Tatjana, the Russian Queen

Doing an inspection of “Hive 6” I spotted Tatjana, the Russian Queen I got from Dan Conlon. She was laying eggs. Can you spot her?

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The frayed, light-colored bee below her, off to the left, is a callow bee: just eclosed. The two dark marks on the queen’s back aren’t mites, but pigment markings. Believe me, I checked!

I encountered the problem with the double nucs I mentioned before: bees crawling up the wall of the other top box and having to be brushed or smoked down before I can replace their second box:

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More problems: the other top box still being in place gets in the way of the wedge tool’s function of lifting tightly wedged/glued frames out. Lastly, the other box being unoccupied by bees, it had become home to ants! I am not liking this design one bit. I may move Tatjana and her people into the 5-frame nuc I have available, depending on what I do this weekend. On Saturday another Russian queen is coming my way, also from Dan. I may use her to replace the very slow-to-start or defective superseding queen in Hive 4 (Laura, who is Bianca’s daughter). Or I may split Hive 3 (Beatrice) and put them in the other side of the box and make Hive 7! In that case, how to get the ants out first…

SCOBY Hotel

DSCF7979My two kombucha Continuous Brews (one with a spiced Indian chai, the other a more subtle Earl Grey) are growing vigorously, the mothers in them giving birth to more SCOBYs (scobies?). They are starting to fill up the jars. Time for a special hold-over vessel: the SCOBY Hotel. I learned about this from the Big Book of Kombucha by Hannah Crum and Alex LaGory of Kombucha Kamp, both of which (the book, the site) I am liking very much.

First photo: Earl Grey kombucha with sour cherry concentrate flavoring for second fermentation. Nicely fizzy! We like the flavors of fresh fruits better though, and those also create an explosive buzz. The sweet cherry and the watermelon flesh flavorings were more of a hit, but not as colorful.

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Separating the older (bottom one) from the newer mother.

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SCOBY motel with four mothers, so far.

 

 

IMO I > IMO II

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I tried again to capture those Indigenous Micro-Organisms, again in the leaf mulch pile, and again I got mostly yellow, pink, blue and predominantly black. It smelled sweet, though, so I decided to make a batch of IMO II, adding 1:1 brow sugar. This can be kept indefinitely in a dark, cool spot.

To plant some stinging nettle plants that a new friend – new, but he understands me all too well already! – brought for me, I went into a seldom-visited patch of our property. While digging the trench, I found the soil there to be super soft and hyphal, especially around an old beech tree. It may be that the indigenous micro-organisms are all the colors of the rainbow, not snow-white, but I may try one more time under that tree. I will have to brave some fast growing nettles to get there. Might as well harvest some of the tops and make a nettle tea…

 

 

Fish Amino Acids (FAA) Update

I visited the two buckets of FAA today – they’re nicely tucked away in the cool, dark basement. Amazing how it doesn’t smell awful or even fishy at all, since it’s just fish and sugar, and some apples. The apple smell dominates, along with a sweet fermented smell. The top of one had a lot of mold, which I just scooped up and fed to my compost bin buddies.

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Underneath that layer the liquefying action is well and truly happening. Basically, only the big fish heads are left. This is what it looks like after a stir:

 

 

 

Meanwhile, outside, this, in case you too were wondering where some of those sumptuous ripe peas went (click to enlarge):

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Getting the Hang of Double Nucs

I decided to give the double four-over-four-frame nucs a la Mike Palmer a try and ordered a set from Better Bee. Whether it was their milling or my hammering the boxes together, I don’t know, but the two top boxes don’t fit together well. With some careful placing, they do the job, but they’re not snug.

I took Queen Sam’s split out of her five-frame nuc box and shifted her into one side of the double nuc a few weeks ago. They filled out the bottom and top boxes in no time. A few days ago, I moved another split (for Queen Tatjana, a pure Russian from Dan Conlon’s Warm Colors Apiaries) into the right side and promptly ran into problem number two.  As I was working the bottom box, many bees insisted on sticking to the side of the other nuc’s top box. I had to brush them down quite aggressively, and even then too many to my liking were squashed when I put the second box on. I wouldn‘t have put that second box on, because the new colony still only covered three frames, but with this kind of outfit you can’t of course work with just one box on one, two on the other. If you do, it looks like this:

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And this is exactly what it looked like today.

I moved Sam’s people to the full hive you see on the left: they were more than ready for a lot more space. After inspecting all eight frames, I had not found the unmarked Sam. There she was: on the inside of the bottom box, hiding among a good three hundred bees who had also decided to hang out on the box. If that box hadn’t been attached to the other nuc, I could have easily picked it up and gently shaken them all into their new home. As it was, I was fortunate to have my hadny-dany queen catcher available and after much searching, spotting and losing her again, I grabbed her and moved her over. I had to keep that box open like that so the other bees could make their own way over there as well. (Forget about unplugging their entrance: too many foragers would have flown into the wrong box.) Luckily there was no wind because the contraption wasn’t quite stable. A few hours later, the nuc box was empty and I closed it up:

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It goes to show that one best has two colonies in one double nuc that are more or less on a par, but I think I will only use this setup as a true nuc, that is, one box with four frames each, for increase and mating purposes only. That avoids the problem with the ill-fitting top boxes and the bees climbing up them as you work the lower box.

Both splits so far have been off one hive (Borgia’s hive), and I have one more strong hive that I could split, maybe once, maybe twice. Time is running out, because the bees need the time to build up before winter. So far I have four Italian queens (Borgia, Constanza, Beatrice and Laura, who is the daughter of the superseded Bianca – she is in the house but not yet laying eggs), one Sam Comfort “mutt” (Sam, who is a beauty!), and now the new Russian, Tatiana, whom I’ve only glimpsed through the screen of her cage.

I’m hoping Sam keeps laying the way she is, then I may steal one frame of her young larvae and try my hand at grafting. I have all the tools and some of the know-how ready. I am planning on using the Cloake Board on Queen Constanza’s hive, which at last inspection was the strongest, most populous hive. If it happens, it will be soon, so stay tuned!

Mushroom!

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A quick update on Queen Bianca: alas, she is no more, but her daughter, whom I have named Laura, made her appearance and was laying eggs. She looked good enough to kiss!

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For now, a photo reportage of a find today in our front yard (“down there,” we call it), in a spot twenty feet from where the big King Stropharia resides.  I will be traveling for a week, so expect no posts during that time.

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And I am reading this tome, fascinating! Will write a review when I get back – hopefully I will have read all 600+ pages by then. Peter McCoy and his Radical Mycology, it’s the bee’s knees!

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New Nuc and Queen Introduction

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DSCF7592I ordered two mated queens from Anarchy Apiaries which arrived this morning. Another beek in our group needed one for a queenless hive, so I gave one to her. I cleared the weeds out of the “Home Apiary,” made sure the platform is straight and sturdy, and set up a nuc box (“Hive 5”).

Then I headed to the Cow Common Bee Yard and went straight for the bottom box in my suspected swarm-ready hive (Hive 4). Going through, finding no open brood at all, only emptied brood cells back filled with LOTS of honey and still quite a bit of capped brood, as well as ten or more emergency cells (in the bottom box alone!), I am now assuming that the elusive Bianca perished, quite a while ago. The emergency cells, more than ten of them, were still capped and undamaged. I left all of those in situ.

I pulled two frames of uncapped honey and pollen and capped brood an put those, with the bees on them, in my Moving Box. I had to go rob Hive 1 (the sweet Borgia), of one frame of open brood – no eggs, though, and I shook off all the bees. The bees in a new nuc without open brood may abscond, so I needed that extra frame. Hopefully, though that brood aren’t their sisters, they’ll be protective and stay with them.

I closed up the Moving Box and brought it to the Home Apiary, added some empty honeycomb and some foundation frames, and after a couple of hours brought in “Sam,” as I am calling the new queen in honor of the great Sam Comfort, who reared her. I don’t think they liked her very much – yet! – as they were swarming the cage and either licking or biting it. Kissing it? Who knows!

I did consider bringing her back in and waiting a few more hours, or another night, but it was getting late in the day (the hive was already in the shade), and it was threatening to rain, maybe thunder. Also, all day the queen and her five attendants had been buzzing like crazy in their cage. So I pushed the cage into the wax of a frame, rubber banded it to be safe, and left. She should be safe inside the cage. They’ll take a couple of days to eat through the candy plug to get to her, and hopefully that will give them time to get used to her. After all, that’s how it’s done when they make packages.

But I’m thinking I’d better start working on the queen rearing part of this operation!

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{UPDATE 6/13: A quick look a couple of days ago showed no eggs, no queen, but I did not despair and decided to wait a couple more days. I went in today and saw… are those eggs? Yes, they’re eggs and… there she was, the queen, the gorgeous, humongous queen called Sam that I hadn’t really been able to see so well when she was in the cage. Loooooong abdomen extending beyond her wing tips, and the workers around her practically bowing to her as she regally passed. Okay, I may exaggerate. But she is a beauty, and is laying, and I am so happy.}

KNF: FPJ and OHN, and OHN tea

Ah–ahcronyms! That stands for Korean Natural Farming: Fermented Plant Juice and Oriental Herbal Nutrient. After weeks of prep, FPJ and OHN were ready to “decant” and use and store.

  • FPJ

DSCF7565On 5/2 (about a month ago), I went about in my garden in the early morning collecting the meristems of all the most vigorously growing plants that I could find. The meristems are the undifferentiated growing tips of plants, full of energy and growth hormones. These are the ones you want in your Fermented Plant Juice. I added comfrey (smallest, newest leaves), common and spear mint, and all kinds of mostly unidentified weeds reaching for the sun. This document from the University of Hawaii has a list of which plants to look for, to which Aaron Englander, who taught me this recipe, added the more readily available purslane, nettles, and mugwort. For the purists, each FPJ batch is just one plant – and that FPJ is then the best for that particular plant. I only make a one-plant FPJ wen I have enough of it on hand.

I packed these leaves and shoots into a jar, mixed them with a 1:1 ratio of raw brown sugar (by volume), leaving 2/3 of head space, adding a lid of sugar on top and packing it down. Then I covered with a cloth and let it sit at room temperature. After a week I found it didn’t make much juice, so I added a small amount of (non-chlorinated) water (a tablespoon) and that got it going really well. Today I poured off the liquid – amazing how much poured out after all. It is stored in the jar with a cloth, in a cool, dark place. FPJ, which is packed with growth energy, is used weekly at the growing stage of plants as foliar feed (at 1000:1 dilution) or a soil drench (at 500:1).

{UPDATE} 4/16: after almost a year, the FPJ is still looking good. I used a lot of sugar. If in the recipe you use only enough brown sugar to extract the juices,  then once you’ve poured off the juice you should add more brown sugar to preserve it, especially if you live in a hot, humid place.

  • OHN

DSCF7567Also on 5/2 chopped up and crushed the five ingredients for the OHN and put them each in their own jar:

  1.  2 parts (by volume) the root of Angelica acutiloba (which I had ordered from Mountain Rose Herb – I also ordered the seeds so I can start growing it myself). Because the quantity of angelica is double that of the rest, I filled 1/3 of a jar that is twice the size of the other jars. You can also just two jars the same size. Same difference.
  2. 1 part licorice root (Glycurrhiza uralensis), which I have growing in the garden, but the plant isn’t ready yet for harvesting, so I got this from Mountain  Rose Herbs as well (1/3 jar).
  3. 1 part cinnamon bark (Cinnamomum sp.), from Mountain  Rose Herbs (1/3 jar).

I added beer (the one I happened to have in my fridge, a hoppy honey beer; you can also use rice wine) to hydrate these and covered them with cloth.

After 2 days, I chopped and crushed the two wet ingredients:

  • 1 part fresh ginger root (Zingiber officinale), skins and all, organic from the store.
  • 1 part garlic cloves (Allium sativum), stem, skins and all, homegrown.

Then I added 1:1 raw brown sugar to all five so all the jars were 2/3 full and covered them with cloth. I let them ferment for 5 days, then I topped all of them off with vodka and closed the jars with lids. I shook them every day for two weeks. Then I strained the juices (but see *!) into two big jars and covered them with cloth (not sure if that’s necessary, but I guess some more fermentation may happen if not all the sugar has been converted yet, and if the jar is closed off, it might explode). Here’s a good fact sheet on OHN, it also uses turmeric.

{UPDATE} 4/16: after a little less than a year I found both OHN liquids had a thick layer of whacky mold on them. This is because I never capped it tightly. The preserving alcohol evaporated, and mold got in. I simply scooped off the mat of mold, added vodka, and capped.

OHN is used weekly at all stages of plant growth as a health elixir and immune booster, as a foliar spray, soil drench, seed soak, or compost booster. It has to be diluted 1000:1.  It is also one of the ingredients in IMO 4.

 

  • OHN marc compost tea

DSCF7563DSCF7568(*!) Now it turns out I should have poured off 2/3 of the liquid and kept the leftover liquid and marc for another round of extraction – you can use the separate jars up to five times. It was too late when I read that, I had already mushed the marc all together for one final press. Then I read you can use that marc for a compost tea, and so that’s where it went, along with the marc of the FPJ.

I have a small, rotating collection of buckets with filtered tap water that I leave open in the sun for 24 hours before putting on the lids to keep dust and animals out. I do this to let whatever the water filter didn’t get, evaporate out – a matter specifically to get rid of the biocide chlorine. I used one of the 5 gallon ones for the tea: wrapped the marc in an old cotton shirt, hung it to steep in the water. I’ll play this one by ear as it will depend on the temperature during brewing.

While I was at it, I also started a new kombucha (following this recipe) and a gallon of ginger soda (using this recipe).

Bubble bubble!

{UPDATE 6/13. This is what it looks like now, without oxygenation. Smells good too. Smells sweet.

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