-04:00

Here are some dark green broccoli sprouts on the right, and some 'sandwich mix' sprouts I tried out. This is simply a produce storage container for the fridge- not what the sprouts grew in. I grew the mixed sprouts in a sprout mason jar, and the broccoli sprouts in a tray, on a little piece of clean towel. I have to learn to start with less seed- my jars get a little too jam packed with sprouts towards the end! It's hard to believe how little seed you really need to get a whole jar full of sprouts.

kitty flypaper

2009-07-23T15:33:00.003-04:00

All you have to do is put a piece of wrapping paper down for a second on the bed, and within 30 seconds there will be cats on it.

The big new garden fence is in!

2009-07-22T16:11:00.003-04:00

Three and a half weeks after planting the first seeds in my new beautiful vegetable garden, the fence in finished! Now I can breathe a sigh of relieve that none of my new growing veggies are going to be mauled and eaten by deer, woodchucks, or rabbits...all of which we have plenty of around here.

The paths and the garden perimeter have yet to be fully mulched in and tidied up, but hopefully that will be done next week. In the meantime, I can continue tending to the new seedlings I've planted over the past 3 weeks. A bit of thinning and weeding already needs to be done in the 'virgin' soil.

I'm so happy and excited! The garden and fence is very utilitarian because it had to fit somehow within our budget- no English country manor look here. But there is a certain elegance to be appreciated in a no-frills practical design approach. Functional simplicity can be beautiful.

Sprouts

2009-07-20T18:43:00.004-04:00

A friend recently gifted me some little broccoli seeds sprouting in a tray, and I was so delighted by their refreshing green-ness that I decided to start growing some sprouts myself. So I bought a 'sprouting jar' at my local health food store, a hemp 'sprouting bag', and various organic sprouting seeds to try. I read about how jam packed full of nutrition sprouts are.

I happen to love alfalfa sprout sandwiches, so I sprouted a bunch of alfalfa seeds in my sprouting jar (basically it's just a Mason/canning jar with a screen lid). I was very diligent about rinsing them with fresh water twice a day, and look how beautifully they came out!:These alfalfa sprouts took about 4 days to mature. I got about 3 whole cups of sprouts from 2 tablespoons of alfalfa seed in the 1 quart jar. Today I spread a sesame hamburger bun with a little cream cheese and a dab of mayonnaise, heaped it high with sprouts and a sprinkle of salt....mmmmmmmmm!!!! Brian put a big handful of the sprouts on his cold string bean salad today too.

As per the instructions, the hemp bag (from Sproutman.com) is especially good for sprouting the larger seeds, grains, and beans, so I put some mung beans in that and I submerge it in fresh water also twice a day to rinse and wet the sprouts, then hang it to drain over my dish drainer. This picture was taken after just two days growth. I figure another day or two and the mung sprouts will be ready to eat...
I can't get over how cheap and easy it is to grow sprouts- I had never tried it before! Sort of makes me feel like I'm back in the 1970's again. I ate sprouts back then but never thought of growing them myself. I stopped buying sprouts at the supermarket long ago because they often looked a little sad and wilted.
Anyone living in an apartment or even a dorm or room can grow their own fresh nutritious greens with no soil or pots or fertilizer at all!
I now look forward to fresh green sprouts even as snowy blizzards howl outside this coming winter.

String bean salad

2009-07-19T16:34:00.005-04:00

Today i went out in the old little vegetable garden to do a bit of weeding and cleanup. I had seen some baby string beans developing on the tops of the bean bushes, but as I poked around in the foliage I discovered a whole mess of string beans all ready to harvest! Mostly Kentucky Blue Lake, with some yellow wax beans as well.
I picked a big bowlful, then cut them and lightly cooked them just until tender. They looked so pretty in my old blue bowl...
I decided to just make them into a nice cold summery vinaigrette bean salad that we could snack on over the next few days right from the fridge.

To the lightly cooked stringbeans, I added:
Olive oil and balsamic vinegar
dill, salt, and pepper
one can garbanzo/chick peas
one can small black olives
a generous handful of capers
a couple thin slices chopped raw onion
a little chopped garlic
a few chopped sweet pickles

yum yum yum yum -a great way to enjoy fresh string beans from the garden!
We're having them for dinner tonight, piled on some of our own fresh lettuce and a few slices of tomato...

Fence going up

2009-07-18T19:03:00.004-04:00

My old little garden has been providing us with endless harvests of greens for the past two months, and no end in sight yet. As you can see, things are pretty much full up in there, not an inch of space left anywhere. The lettuces have been a great treat, and I've had to give away quite a lot of it to friends. I was surprised at how nicely the romaine grew, and have planted some in the new garden as well. Most of the bright lightest green you see here is Black-seeded Simpson leaf lettuce. It's very quick growing. Tomatoes are along the right wall, and bok choy nearest the camera, along the path.

Today the fence guys came and put in the big posts for the new garden's fence. Very exciting and impressive! Should be finished just a few days from now. I do hope they get the fence done before the rabbits and deer discover all my baby vegetables as their personal free buffet...I've been very lucky so far, considering I see deer footprints here and there in the fresh soil every few days.

You can just see some of the green rows of baby seedlings sprouting up in the garden already (if you click on the picture it will enlarge and you can see it better). Those are from the seeds i planted two weeks ago. I made a new succession sowing yesterday, and will plant more seeds in another two weeks again. This will hopefully give us a more even supply of Fall vegetables and greens, rather than have them all mature at once.

A good July 4th

2009-07-04T20:47:00.006-04:00

What a lovely July 4th I had!
First a wonderful breakfast at Ralph's Pretty Good Cafe with my honey.

Then we went for a nice 14 mile bicycle ride in the countryside.

After that I brought in a HUGE amount of fresh lettuce from the 'little garden' and carefully washed it. Such sparkling bright greens and ruby reds! It was enough lettuce to fill a spaghetti pot like four times over! I divided it all in four portions- one portion I gave to my neighbors, one my husband took with him to a party today, one we are bringing with us as part of a large salad for a party tomorrow, and the last batch is just for our own use at home over the next few days. Funny thing is the little garden doesn't look much different even after taking out all that lettuce...I really have a lot of lettuce right now.

After that I did a little bookcase organizing.

Lastly this afternoon I made two nice white boules today in my Dutch oven pots. They rose nicely! One has a poppy seed top and the other is sesame. I also mixed up a batch of semolina dough for next time I bake, let it rise, then put it in the fridge to 'ripen' for a couple of days. The flavor improves over a few days in the fridge before baking.

Suki loves to play turbo ball...

2009-07-02T12:57:00.003-04:00

Our new adopted kitty Suki has lots of energy. We got her these Bergan brand track-ball cat gizmos.
She seems to enjoy them...

Forming the beds and paths...

2009-06-30T17:58:00.007-04:00

Today we started shaping the beds and paths in the garden. We still have to stay well clear of the outside perimeter of the garden, to allow the fence people ample room to install the big fence that will keep out the marauding woodchucks, rabbits and deer.
But the interior of the beds are now plant-able even though not quite finished. Once the fence is put in (two weeks from now) we'll be able to finish the path that goes all the way around the garden inside the fence.
There are three long vegetable beds running down the length of the garden, and one wider bed on the end for blueberries, strawberries, and rhubarb. The long thin beds are 3 1/2 feet wide, and the two paths between them are two feet wide to accommodate a wheelbarrow.

I am terribly excited because now I can actually start planting seeds for a Fall crop! Hopefully not too many rabbits and deer will nibble the seedlings between now and when the fence is up. I can now start to sow seeds for lettuces, spinach, carrots, turnips, kohlrabi, radishes, beets, and various other Autumn loving vegetables. All I have to do is wait for it to stop raining.

Topsoil is in...

2009-06-29T10:43:00.008-04:00

The new topsoil mixed with compost has been brought in for the vegetable garden. It's about a foot deep. We'll be laying out the bermed beds and the mulched paths in the interior of the garden over the next few days, while trying to steer clear of the perimeter so the fence people can put the fence in around the outside a couple of weeks from now. Meanwhile, I should be able to work in the center area of the garden once we have the paths set.

New vegetable garden- breaking ground!

2009-06-25T19:05:00.005-04:00

Well, they broke ground for the new 40' x 18' vegetable garden in our back yard today- so exciting! They are coming back tomorrow to do some more digging and bring in some new topsoil and compost to heap in the middle. After that it's a matter of waiting for the fence to be installed around the perimeter (to keep all the marauding varmints and deer out), then lastly laying out and sculpting the beds and paths inside. I can't wait to starting planting! (but I'll have to). The robins feasted on some yummy nightcrawler worms after the excavators left for the day. Poor worms! That's me in the last two photos...

First worm castings harvest

2009-06-20T16:04:00.003-04:00

Well today I harvested my first tray of earthworm castings from my tiered worm compost bin. I really could have done it a couple of weeks ago but didn't have the time til today.

After carefully sorting out the remaining worms and returning them to the bin, I wound up with about 12 pounds of beautiful 'black gold'- pure worm castings. Looks and smells like gorgeous black crumbly forest earth- smells like the forest, too, really nice.

Every time now that I plant a new row of lettuce or radish or spinach seed in the garden, I'll work little trowelfuls of castings right in along the little seed trenches as I sow. Unlike manure, castings won't burn the seedlings. Castings are like compost but even better- more-nutrient rich, and all the nutrients are already broken down into a form that the plants can use immediately.

I'm excited! My next tray of castings should be ready to harvest in another month or so.

I've had the worm bin for about 2 1/2 months now, and it's done extremely well for me. The worms have been breeding and thriving. The worms are all now 'up to speed' and can process kitchen scraps more quickly than when they were starting out. I'd estimate that they consume and process about 7 pounds of kitchen scraps per week now. I hope to increase that to 10 pounds per week soon, as the many babies mature. The worms have been multiplying happily and I must have about 30% more than when I started. It's said that their population size will automatically regulate itself according to the bin space and the food supply.
The worm bin is unobtrusively in the corner of the kitchen, and it never smells or attracts fruit flies or anything. I guess I must be keeping the bin conditions just right.

I like that after the initial purchase of bin and worms, it becomes an essentially free way of USING one's kitchen garbage and food scraps, converting it into healthy rich garden fertilizer...to help grow new fresh food! A very lovely cycle to start in motion.

Little garden filling up...

2009-06-17T15:46:00.005-04:00

Well things have certainly grown in two weeks since my last pictures!
The big hailstorm we had a couple days ago did shred some of the outer large lettuce leaves but the damage was less than I had feared. We ate most of the damaged leaves right away- and there is plenty more lettuce growing.
We are getting a lot of leaf lettuce now- more than we can eat really, and we're enjoying fresh salads almost every day.
The three varieties of radish are coming along nicely and we might get to eat some in another week or two. Lots of baby green tomatoes. This evening we had our first Swiss chard, stir-fried with rice and shrimp. I'm excited to see the romaine lettuce and the bok choy growing well too, though they are still small. The string bean bushes are getting lush and I had to trim back some of the leaves so they don't completely shade the developing radishes. I want to plant more scallions- the little row of green threads looks so pretty, but I want more scallions started! The only thing that has not been doing well is the cilantro. It has stayed small and keeps producing flowers rather than leaves. I may just yank it and plant more scallions there instead. Don't want to waste a single inch of space! Sort of like "square inch gardening" around here.... ;D

Our new kitty

2009-06-12T19:42:00.009-04:00

We had a sad 6 weeks. Of our three beloved cats, 8 year old Lydia got kidney failure and died. Then a week after that, our 20 year old Ellie kitty began to fail and died. Both kitties passed away peacefully at home with us, within a month of each other, after about two weeks illness each. We did all that we could to save them and make them comfortable.
Things were pretty glum in the house, and poor Pearl kitty who was left (our 9 year old silver Maine coon cat) was understandably confused and worried, both her longtime companions having 'disappeared'.

We went to the animal shelters near us and carefully looked over all the kitties needing homes. After much consideration of various cats, we picked one to adopt into our family. She had been taken from an abuse situation, had been emaciated and sick with infections, and the end of one ear had to be amputated. She recovered very nicely after weeks in the Humane Society shelter being nursed back to health and then spayed. We think she is between 2 and 3 years old, since she still had many kittenish characteristics.

We've named her Suki.

Suki has lifted our hearts completely and is such a sweet delight! She is the most affectionate cat I have ever known, giving face kisses and cuddling us all the time, following us around the house cheerfully. We have completely fallen under her spell. It's a very happy match for all of us!

Pearl and Suki are tolerating each other much better than I had anticipated, both cats adapting pretty quickly to each other. We are giving Pearl lots of extra loving, of course (poor Pearl has been through a lot the past couple of months).
We can also feel good about giving a desperate homeless cat from the Humane Society a good 'forever home'.
I hope you too consider adopting your next pet from your local Humane Society or animal shelter. If you can't adopt, then consider making a small donation to support the good work they do! Every little amount you can give helps eliminate the suffering of desperate innocent animals.

Welcome home, little Suki!

Two semolina loaves

2009-06-08T18:32:00.004-04:00

Yesterday I baked two loaves of semolina bread, side by side in cast iron Dutch oven pots in my oven. The loaves get lowered gently right on their sheets of parchment paper into the hot pots, and the lids are put on tightly during the first half of baking time to trap steam and produce a crispy golden crust. the parchment bakes right along with the bread and helps keep it from sticking to the pot. You can see here how the parchment 'bowls' look after baking in the Dutch ovens.

I topped one loaf with poppy seed, and one with sesame seed. Brushing with a water/cornstarch glaze before sprinkling on the seeds makes the seeds stick to the loaf.
They came out very nicely. I really like baking bread in the iron pots!

Both loaves have barely lasted through dinner and breakfast, what with company staying here overnight.

Little garden is filling up....

2009-06-04T22:37:00.005-04:00

I am still in the planning process for my new large vegetable garden, but in the meantime, my little tomato patch has become much more than just tomatoes now.
I rearranged the stone path to take up less space, and decided to use the spaces a little more intensively for quick growing greens and radishes.
I planted quite a few rows of new seed up and down along every single available space...lots of lettuce (leaf and romaine), 3 kinds of radishes (cherry red, white, and French Breakfast), bok choy, scallions, and more chard. Things are growing! The scallion and bok choy seeds have not popped up just yet, but I expect them to shortly. I think I've crammed in about as much as I can from the little garden. I plan to rotate the spots for lettuce and radishes as they get used up and need to be re-seeded every couple of weeks or so.

We've been eating leaf lettuce and chard in salads already (3 salads this past week!), and I'm now thinning radish seedlings. Today I saw a 1" toad hopping around under the lettuces.
I am so pleased with how much more I am growing (and hope to harvest) from my little space now! It's been about 20 years since I last grew my own lettuce, in Puerto Rico. Interestingly, the same variety- Black Seeded Simpson!

Here is a "Before" picture from almost a month ago.

And here are the new pictures from this morning: