Monthly Archives: May 2018

Hive report: a beekeeper’s notebook

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21 May 2018:  I’ve had a new beekeeping experience–dealing with a seriously angry bunch of bees. I do hope it will be a while before I have that experience again.

Yesterday  I planned to inspect Hive A (Dave’s Girls), but I didn’t take into account lawn mowing and trimming activities that had been going on around the hive. I had just removed the telescoping cover and the inner cover when I was in the midst of a serious attack–I now know what seriously PO’d bees sound like. After getting stung on my hands (only thin gloves on) I beat a very hasty retreat, but the girls were angry enough that they followed me–so I had to stand around in my bee jacket until they finally gave up and went home.

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22 May 2018:  This morning  I went back to do what needed to be done. Things were good when I opened the hive–bees all over all of the frames just doing their thing and they let me look around and do my part of the housekeeping.  I’ve put in foundationless frames to see if the girls will cooperate with me for some cut-comb honey this season. Fingers crossed and waiting.

26 May 2018:  There’s obviously been a bit of a hiatus here–the weather has been rather erratic–intermittently cloudy, windy, with less traffic in and out of the hive than usual. I’ve learned (the hard way) that the girls are quite testy (even bitchy, maybe?) when the weather is good.  Of course, that also means that lots of them are out at work so there are fewer to deal with during the inspections–and that is definitely an advantage with a large colony.

I made the mistake of putting work hours before bee time! Silly me.  By the time I was ready to do inspections, the weather wasn’t cooperating–intermittently cloudy with threatening clouds and a little drizzle. Then another bit of sunshine. Then clouds again.  I wussed out and decided to wait until tomorrow morning. I mean, in this area I should know that thunderstorms are likely in the afternoon.

27 May 2018:  This morning I had my priorities straight: to the hives just of soon as I had adequate Sunday morning caffeination.  I started with the Georgia Girls (Hive B) since that was the big job. They had been cooperative, actually doing what I wanted them to do–most of the brood was now in the deep so I could reverse the medium and be back to deep-on-the-bottom then the medium, still with some brood, above. They still had room to store honey above the queen excluder so I didn’t give them any foundationless frames.

Hives C and D each got a quick peek under the cover to see how things were. Both obviously had a queen doing her thing. Hive D (a split with a queen cell from Hive A) had brood in the medium (and the deep), but needed more room for honey.  Add queen excluder and a super for honey–done!  And–just in time for it to start getting a bit more overcast and breezy.

Happiness for a beekeeper is knowing what the girls are doing!

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Eggplant bacon?!

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I like breakfast–but not at the crack of dawn. I am trying to get food on the inside me earlier in the morning and I know I need to eat more vegetables–they are good for you. Eggplant IMG_4285The more nutrition and “diet” reading I do the more I realize how important fiber (and thus vegetables) is in diet, and that it would be good to have vegetables included in all my meals. As much as I like omelets and frittatas, I need more ways to get more veggies at breakfast and at other times, too.

Eggplant is a vegetable of which I’m not particularly fond. Nutritionally, I suppose it is good for me–or at least a filler. According to  USDA nutrient information, eggplant is right about with iceberg lettuce and cucumbers–which is certainly not saying much. But it does have fiber!

So you’re wondering where did the breakfast thing come from?  Well, I don’t often find an eggplant recipe that puts me in gotta-try-that mode but the “bacon” got my attention as I was browsing through my email notifications from  Kitchn. (I suspect it was really the “bacon”, not the eggplant that did it, since bacon will always get my attention.) A post on how to make eggplant into bacon caught my eye. The pictures looked really good and it made me think “breakfast vegetable” other than tomatoes, spinach, kale, mushrooms…

After I finished reading about bacon, I noticed that there were recipes for eggplant bolognese, eggplant jerky, and eggplant burgers–which I doubt that I will ever try–eggplant bacon, maybe! 

 

Crudités

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After my last visit to my physician for my 100,000-mile maintenance check, I was appalled at the numbers I read on the scales when I weighed in. Arrrggghhhhh! So it time to do something about those numbers. Obviously, more exercise–and I’ve actually Radish Varietiessuccumbed to a fitness device that will make me (horribly) aware of how inactive I can be, especially during working days.

Along with trying to get my butt out of my office chair even on work days, I’m trying to get more veggies and fruits into me. As the weather gets hotter, I want cool things so crudités are appearing often. Most often served with a dip of some sort but I was looking for something to add a bit of zip and zing to raw (or lightly blanched) vegetables: celery, radishes, zucchini, jicama, kohlrabi, etc.

As you all know by now, Bull City Olive Oil is one of my favorite places to find tasty stuff (like truffle salt for popcorn). In addition to olive oil and salts, there is a grand array of balsamic vinegars. I’ve discovered that some of these make a marvelous “dip” for all these veggies–without adding any oil–so that it keeps my cruditès low calorie but still never boring.  Some of the ones I use are honey-ginger, blackberry, blackberry-ginger, black mission fig, and lemongrass-mint.

And–the dark chocolate! Just a few drops with berries or fruit makes a wonderful treat–as does the passionfruit, or the lavender.  All very low cal, but so tasty! I suspect that the coconut white balsamic would be pretty darn good with fruits and berries too. So many possibilities for good taste–and there are always new ones to try–and healthy eating, too.

A son gôut!

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Comb honey vs. extracted honey

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From one of my very favorite (and useful) beekeeping blogs (HoneyBeeSuite) I wanted to share a post that so well describes the grocery-store honey and the wonders of honey in the comb: How to make value-subtracted honey.  I couldn’t agree more, nor could I say it better so I’ll just pass on this link.

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Hive report: bees and cats!

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The last week or so has been a bit hectic–indexing work, and beekeeping. The apiary has grown to four hives now–two from swarms cast by the two large (Dave’s bees and the Georgia Girls) hives. Now I have hives C and D. Hive C is from the swarm from the Georgia Girls. Hive D is from a swarm from Dave’s Bees. The purpose of my inspections of three hives today was to check to see that all were queenright even though looming deadlines for indexes have put a limit on the amount of time that I can spend with the bees on this Mother’s Day; so necessarily very quick question-oriented inspections.

brood box of hiveI had already found that Hive C was queenless. I started the procedure of requeening earlier in the week, but I did need to make sure that the queen had been released from her travel cage. Happily, the queen was out and about in the hive. However, the comb in that brood chamber is so exuberant and higgledy-piggledy that it was (in a reasonable amount of time, with sweat dripping from my eyelashes) impossible to see if there was brood. But, the queen is free so I’ll check again for brood in a while.

[Why did I have sweat dripping from my eyelashes? Well, it happens if you neglect to put on the sweatband under the veil. Needless to say, I went back and added that to my attire before moving on the Hive D.]

Hive D (I know, very unimaginative) was a swarm from Hive A and since I had not captured the queen, I had put a queen cell into the new hive. Today was to check and see if that colony was queenright. Still dripping sweat, I opened this hive to find that there was now capped brood, lots of capped brood in a very good pattern in that hive. Again, I settled for the quick answer without a detailed search to find and mark the queen as I need to move on to Hive A.

In Hive A, my concern for this quick inspection was to see if there was a functioning queen here, too.  The quick answer was a resounding yes! I found lots of capped brood in an excellent pattern–in the medium super above the brood box.  Again, I accepted that, but realize that there is another problem that I need to address immediately. I need to get some new frames for the bees to start for cut-comb honey since they are rapidly filling everything with honey and pollen. I admit that I didn’t even look in the brood box to see what was going on, but I suspect it’s being filled with honey and pollen, so I likely need to reverse the medium with brood and the deep at least for a while.IMG_7769

Ok–you wondering about the “bees and cats”!  Since this was the week that I had to tote Frankie, the cat, to the vet and deal with his foibles about the carrier and the car, cats, and their sometimes strange ways have been blatantly obvious.  After these quick inspections, I thought that bees shared some of the same characteristics: both bees and cats do what they damn well please, no matter what I think, or hope, they will do!

I definitely need some consultation with a very experienced beekeeper to try to sort out what these girls are doing and how I can best deal with it.  But from a beekeepers perspective, all is right with the world.

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Popcorn!

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I am a big fan of popcorn. I’ll take that over potato chips, or any other variety of chips almost any time. It’s just the thing to go with a good book while you’re having a duvet day.

PopCorn MakerYou can probably even make a case that it is at least “healthy-ish”–compared to most other snacks that come in bags from the grocery store–and it’s more fun. You can custom tailor the seasoning to fit your mood. At least I know what’s in it if I’ve popped and seasoned it myself.

I’ve gotten very fond of my Lékué PopCorn Maker for making popcorn in the microwave (and that’s about the only thing I do in the microwave).  I will admit to using oil (usually about 1-1/2  tablespoons of olive oil for about 1/3 cup popcorn) when popping popcorn. For some awesome popcorn, use just a little Baklouti chili pepper (fused) olive oil (about 1 teaspoon) with the regular olive oil. Wow!

Other favorite infused oils (all from Bull City Olive Oil) to touch up my popcorn with are harissa, chipotle, or garlic.

While I don’t often do stove-top popcorn, I did find some interesting suggestions for other flavorings to try from Taste in “Really Good Popcorn“: brewer’s yeast, dulse flakes (I know I like other seaweed seasonings), and Urfa biber (described as in that article as “a dried Turkish chile pepper with a raisin-like sweetness, a subtle spice, and the gentle acidity of a lightly roasted Ethiopian coffee”–that sounds totally great.  Since I’ve used Aleppo pepper on popcorn and that makes this sound very interesting to me.

A son gôut!

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Hive report: Swarms from Hive A!

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Shortly before I had to go out of town for my indexing convention, Hive A (Dave’s bees) decided to swarm (18 April 2018). I really appreciate the consideration–swarming before I’m out of town–and all the swarms have clustered low and close. But, you notice, I didn’t say that they were convenient or locations where they were easy to retrieve–just close and low.

I thought that these bees might just be “thinking” about swarming as they were coming out of the hive at a brisk pace, but not streaming out as with the other swarm. They clustered on the frame of the hive scales and down into the hollow of the cinder blocks on which the hive sat.

No way was I able to do a nice, neat collection. I got as many of the bees as possible–but I didn’t think I had the queen with the swarm although bees that I put into the 4th hive did stay there so I still don’t know if I captured the queen.

When I saw the brisk movement out of the hive I had put a jury-rigged swarm “trap” on the outside (cut from a plastic queen excluder in hopes of keeping the queen in), even knowing that a queen with the swarm would have slimmed down and might get through it. On inspection of the hive after collecting the bees as best as possible,  I could not find a queen so I suspect she was already out since there were some bees still clustered in this inaccessible place (I drew the line at actually moving the entire hive to get them). They stayed clustered in a way that certainly made me think the queen might well be there–out of my reach unless I took real risk of injuring her, even if I did find her.

In going through that split the day after, I did not find a queen and there were certainly many fewer bees to sort through. I decided to treat that swarm as if it did not have a queen and provided them with a closed queen cell from the ones found in the hive from which they swarmed. So–doin’t know what will happen, but it’s soon time to go take a look again.

Today (Tuesday, 01 May 2018) there was another swarm–I suspect a secondary swarm from Hive A. I captured it (another low and close, and almost convenient) but don’t have space to keep it, so I contacted the “swarm team” from our local beekeeper’s club to donate this one to someone who needed bees. (I did find it a good home.)  This swarm behaved like I had gotten the queen in the box–all the stray bees that I couldn’t capture followed the box (but since it was the second swarm I wonder if it had a virgin queen).

In retrospect, I wish I had checked that first swarm from Hive A again to see if there was a queen, or if the queen cell had been opened. If not, I wonder if I could have combined those two swarms for a stronger hive. Ah, hindsight is such a wonderful thing. Thinking about this in the comfort of my desk chair is entirely different from considering it while putting thousands of bees in a box.

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