MamaStories

When Tom (the hive inspector) pulled out one of the frames, he said it looked like perfectly good honey and I could  harvest it.There would be another flush of nectar at the end of summer, so whatever I took they would easily rebuild and refill.

So yesterday  I did just that.

The bees only got upset with me taking it when I started brushing off the 200 or so bees that were working on the frame. It was a quick job  and I walked away with a clear frame within minutes. The point, I’ve found, with beekeeping is to set your goal, to go in and act resolutely and confidently, and leave things in order.

One side was entirely capped, the other had about 1/10 of uncapped honey on it. I harvested only the complete side – never harvest uncapped honey because the bees haven’t evaporated it enough and it will ferment your entire batch.

First I sliced/sawed) off the wax caps with a bread knife warmed in a glass of hot water (a serrated knife would have been better, in hindsight). I didn’t want to ruin the comb, so at first I set the frame at and angle and let it drip, but it was soon clear that I’d have to wait days to get enough honey out that way. During that time, the honey would soak up humidity from the air, making it unsuitable.

Letting go of my hopes to keep the comb intact, I pressed the comb with the back of a spoon. The wax of the cells is so fragile , it gave away almost immediately. I squeezed the honey out with the spoon, trying to keep as much wax out as possible. I transferred this honey into a fine mesh colander and let it drip through into a stainless steel pot. Then I scraped off the wax comb – I thought it would take the bees less time to rebuild it from scratch than to clean that mess and rebuild it. This mess still had a lot of honey in it, so I set that to drip in a different colander, for more immediate use, since it took longer to drip out than the first batch.

Altogether we collected 2 lbs. 1 oz. of gold!

Then I returned the frame – the other side  completely untouched – to the hive. The bees weren’t happy but I came away with no injuries. My husband helped carry the tray with the frame. You have to be careful not to leave even one drop of honey on the outside of or anywhere near the hive, because this might attract other bees who will then rob the hive. This can seriously weaken even a strong colony. It’s a good thing I didn’t wait until today to return the frame because even after 4 hours the bees had already built a lot of bur comb and propolis into the gap.

It’s all for Amie – 1 teaspoon a day to combat her allergies – so I won’t be presenting friends and family with jars of liquid gold, yet. But, wow, 2 lbs off one side of a frame! A deep frame, to be sure, but still. When Tom said I could have 100 lbs next year, if all goes well, I was skeptical, but no longer.

How does it taste?

Mmmmm. Incomparable!

Hive inspection by the county inspector

That’s one whole frame full of good honey, both sides. I’ll harvest it when the rain holds up.

~

I apologize for the dearth of posts. Our household has been in such a flux and beset by crises these last few months, it has been hard to sit and write something down. Here is what has happened so far.

June

- my 13-year-old nephew arrives, we get him from JFK and bring him home. Car breaks on way home.

July

1 week of farm camp for Amie and my nephew. Have car problem(s) fixed over several visits to mechanic.

- MIL arrives

- chipmunks harvest tomatoes and eggplants

- letter from our Town giving us 2 weeks to fix an unknown leak in the main water pipe

- lice!

- trip to NYC to drop off nephew, come home and have water pipe fixed – but good news: insurance will pay – deductible

August

- FIL arrives

- leave for 1 week on the Cape. Friends (3) from NYC come to visit for 1st weekend, after which the mom leaves, the dad and 6-year-old and 9-year-old golden retriever stay on

- friend from Belgium comes to visit, sleeps in tent because cottage is so packed. Leaves after 3 days

- bring 7 people home

- find out we need to replace all tires on both cars

- surprise for our birthdays: SIL arrives

- mom from NYC arrives

- big birthday party, 50 people in back yard, main drain gets clogged, basement flooded with reeking water. Friend from NYC devotes the evening to cleaning up the basement!

- NYC friends and dog leave. For hours try to fix clogged pipe ourselves, no use

- lice?

- cave and get plumber: he fixes it in 1/2 hour! Clean basement

future

- SIL will leave this week, FIL the week after that. A second visit from my Belgian friend expected, plus a visit from another friend from Belgium. Kindergarten starts. MIL will leave mid September. My parents come in October.

We’ve been loving it: family, friends and fun. Amie basically had a two-week-long, uninterrupted play date with her friend from NYC. But it is hectic, so I haven’t been able to do much of what I planned to do – work (harder) in the garden, build a shed, read more about herbalism, blog.

~

{UPDATE 24 August}

add to the list, for today:

car with MIL, FIL and SIL breaks down in the middle of their shopping trip

While I’m trying to get tow-truck and mechanic arranged for them,

Amie wakes up from an uncharacteristic nap with a 102 F fever

It doesn’t end…

This morning I had a visit from my county’s hive inspector. He was a nice man with almost 20 years of experience. We talked about Italian bees vs Carnolians, packages vs. swarms, treating versus letting the bees fight it out, win or loose. The inspection showed a good amount and variety of healthy bees, lots of brood – eggs, larvae, pupae – and quite a few frames loaded with honey.

We decided to take the honey super off. The bees had not drawn it out and wouldn’t do so anymore anyway. The inspector did confirm that I shouldn’t hesitate to pull one frame of honey from the top brood box. Amie’s allergies have been acting up and I am keen on gathering some of this local honey for her.

The inspector pulled out a clump of drone cells. Varroa mites are attracted to drone cells  because drones take 4 more days to develop than workers.  Safely and comfortably inside the capped cell with their defenseless victim, varroa destructor can have on average 2.2 – 2.6 offspring, compared to 1.3 – 1.4 offspring when on worker brood. The inspector burst one of the cells and we could immediately spot a mite. I brought the piece inside to show everyone at my house (that is, at the moment, 6 adults, 2 kids, 1 dog).

I sliced open the dark cell and so in fact released the drone that must have been just about to hatch.

After depositing the drone outside, I opened the larval cells and was disappointed to see that there were more mites, sometimes two, in each of them.

yeah, those are not eyes

Varroa does proliferate in Summer, so the minimal mite count in June no longer counts. I’ll put in another sticky board soon to see what the mite population is now.

The cucumbers are finally coming in. Amie was happy to harvest some, though she won’t eat them. These, maybe… Still no zucchinis or squashes in sight, just like last year.

Of the dry beans, Jacob’s Cattle is the first one ready for picking. I love the sounds of the hard  beans rattling in their dry pods. They are works of art, each one. All of garbanzo beans were harvested by unknown critters. I was so looking forward to tasting one fresh from the pod.

I’ve harvested all my onions now: 40 medium to small sized ones. That’s much better than last year. Next year I can transplant them even closer together. One 4×8 bed could easily hold 250 of these.

Harvest of 31 July 2010

As you can see we’re eating mostly small tomatoes: Sungold and Be My Baby cherry tomatoes as well as husk cherries, and Ida Gold and Heinz. Mainly they’re the ones in the tops of the plants, where the squirrels and/or chipmunks can’t reach. I estimate that almost half of my tomato harvest has gone to them.

The big Brandywines are still ripening, and I hope I get the chance to harvest some. The eggplants are fattening up, but here again the critters are at work. It’s heartbreaking to go into the hoop house first thing in the morning and find yet another juvenile eggplant has disappeared.

In the big harvest picture you can see the three red peppers that came in so early on the overwintered pepper plants. What a treat! There are plenty of green peppers growing, some ready for harvesting, but I’m so fond of the red ones. The hot peppers are coming in too, one or two each week: that’s plenty for me. They’re hot!

We’re eating kale and chard whenever we want it, and I will start putting them up when they grow beyond the bounds of our appetites.  The lettuce  I sowed last month is hanging on in our hot, dry weather, but it’s not growing. We’re still picking leaves off the old lettuce plants, but they’re pretty bitter by now.

chamomile – it’s a start

I’m also taking and drying herbs, such as mints, comfrey, chamomile and feverfew. I’m on the lookout for a good course in herbal medicine. If anyone can recommend a good book…

You know, I wouldn’t mind sharing my harvests with the critters, if only they weren’t so wasteful. They take, munch a few bites, then discard.  My garden is littered with half-ripe, half-eaten vegetables. I tried this product called Repels All, and it worked the first time around, but now, not so much anymore. Next up to try is cayenne pepper!

The bees have still not drawn out the honey super. What with the dry weather not many flowers are growing, so  there’s a nectar dearth. Hopefully it will pick up soon and we’ll have one super of honey – I might take out two or three frames but leave the rest for the bees to overwinter on. I did get to taste some! I broke some comb when taking off the super to peer in the nest boxes and there it was oozing. I couldn’t resist. I took off my glove, scooped some up and licked my finger through my veil. So sweet!

Last but not least, a fantastic Freeycyle haul! We were so lucky to catch these items, which the owner so generously putt out on her driveway. A chipper/mulcher which will need some work and an already much-used hammock with stand.

This is one more long update. Life is so full it’s tough to find a moment to sit and write it all down. But here goes…

Home-grown salads are a common fare nowadays: lettuce mix, beet “greens,” cherry tomatoes, onions, garlic scape dressing. I could throw in bell peppers too, but I’m letting them mature to red – one (from an overwintered plant)  is getting really close. We are also harvesting lots of tomatoes and green beans.

I took down all my favas. I had high hopes because the pods were so fat. But a 4′ by 2′ bed with about 20 plants yielded only 6.1 oz. de-podded and peeled favas: enough for one small appetizer!

I won’t be growing favas anymore, however delicious, and however interesting.  The following photo shows the mycorrhizal nodules on the roots of the plants when I pulled them (there were a few more blossoms, but the leaves and developed pods were developing a black spot).

Most of my brassicas bolted. Neat, a bolted cauliflower:

It’s like a space ship. I’m keeping it to see what happens next.

We’re also eating the scrumptious husk cherries, and we’re comsuming two gallons of mint ice tea (mixed mints) with honey a day. Then there are all the other culinary herbs, of which we use some immediately and dry the bulk. I’ll write about our drying setup soon – it’s our next big project.

I’ve also harvested quite a bit of propolis and wax comb from the hive, which is doing well. The top broodbox is heavy with honey. I put on the first honey super two weeks ago, with a queen excluder. The excluder is a grate through which only the worker bees can pass.  We put these between the broodboxes and the honey supers to keep the queen from laying eggs in the honey harvest. However, after 2 weeks the bees had drawn out no comb whatsoever, confirmation that they might be reluctant to do anything in there because of the lack of queen pheromone. So I removed the excluder for now, and will see what happens.

propolis and wax

As for the house, DH, my nephew and I put down a wooden floor on concrete footings in our previously dirt floor shed. The idea is to put up insulation and drywall and two large doors and it can be an almost-year-round woodworking shop. It’s great to have the table saw and lathe out of the porch. Getting all the stuff that was in there before back in, in an organized way, was my biggest challenge. You know how you end up with boxes and boxes of odds and ends…

And last but not least, we’ve also added one more member to the family: Amie’s grandmother has arrived from Singapore. This means lots of art is being made, about which later. And yummy Indian food!  So we’re five now: three adults, one teenager, one kindergartner. I  do love having a full house!

Amie and I went to visit our new friends of the Freecycle comfrey, L and S, last week. Their raspberry garden was bursting with plump juicy berries. L helped Amie pick, she is so good with young kids. Amie was in seventh heaven, practically yelling with the fun of it. I chatted and picked and in less than 40 minutes we had gathered one pound and seven ounces. Later at Whole Foods I saw 6 ounces of organic raspberries for sale at $6. Wow. So:

raspberries from friends: 2 lbs (from two pickings)

We also picked our first strawberries. There are more ripening, I think in the end we’ll have about 100 berries. Amie again had a blast picking them after we removed the net.

strawberries: 3 oz.

We’re getting a good daily harvest of green beans every day now, from one 4×8 bed of Provider and Maxibel:

green beans: 1 lb 1 oz

I had to pull some pea vines because the chipmunks uprooted them. Still, incredibly – we hit 100 F yesterday – the remaining peas are still producing pods and even flowers.

peas (mix): 1 lb. 8 oz.

At the moment they’re straggling in one at a time, but the first big batch of tomatoes is on the verge of ripening and soon though there will be too many to eat day by day. Better get that solar dehydrator built.

tomatoes: 2.2 oz

cherry tomatoes: 6

Other harvests:

radishes: 4 edible ones (1 really good one)

garlic scapes: 10 (made them into Daphne’s salad dressin: delicious!)

garlic: 8 bulbs for eating, 8 for sowing

cauliflower: 1 tiny one, the rest bolted

carrots: 3 ounces of the baby kind, and a big bunch of green leaves that went into soup.

comfrey: 1 stuffed bucket for compost, though it looks like I should harvest it for skin salves.

The fava beans are in the pipeline, they are huge and kinda grotesque, but I’m waiting for a chance to make some Fool Mudamas to pick them. The onions have all fallen over and they are looking fat and juicy. I’ll be able to pull them soon as well, adding yet another empty bed. Time to plant Fall and Winter crops. Maybe the brassicas will do better in the Fall this year – all my brassicas, but (so far) the Brussels Sprouts, bolted.

~

The borage is in bloom and the bees just love it. At my last inspection I found my queen – I thought she had been superseded. I tall looked well enough for the first  honey super to be added on. If we have some honey I will be happy, because local honey can help Amie’s respiratory trouble which – we think – is due to allergies to pollen. And how local can honey get!

~

My nephew from Belgium arrived last Monday and he will be staying here for a month. He’s a strong and friendly thirteen-year-old who can help a lot around the house and garden, and he and Amie get along so well. He’s a teenager but he can still play. What a boon it is to have him here.

Exactly three days after installing the sticky board underneath the hive, I pulled it out. Fascinating what’s all on that sticky board: dropped pollen, nectar, honey and propolis, dirt and dust, little insects and… varroa mites.

Yes, there were mites, tiny fat disks a dark reddish brown, all of them stuck to the board and some of them still alive, little legs squirming. Too bad, suckers!

Using our magnifying glass I counted and Amie kept score. Thirty of them. I was alarmed. Maybe I had even thought my bees wouldn’t have mites, even though I knew that all bees in most parts of the world have mites.

But my bee books told me that the threshold – the point at which you need to consider treatment – is a “mite fall” (the amount of mites that fall onto the sticky board as the bees grooms themselves) of 40-50 a day. What a relief!

I’ll do another mite count in the middle of Summer, when the mite population is at its highest. In the meantime I didn’t put the sliding board back in, so now the hive is open at the bottom except for the screen. We are getting some more hot and humid weather and the bees will welcome the extra ventilation.

The bad news is that my camera seems to be on the fritz. Everything works  but it will no longer focus – a severe handicap. Maybe I pressed some button that I don’t know about. I wish I could take a picture of the sticky  board for you, and of my kale substitute for sauerkraut (so yummy and much easier to grow than cabbage), and of Amie’s latest drawings. I am so dependent on my camera, not in the least for blogging inspiration…

Bees coming in on the landing board

The hive was getting very crowded, with 8 frames entirely built out, so today I added the second brood box. The colony should build out 10 new frames much faster than they did the previous 9 ones, because there are many more bees now, and the colony is growing every day.

I also replaced the full bottom board with a screened one, which will improve ventilation over the next couple of months. This bottom board has an added feature. It has a slot for a board that slides in through the rear of the hive (handy, because I won’t have to disturb the bees). On that board I put a sticky board to trap all the mites that fall off the bees. If you have a full bottom board, mites can just crawl back up again. If you have a screened bottom board, they fall onto the ground and can’t make it back, but you also can’t count them.  I will return in 3 days to see how many have fallen onto the sticky board, and I’ll be able to do an assessment of the mite population in my hive.

I wanted to build this bottom board myself, but with DH away for a conference I couldn’t figure out which of our vast array of power tools to use (and how), and the colony couldn’t wait until he gets back. So over the weekend Amie and I drove to a beekeepers supply warehouse, where I stuck strictly to my shopping list, and I bought this thing.  I wish now I hadn’t forgotten to photograph its ins and outs, so I could reproduce it…

In order to put this new bottom board on, I had to lift the first, filled brood box and put it aside, and I was surprised at its weight. Inspections will get harder from now on. Imagine moving and inspecting two brood boxes, three honey supers…

One of the neatest thing with this hive manipulation was the honey bee – bumblebee fight. Just as I arrived, a big fat bumble was approaching the hive – they try to get in and rob the nectar and honey. A guard bee was warning it off. I grabbed my camera and took some pictures. Not the best – it was cloudy – but it gives an impression of the situation:

Warning stance?

The honey bee gets her stinger into the bumblebee!

The bumble bee managed to get the writhing bee off her, then beat a retreat. The bee of course perished right there. What a saga!

Bees bearding the hive? Or just lots of traffic. Here’s a little video. Most of the noise is generated by the bees:

Garlic scapes ready to pick – I’m waiting for a hot afternoon

These are ready as well, but I’m holding out for red peppers  (these are the overwintered pepper plants)

Something pretty in the side bed, don’t know what

The comfrey patch: all the transplanted roots and shoots made it

This was the best surprise in one of the potted cauliflowers. It was not there two days ago, and now it is. I’ll have to wrap it up as soon as it stops raining. The cauliflowers in the beds are bolting, I’m afraid.

I wrote last time about my concern that my colony is behind. At my last inspection they still hadn’t drawn out (built wax comb onto) enough frames to warrant the second brood box. Still, my inspection indicated that the queen would soon run out of immediately available space to lay eggs. In the summer a good queen can lay 1500-2000 eggs a day!

So yesterday I went in to move one of the empty outside frames in couple of spots in.

When bees build comb and then fill it up with brood lives in two boxes, they will always use it for brood {UPDATE: this turns out not to be true: the bees can clean out honey and use the cell for brood}. As the new bee emerges from her cocoon, her pupal lining stays behind and is not cleaned out – neither are waste and bits of pollen and propolis. Over the years, brood comb, then, gets darker, even black. Since the chance of disease rises and the cells become smaller with each new shedding of a cocoon, brood comb needs replacing every four or so years (though it depends). Comb filled with honey will always use be honeycomb {UPDATE: nope}, which is lighter in color, because each cell always gets cleaned out totally when the bees go into their honey stores.

The brood nest (adult bees, eggs, larvae and pupae) forms a sphere in the middle of the hive. When you add a second box on top, the bees will gradually move the nest up. By winter, the nest will be in the top box. In spring you reverse the boxes, so the nest is in the bottom box again. And so forth.

My brood (B) nest, confined as yet to one single box, was honey-bound: it was enclosed on both sides with honeycomb (H), and not large enough.

One of the solutions is to put the second  brood box on top: no less than ten empty frames. But it is desirably that the bees draw out all the frames in both boxes. This means the beekeeper often needs to move frames around. I moved the empty first frame into the third slot, in between two frames of brood, so the bees will draw it out and fill it with brood.

This is what I love about beekeeping (or what I have experienced of it so far). It is like a good game: rule driven, with a challenging array of variations. You observe patterns, deduce what is going on, and manipulate to get the best outcome. But the game is much bigger than that. All that the bees do, all that the weather brings, all that the flowers offer and all the interference from other animals and beekeepers, etc., it is all rule-driven: it has causes, reasons. Most of these are natural.  And nature is vast. We, beekeepers, have very limited insight in them. So the game is new every time. Keeps you on your toes.