MamaStories

I waited impatiently for that “warm” day when I can go out to the hive and do a quick inspection. 40-45 F is the minimum advised temperature at which you can open the cover, have a very quick look, deposit any food on top of the bars, and close it up. No more.

In preparation I read up on what I could possibly find in there (it is, after all, my first Winter as a beekeeper) and what to do under which circumstances. I made a sugar fondant that I poured into molds, defrosted a pollen substitute patty, and made a spacer rim which will keep the cover from squishing the food.

Sugar Fondant Recipe

1. make a 1:2 (sugar:water) syrup (boil for 1 minute to make all the sugar dissolve)
2. boil 3/4 cup of water
3. gradually add 1 cup of sugar and 1 cup of syrup
4. let the temp go up to 238 F (this takes a while, a trick is to cover the pot if your thermometer allows it, then immediately take off lid and off heat
5. let cool down without disturbing it
6. when cool to the touch, mix briskly (it should lighten in color)
7. I’m also adding Honey-Bee-Heatlhy (1 tsp for 1 quart)
8. pour into waxed mold – make ‘em thin so they fit the rim space.

The spacer rim is made out of a landing board I am not using.

Today it registered a whopping 50 F, the hive was in the sun, and there was no wind. DH came along to take pictures and help.

I didn’t know what to expect. I saw some bees flying out a few weeks ago, and there were signs of undertaking (dead bee clean out), but I had no idea of the strength of the colony, its numbers, its food supply. We went out without veils, and without bee gloves. Here is the hive after clearing off the snow, removing the outer cover and the queen excluder I had put on top of the inner cover to keep the mice out.

As soon as I cracked the inner cover open with my hive tool…

Just lovely! What a wonderful surprise!

I kept my cool even though I soon had about a hundred bees flying at my face, stinging my gloves. But what to do? No time to run inside to get a veil. If you get stung it’s no big deal,  but if you leave the hive open for too long, they all die. Forge on!

The nest is up on top, to the front. There were many bees, though I dare not guess how many. They seemed strong. I didn’t have much time to look closely, but I didn’t see any honey in the frames surrounding them, so it was good that I came out with the food. I brushed some of the bees off the top and placed the spacer. In this picture you can see the bees attacking my gloves.

Then I deposited half the fondant and half the pollen patty on top, a little to the side of the nest.

Then I felt this frantic buzzing in my sleeve. I quickly brushed the bees that were still on the inner cover into the hive and replaced it, then added the outer cover. Then I ripped off my jacket. Whew! It must have looked pretty funny to someone observing us.

Soon lots of bees were flying out of the top opening. To keep the nest clean they don’t defecate for weeks at a time. A warm day like this allows them relieve themselves. Our jackets and the snow all around was spotted with that vile stuff. Time for laundry.

There was also a lot of cleaning out dead bees.

My gloves with some bees stuck to it by their stingers.

But here I am, miraculously unstung, and very, very happy.

Hurray for the bees!

DH and I tried to save it, but the snow inside the “boat”/”float” is unapproachable. The bent pipes are still holding it up, about 1 foot off the ground, which is good on the one hand because the beds inside aren’t (totally) crushed, but which is also a problem because we can’t just jump in and shovel out the snow. We tried to push it up from the inside, but the snow load is too heavy. Raking, shoveling or sweeping the snow out from the sides only got us so far.

So we decided to leave it as it is.

If we get a big thaw we can drain the thing and put it aside. I’ve given up on the produce inside – grown and nurtured from seed, transplanted with my Mom’s help in September, covered with row cover and later with the top heavy hoop house when we moved it from its Summer to  Winter position. If it survives, we rebuild the house or cover each of the beds with their own plastic.

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At least there was something to cheer about – it’s good to look around for those. The slightly warmer temperatures brought out some bees. They took cleansing flights and shoveled out a whole lots of dead bees. Signs of life, at least.

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I also washed my indoor plants again. I am resigned to having the whiteflies in the house, and that just like mites on the bees I can’t get rid of all of them, but can only  manage their numbers to tolerable levels. It felt good to wash off as many as I could, though. The plants look a lot happier too.

I also found a good trick to keep the soil from falling out of the pots and muddying up my bath tub:

The hive in the distance. Gotta go dig it out.

Some wading and digging and it’s done.

The new dead bees at the entrance means the bees in there are still alive, trying to clear out the die-off. They’re well insulated now in that blanket of snow, as long as the hive gets some ventilation. I am eager for that first day of temperatures in the higher 40s, when I can go and take a peek and maybe even move some honey frames closer to the cluster, or feed if necessary. I’ll have to wait a while still, because after some really cold nights (- 9 F = – 22.7 C) we’re looking at yet another snow storm.

I also put more seeds and nut in the bird feeder, which was on the way to the hive anyway.

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When not wading through 3 feet of snow, I am reading two new books, wonderful books by wonderful people, Nancy and Michael Phillips’ The Herbalist Way and Michael Phillips’ The Apple Grower. Wow, I want to learn and do too many things at once. Better start making up a budget…

Bubbles!

The Ginger Bug is bubbling so I’m moving on to the next stage of brewing a good beer: adding the culture to the base (water, more ginger and sugar/honey) and letting it ferment away some more. I’m making a little less than a gallon,  about 6 wine bottles, I should say.

DH made some wine a many years ago (it was really good), and so we have carboys in several sizes. You could use a milk container but 1) they’re plastic and 2) they’re not clear, which makes keeping an eye on the fermentation difficult. Also, 3) you need to find a way of closing the container, and that flimsy cap won’t do it, it’ll blow right off as the fermentation keeps going. DH’s carboy comes with a stopper with an airlock. Perfect!

A week to two weeks to my first ginger beer!

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I want to grow ginger root, or rather, ginger rhizome (Zingiber officinale). It seems challenging in a cold climate – it needs about 8-10 months of growing time and is not cold-hardy, so it has to come inside for a large part of the year. And inside I am still struggling with the whiteflies and the aphids - the neem seems to have gotten the majority, but the survivors are recolonizing rapidly. Keeping humidity-loving, pest-prone exotics happy in the extra dry winter indoors is not easy.

Nevertheless I want to give it a try, and while I’m at it I’ll also try to grow ginger’s relative, turmeric (Curcuma longa), another great medicinal and culinary rhizome, if I can find a fresh root somewhere.

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More snow is coming down. It’ll have added 7 to 8 inches by the time it’s done. I  don’t think that  I’ve ever seen so much accumulated snow in the twelve years that I’ve lived in the Boston area. School is canceled for an unprecedented second day int he history of our town. I will have to go out to dig out the hoop house and the beehive. I’ll have to wade through snow up to my knees. A plus is that it is making me take a closer look at where to put the chicken coop.

If we want to make a snowman we’ll have to do it today. After today we’re looking at a couple of days of excrutiating cold – minus 5 (F) Sunday night!

Right before we left for India and for quite some time while we were away the weather was bitter cold. Aside from the winter crop in the hoop house (all doing well), the weak spot on our property where cold matters is our bees.

I decided early on in the game not to medicate, feed or wrap the hive. We’re going to need bees that can thrive in this climate. If this colony does not survive, I will try another queen, or another breed of bee altogether, until I find the one that does. That will be the queen to breed queens from.

So it was with some trepidation that I approached my hive and saw the landing board strewn with dead bees. During winter there is no rearing of brood. The bees just huddle in a ball to stay warm and wait for warmer temperatures. If the queen and enough bees survive to get started up again in Spring, the colony has survived. Bees die before then, of the cold (if they’re on the outside of the ball), starvation and preferably just simply of age. Their fellow bees do not have the opportunity to rid the hive of the bee bodies. So they pile up.

But how to check if the colony is doing well? If I open the box, I’d chill them and stress them badly. So I put my ear to the hive box and heard…

a buzz!

There are some bees alive in there. It’s hard to know how many, what shape they’re in and how much food they have left and if they can reach it. That we will know in a couple of months, as soon as we are graced with a day warm enough to take a quick peek.

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While I was checking out the hive a bee clambered out, dragged herself to the edge of the landing board, keeled over and fell down into the snow. There she shuddered, then lay motionless. I picked her up and brought her inside, wanting to see if she had any deformities or mites piggy-backing on her. Soon after coming into the warmth, she revived and I quickly put a bell jar above her. I am now feeding her some honey (from her own colony). I wonder how long she will survive.

New Delhi street view

Well, we made it there and back again, but we’re not in good shape. The trip is 32 hours door to door, in 3 airplanes, through 4 airports and too many security checks. Disturbed sleep or near-total lack of it in my case (very light sleeper and insomniac), irregular eating of warmed-over food and, especially in my case, very little of it (mild but constant motion sickness), and the folding of time itself (Calcutta is 10.5 hours ahead of Boston), and the breathing in of the dense pollution of India’s big cities — all do a decent job of lowering one’s immunity to the billions of strange germs one comes into contact with.

Goofing around in front of the Taj Mahal

Long story short, we’re all of us down with jetlag, coughs and colds, and jetlag. It’s 4 am and Amie is watching How to Train Your Dragon and coughing incessantly. My nose is running and my ears are ringing and I want to go to sleep. DH, in Amie’s room (where her bed is but where she will not as yet deign to sleep) is awake too. Amie will miss school again tomorrow.

Rajastani apiary and mustard field

But it was worth it. We got to spend lots of time with family, including Amie’s great-grandmother, her grandparents, aunts and uncles and great-aunts and great-uncles and countless friends and other family. We flew North for five days to see Delhi, Agra (the Taj Mahal had just been cleaned up for Obama’s visit) and Jaipur, and even made a short trip to Shanteniketan (Tagore’s town, a three hour drive from Calcutta).

Lake garden at the Amber Fort in Jaipur

I got to see lots of apiaries in Rajastan, but was also introduced to the sad story of Indian bees and agriculture by an eighty-year-old botanist and organic activist and a West-Bengal based NGO. The news is not good. The temperatures are unusually high for winter,  the rivers and ponds are dried up (and the rainy season only starts in June). The pollution in the cities is atrocious, there is trash everywhere – much of it Western, no doubt – and most shops don’t even sell coke anymore: it’s all diet Coke. That little detail says so much.

Along the road to Shanteniketan

There is a lot to tell, but let me recuperate a bit first.

(Oh no, it’s another series!)

Amie and Mama and their first honey harvest

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I’m so sore from my workout yesterday. I was shredding leaves for two hours and also moved the contents of one (full) outside  Earth machine to the Earth Machine inside the hoop house. Going by last year’s experience, this compost won’t freeze  and will keep going if I turn it once in a while. It’ll absorb, retain  and even create heat inside the hoop house, and make compost, of course. The moving had to happen with buckets, because the wheelbarrow doesn’t fit through the hoop house door, and so I’m sore, and so today is a day of book learning.

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I’ve been benefiting tremendously from honey – nipped two colds in the bud with it so far – and am on the lookout for a good book that tells me all about honey, pollen, propolis and other so called “products” of the hive. Everything, that is, about how the bees use and make it, what it consists of, how to harvest it, how to cure it if it needs curing, extract it if it can be extracted, and how those foods and medicinals work. I haven’t found that book yet, but I did find some pieces of the puzzle in this little book by C. Leigh Broadhurst (Basic Health Publications, 2005). Each of  its 85 small pages is packed with nutritional and medicinal information. (Warning: If you are upset by animal testing, expect this text to refer to some horrendous scientific tests on animals.)

I’ve gathered and digested some interesting data from this  book and Wikipedia for you. Let’s begin with honey.

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• Honey and phytochemicals

Honey, when capped by the bees, is ready for consumption by the bees and by us, containing only 15-21% water (by weight). Uncapped honey as yet contains more water – the bees haven’t cured it enough – and will ferment if extracted. Besides water it consists almost entirely of carbohydrates: mostly simple sugars like glucose and fructose, and some sucrose, maltose and other sugars.

A small percentage of honey consists of phytochemicals. These comes from the  nectar source plants. These phytochemicals give (raw, unprocessed) honeys their distinct taste and aroma. They also confer medicinal benefits, because the plants made them to protect themselves from the bad effects of excess free radicals. These phytochemicals survive in raw honey and are passed on to us when we eat it. And what works for plants, works for us, because we too can suffer from excess ROM.

• Reactive Oxygen Metabolites or Free Radicals

Reactive Oxygen Metabolites (ROM) – a type of “free radical” – are  naturally created as byproducts of metabolism. The cells in plant and animal bodies are composed of many different types of molecules, which in turn consist of one or more atoms of one or more elements joined by chemical bonds. When cells metabolize (convert of food into energy), there occurs a chemical reaction that transfers electrons from a substance to an oxidizing agent. This reshuffling of electrons often results in ROM, oxygen molecules with an unpaired electron.

ROM are unstable and highly chemically reactive, attacking the nearest stable molecules and stealing an electron from them to gain stability. The attacked molecule then becomes a free radical itself.

• Out-of-Control Immune Response

Sometimes this process is  a desired one, actively created by the immune system, for ROM will also attack harmful bacteria and viruses and other pathogens. They also prompt enzymes that sterilize wounds by inflaming, heating the damaged tissue (making it swell) and thus flushing tissues of toxic substances.

However, the chain reaction of radicals creating radicals can get out of control, cascading into excess ROM. This inflames when inflammation is no longer necessary, causing chronic inflammatory conditions, like asthma, arthritis, tendonitis and ulcers.

An out-of-control ROM chain-reaction destroys cell membranes, reprograms DNA, forms mutant cells, causing  cancer, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, stroke, diabetes, even schizophrenia.  And the older we get, the more our cells suffer from such “oxidative stress”.

• Anti-oxidants

Now plant and human bodies can generally prevent this with chemical compounds called anti-oxidants. These terminate the chain of oxidation reactions by being oxidized themselves without in turn becoming free radicals. So, Broadhurst writes, they “act like chemical sacrificial lambs,” neutralizing ROM before they can irritate our cells. (p.9)

Human bodies make their own  antioxidant compounds, like bilirubin, uric acid, superoxide dismutases, catalase, glutathione peroxidase, etc.  But luckily, many of the antioxidant compounds in plants, especially fruits, vegetables and herbs also work for us. We can ingest their carotenoids, tocopherols, ascorbate, bioflavonoids, etc. directly, or indirectly by eating honey.

It is no wonder, then, that certain substances are the opposite of these beneficial foods. Polluted air and water, radiation, cigarette smoke and herbicides come with free radicals. So do refined foods, like hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated oils, most other heated oils, table sugar (sucrose, dextrose, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup) and white flours. None of these contain antioxidants, so the disastrous chain reaction is unchecked in them. When we ingest these, we  basically flood our bodies with ROM.

• Antioxidants in Honey: Phenolics
  

Water tupelo, Hawaiian Christmas Berry, and sunflower honey have a high antioxidant content, but they are well outmatched by buckwheat honey.  Buckwheat honey has a dark brown color  and a distinctive taste and aroma, imparted to it by a type of antioxidant called phenolics. All flavenoids, for instance, are phenolics. So, the darker a honey, the more phenolics it contains.

Other antioxidant compounds in honey are vitamin C (ascorbic acid), malic, gluconic and cinnamic.

All these antioxidants also give honey its incredibly long shelf life and make it an excellent preservative for other foods.

Broadhurst warns that honey should not be thought of as a substitute for fruits and vegetables. It is a “processed product,” processed by the bees, and thus contains fewer antioxidants than fruits and vegetables (as well as much more sugar).

Heating and processing honey will destroy the vitamin C and the other antioxidant contents of honey. So eat honey raw and unheated.

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That’s not all that honey does for us, but you’ve guessed it… TBC!

Go here to sign the petition!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Today we came home from Amie’s cello lesson to this:

We could not believe the size of that giant pumpkin! There were also bags of more pumpkins, goopy pumpkin guts, and a couple of gourds. The latter I would have to cut up somehow,  they’re so hard, or maybe I’ll try drying them for bird houses.

The haul filled up the wheelbarrow and much of the compost bin. Once I get the shredder going I’ll fill up the gaps in the bin with shredded leaves.

The neighbors are really into the orphan punkins this year. Maybe I could get a more elaborate system set up, a large three bin system down the hill, near the mailbox, where they could drop off vegetable kitchen scraps? A neighborhood composting facility… And once we get chickens,  we would doubly appreciate the scraps. Mm…

I’m going to ask my tree removal neighbor for all his wood chips from now on to do this in the  veg garden. I could easily fill up those garden paths with wood chips and leaves. These paths erode so badly, especially the ones that run in the direction of the (slight) slope. It would also keep the weeds down, and be a haven for the worms. A permaculture function stack!

What a day today was. 65 F and sunny. The bees took the opportunity to take some cleansing flights and dump out some more dead bees, and we got to go outside too, to rake leaves, and leaves, and leaves, and play…

I did a last inspection today – 69 F, no wind, no rain, just lovely. The bees were foraging, so it was safe to open up the hive without risk of chilling the bees. They were quite defensive, and did not take kindly to my stapling my home made mouse guard to their front entrance.

There were some huge drones, really fat, big ones. Many of them were on the ground in front of the hive, dead. At this time the worker bees evict the drones from the colony, and they pull the undeveloped drone larvae and pupae from their cells and throw them out. Drones are useless in this particular season. The ones alive now will only eat through their stores in no time (being bigger), and their lifespan won’t carry them into Spring, when they have to perform their one function: mate with a queen. The colony will start rearing new brood, and new drones, after the winter solstice. It’s not a good time to be a drone at this time!

There is not much to be done about the hive anymore.

1. I counted 10 full deep frames of honey and pollen, that is approx. 4 lbs of stores per frame (an underestimation to be safe), so approx. 40 lbs. That should be plenty to get the colony through the winter.
2. I left the screened bottom board in for ventilation. It’s not the cold but the condensation that will kill off a cluster of bees.
3. As for mice, I put the metal queen excluder up on top of the inner cover, so they can’t get in through the telescoping outer cover,
4. and I stapled my homemade mouse guard to the bottom entrance.
5. I also put a large stone on top of the outer cover. We’ve had some strong winds and though I’ve seen hoop houses and the lids to my compost bins fly off, I’ve yet to see that heavy outer cover budge. Still, it’s a small effort for a big insurance.

All I will be able to do during the winter is make sure that snow doesn’t cover the entrance, and wait. And build extra hive boxes and frames, so I can make a split in Spring, or a nuc, or catch a swarm… I really want that second hive!