Mon 14 May 2012
As the solar system was being installed on our house, in August 2011, my friend Rob from 360Chestnut came by to film the process and to do an interview with yours truly.
and
Sun 13 May 2012
What did you do on Mother’s Day?
I split firewood. A cord and a half it it.
Had some help from DH, of course. And we rented a log splitter. The maul you see there in the picture is just for show. Had we done this the old-fashioned way I’d be writing this from the hospital. It was hard enough as it was, and we went an hour less than we had planned, DH coming down with a cold Amie had brought home.
I do love hard physical work. I was thinking of a friend who is experiencing problems with her heart. I was thinking, what if that was me? I wouldn’t be able to do this. But then I would of course simply do other things, like write that book of reflections I’ve always wanted to write. And learn to play the cello.
It’s just that, at this point in my life and physical state, I can do the log splitting, the garden beds, the lugging around of five-gallon buckets of water, and all that equally good stuff.
The bees (Hive 1), in case you’re wondering, still haven’t swarmed. It’s like waiting past your due date!
Tue 8 May 2012
After checking on a new beekeeper’s new hive, I rushed home to inspect my own hives.
I found Hive 3 doing well: lots of eggs, and brood in all stages, also lots of caps, and two frames entirely drawn out and capped, two more getting close. The Queen had lots of attendants around her, grooming her. I had been worried about this queen, as I had to release her from her cage myself.
Hive 2 was a different story. My first impression was that the busiest frames were too light. Also, no caps anywhere. A closer look revealed no eggs and no larvae either. Strange, I am sure I saw some of those when I last checked, on April 26, but they seem to have disappeared. The queen wandered seemingly aimlessly, without attendants. I even saw one worker react nastily to her – bad sign. And… no supersedure cells, possibly because none of the available eggs were viable.
Then I opened Hive 1, the three-year-old, strong one. Just the medium super revealed a wealth of mysteries. Weird comb, and queen cells, either supersedure ones or swarm cells. The latter would not surprise me. I’ve been expecting it to swarm for a while now.
So: two plans!
1. Pull a deep frame, with bees, brood, honey, swarm cells and all, from Hive 1 and move it into Hive 2. My bee teacher said the Hive 2 workers should accept this. That way I can save Hive 2, but Hive 1 will still swarm.
2. Find the old queen in Hive 1 (gulp!), move her with the frame she’s on and several more frames of brood and bees into Hive 2. This is called a split. That way I save Hive 2 AND it could just be there Hive 1 is fooled into thinking they’ve already swarmed, thereby forestalling a swarm.
In both cases I kill the failing queen in Hive 2. I read I should keep her body in a jar of alcohol. Apparently, if you soak several queens in alcohol to effectually make a “Queen tincture,” it can serve as a powerful lure for swarm traps.
I like experiment 2 best and am waiting for the first good weather moment to deal with it. It will depend on my finding the old queen, of course. Who knows if she’s still the one I got three years ago, with the blue dot.
But in case there is still a swarm, I will still set out a deep box with a couple of frames in an open, elevated spot and to bait it with lemon grass oil. Ideally I’d catch the swarm while it’s still balled up in a tree somewhere, waiting for its scouts to find a new nest. But if I can’t, then maybe they’ll choose my box.
I’ve written to my neighbors to keep them apprised and to forestall any alarm at finding a ball of 40.000 bees in their bushes! I’ve received “cools” and “excitings!” back. I have the BEST neighbors! (Beekeepers: keep your neighbors in the loop!)
Tue 1 May 2012
Earth Day is Our Day, First Edition, 2012
Posted by brooklinemama under activism , bees , TransitionNo Comments
There were Segway rides
After our “sermons” on Sunday morning, April 29, we ran across the street to the Town Building (I just loved that, that we could just cross the street and be there). Behind the building lies the grassy “courtyard”, intersected by paths. It was already bustling with people, exhibitors setting up their tables, food stalls setting up shop. There was an organ, the Diamond Jubilee, pumping out great music, and past that, the Red Cross Donation Bus, already busy taking donations of blood. Teenagers were running around looking for the face paint, grownups were untangling power cords for the PA system. The MC was oiling his voice and guitar.
It was the quiet before the storm, before the official opening of Earth Day is Our Day, organized by the Wayland Schools Green Team and Transition Wayland. It was a great success, beyond our wildest dreams, really. There were over 50 exhibitors, and an estimated 400 visitors!
Not that I ever got a good idea of all that, since during the next four hours I was run off my feet keeping everyone happy and organized and the tents from flying off. Next year, someone remind me to schedule a relaxing holiday right after! But I had fun in a different way, seeing all those happy faces, kids’ and adults’ alike, and just seeing so many people there because we had made it happen.
The tables for Transition Wayland and the BEElieve Beekeepers group were well-manned and especially the latter – all decked out with bee equipment and bee products – was very popular. Our State Rep, Tom Conroy, who lives in Wayland, signed up! It was very sunny and I had forgotten my cap, so grabbed one of the props. After that I was a magnet for bee questions.
(Photo by Peg Mallett)
Check this page to see many more pictures of the events, and check back there often because we’ll soon be adding press coverage. Happy Earth Day, everyone. And now I need a nap!
Tue 1 May 2012
Transition Wayland speaks at First Parish, Wayland, for Earth Day
Posted by brooklinemama under activism , Transition1 Comment
Sunday April 29 was a big day for me!
In the morning, I and my Transition Wayland colleagues Andrea Case and Wen Stephenson spoke before the First Parish congregation. First Parish, as my fellow speaker Wen Stephenson said, is like the nerve center of Wayland. I call it home because I have been going to services there and teaching Sunday school for almost a year now. The congregation has a Green Sanctuary committee that takes care of one Service a year. This year, it was Transition-themed. How cool is that! You can read my remarks, as well as those of my colleagues, here. I’ve copied mine below. Enjoy.
It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.
That is my hero, Wendell Berry, who never hesitates to say what is difficult. And to say it so beautifully.
I was asked to explain what Transition is. Now how shall I do that?
I could talk about climate change and its implications, like a 4 meter sea-level rise, a 6 degree centigrade temperature rise, increased droughts and floods and corn that won’t grow. I could also stress that the need for mitigation of climate change is now equaled by the need for adaptation to what is already locked in. Or I could propose solutions, like improving efficiency, sustainability and resilience by relocalizing, as much as we can, our food and energy production and the skills that we’ve outsourced. Let me add, also, that the only way to make that happen is by building community, embracing interdependence and working together, face-to-face.
But I don’t just want to explain what Transition does. I want to do Transition. And if what I am doing here, right now, is Transition, then I need to call you to action. Transition, you see, is not just a group of people, or eventually an entire town. It is not just a tool box, not just an idea or even, a dream. Transition, you see, is not a noun. It is a verb, and an imperative at that.
Consider the word change. As a noun it is coming, whether you want it or not. As a verb, it is either something that happens to you – when something changes you – or something that you do yourself: you do the changing. Transition is all about the latter. It is you and me making the change.
The question then becomes: how do you do that?
In a moment, Andrea will talk about small-scale changes in the household. And Wen will take us to the global level where we need to act upon our government. Those are the actions that most people think of when they think change. You have probably changed your light bulbs, some of you have even hung a clothesline. You have probably written to your Senator or signed a petition, even walked in a rally.
Those are all necessary. The problems are enormous and we must put into action all the solutions we can think of. But sometimes it might feel like individual changes are not enough. And sometimes it might feel like your voice doesn’t reach the upper echelons. Then hopelessness and cynicism tend to take root.
Then may I suggest Transition? Transition does what my hero Berry recommends. He writes: “Our understandable wish to preserve the planet must somehow be reduced to the scale of our competence.” He writes that the question, then, is not how to care for the planet or humanity, but how to care for each of our millions of human and natural neighborhoods.
The neighborhood, the town, is the middle ground between the shorter shower and national politics. It is the place where what you do gets multiplied a hundred- then a thousandfold, and where you can continue to see the effects of your actions.
Transition invites you to return often to the scale of your competence, even if only to find in it the battleground where you can come into your power and slay your cynicism. To find in it, also, the fair ground where you can share your dreams and celebrate.
A call to action, then. If something is wrong, then you have the right to be upset about it, and the responsibility of hope that you can do something about it, and the duty to do it. You all have ideas about what should be done but isn’t being done. Well, be like those Transcendentalists, whom we hold so dear here, of whom someone once wrote that in this brave new world a thinker was “called on to justify himself on the spot by building an engine, and setting something in motion.”
That’s what Transition is: it is that engine!
It is no small thing that I — no, that the times — ask of you. To become an activist, to move yourself, to be the one you have been waiting for. It is no small thing but you don’t have go first anymore, and you don’t have to go it alone. The engine is already running, chugging along on the scale of our competence in the middle ground, which is already bustling with people. I hope that you will come to be among all those people, at noon at the Town Building, that you will come to work on the engine at later Transition events.
Because Transition is only that: it is what you do when you find your power.
Wed 18 Apr 2012
Finally, our friend’s birthday poem. This one was accompanied by a linocut print made by DH with some help from Amie. We chose that beetle because of its name.
Mon 16 Apr 2012
It was 90 F today. April 16 and 90 degrees! Poor Boston Marathon runners. Poor spinach seedlings. Poor beekeeper in her hot bee suit. The bees didn’t seem to mind it much, probably because until Saturday they were in Georgia, where they were bred. I shook two packages. So glad I got it all done (assembling the frames, building the hive boxes, and some last minute painting). Now there are three:
DH took footage of the hiving (almost) from beginning to end:
Wed 11 Apr 2012
After the frames, the boxes. The priority is two hive stands and four deeps, two for each of the new colonies and one for a swarm box. The four mediums as honey supers, and one shallow that I want to experiment with will be for later. I still had two bottom boards, among which is one full one which I need to transform into a screened one, and already picked up two assembled telescoping outer covers and two inner covers for a song.
We cut the wood to size the other day, following this pdf.
You can’t use 1 x 10s for deeps, which are standardized at 9 5/8″ to fit frames that are 9 1/4″ (leaving the “bee space” in between frames). 1 x 10 are not true, not 10 inches wide. I found on the net that when the Langstroth hive was standardized, a 1 x 10 also wasn’t true: it was 9 5/8″ wide, so that’s what the beekeepers and supply manufacturers took as the size for a deep and a deep frame. Since then, 1 x 10s have shrunk some more, down to only 9 1/4″ wide. So you have to use a 1 x 12 to fit in a deep and cut of a bit. You can get one box out of an eight footer. Same for the mediums and shallows: you have to use a 1 x 8″ . The wood we cut off won’t be wasted, really, because we can use it for rim boards.
We routered the rabbets on the short sides that the frames will rest on. Then it was time to cut the box joints, which we did with a dado, a combination of blades on the table saw. Our first jig made the joints too tight, making the wood split when we knocked it together. We built a good one.
We even waxed the sliders that fit into the grooves in our table saw with beeswax. Worked like a charm!
Here’s DH working the jig. He’s so good to help his wife with her slightly out of the ordinary projects!
Oh, did I tell you, that this would be a LOT more work without a router and a table saw? And a dado set?
The pine was giving us some trouble. Some of the planks are bowed, making the fit less than perfect (but the bees will propolyze any gaps). The wood also split on us, like in the picture above. I’ll fix it with glue. It’s just one notch, so it won’t harm the overall strength of the joint.
The frames fits. The box is square. Time to glue the corners together with a bit of Elmer’s exterior wood glue, then to immediately pre-drill a couple of the pins and hammer in the 1 1/2″ 6d galvanized nails so that the corners won’t shift as the glue dries. Then I pre-drilled and hammered in each pin.
Here’s the end result of a couple of days work (which could all have been done in one, long day), ready for some paint:
Wed 11 Apr 2012
New Pots, and Clay Creations by Amie
Posted by brooklinemama under arts/crafts (children's) , arts/crafts (grown-ups') , games and toys , potteryNo Comments
Last session Amie also took classes with my fabulous pottery teacher, Lisa Dolliver. These are some of the pieces she made:
The unicorn is a piggy bank. At the moment it has a clay blue heart sitting in its slot. Aren’t they lovely?
That, by the way, is a Go board: DH and Amie are learning the game together. Amie has quite the knack for it, and loves it. The read the book and play at least two games every night.
These are my pots.
I was very productive: three small plates, three medium ones, one vase, two soup bowls, one tumbler (pic below), and two large bowls, the largest pieces I’ve ever thrown, but I needed help from Lisa to do it. As you can see if you compare with previous sessions, I’ve found a pattern in the glazing. The idea is to make a dinner set. Also to take the pressure off me when glazing – I don’t like glazing much.
They stack up!
Tue 10 Apr 2012
After planting hundreds of fava beans, peas and trellises, and transplanting chard, lettuce and spinach, I looked at that hive, saw the bees hard at work, and knew it was now or never to go deep into the hive to see if I needed to do a brood box reversal.
First I took off the outer cover, then the and inner cover (with the rim board firmly propolized to it). Then I lifted the top brood box off and set it aside. They get heavy, those deeps filled to the brim with bees, comb and honey!
I pulled two central frames from the equally busy bottom box and ascertained that it had only food in it, mostly pollen. No grubs, no eggs. That meant the nest was all in the top box. This, according to many, is an precondition to swarming: the nest moves upward and if it finds there is no more space up there, they might leave (half of the colony leaves with the queen). I would not like a swarm! I’d want to catch it and keep it, of course, but there is no guarantee whether I would be able to.
I had supered the hive – put a honey super on top - but the bees have only just started drawing out the comb on those frames. I also don’t want the queen in the super, which is supposed to be a honey super, not a third brood box. So I decided right then and there to reverse the two brood boxes. I had read on the forums that the best time to do this is “on the dandelion”. I looked around at the many fat dandelions in my yard and took that as a confirmation.
I was pretty curious about the bottom board. Last year when I lifted off the brood boxes it was carpeted with an inch of dead bees. Not so this time:
Not one dead bee. The white stuff is the wax paper my sugar slabs were served on. It had disappeared, and there it was, shredded. Did the bees harvest the wax off of it?
By now the ladies were pretty excited. Obviously. Foragers were returning to a hive that was cut up into many parts, all spread about, and there was light everywhere (bees like it dark in their house), and the wind was either chilling them or the sunshine was overheating them. The bees were all over me, taking a special liking to my gloves. I have never been stung through those calfskin gloves, and I didn’t want this to be the first time, just when I was handling a 60 lbs deep full of already agitated bees. So, no dwindling, no camera work – better get on with it!
Switch boxes, quick check for swarm cells (queen cells that will be at the bottom of the frames), then add super, rim board with inner cover, outer cover. Done! Walk away.
Reversing brood boxes is a pretty stressful action for the colony. Imagine someone comes to your house and reverses first and second floor! Some beekeepers won’t do it, as it’s unnatural, but others do it as part of swarm prevention. I did it last year but the situation was very different then (there was no action, no food, no bees, no nothing in the bottom box). Still, this colony is so strong, they’ll handle it. If not, they’ll swarm…
It’s one big puzzle of which I don’t have half the pieces. But the uncertainty and surprises are part of the fun.
