Seeds in the City

Late harvest fortune

2011-12-11T22:08:00.001-08:00

After a frustrating summer for the bees, something struck their fancy when it flowered late. We ended up with a honey harvest!

Early spring honey

2011-04-24T14:44:00.001-07:00

Nothing tastes better!

Favas

2011-04-22T19:32:00.001-07:00

Some of these favas are ready to pick! The plants have taken over the garden walk way.

Why bike?

2011-02-11T17:21:00.000-08:00

Lizzy from Timbuk2 used twitter to collect answers to a simple question: Why do you bike commute?

The article can be found on the Atlantic.
Thanks Lizzy! The community summed up my feelings exactly!

Four days in bee time

2011-02-08T20:58:00.001-08:00

Last year M took out two frames from the brood box to capture a swarm. (The swarm is doing great) He didn't replace the frames, bee space was violated, and the girls built out comb. They were given a new brood box (with frames!) and the old box with burr comb was left out for the bees to rob. Unfortunately, a cluster of bees didn't leave. For two nights (temps were around 30 - 40 F) these bees sat out there on the wax. M realized there was some brood in the comb. We set the brood box back on the hive Wednesday afternoon. Sunday morning we went out to remove the burr comb and found what they had made.

With water, smoke, and patient brushing, the bees were returned to the hive and the comb left in a wine bucket for the bees to rob.

I'm still amazed what these girls can do.

Fall and Winter

2010-12-27T21:56:00.000-08:00

If there's a way to easily update the blog via smart phone (and I'm sure there is!), it's more likely this blog would have been more lively! It's been a busy fall, and now we are in winter.

The garden was plenty busy in the fall, and there were harvests.

Of basil...

Our cool and wet summer meant our tomatoes grew, but did not ripen. Finally, they were all picked in October.

(yes, it was raining when I picked them!)

I decided to try my hand at canning for the first time, and made a Green Tomato Chutney.

I loved canning! It was greatly satisfying to not waste fruits of the garden, and to create something so delicious and easy to share. I'm told it's perfect on a chicken sandwich. ;)

(we also had fried green tomatoes, delicious!)

And now between the rain and cool weather, the winter garden grows.

Peas, parsnips, turnips, spinach, garlic, carrots, and leeks.

Fava beans. (and oxalis. Always oxalis!)

On clear sunny days, the bees show up.

And my locavore self, sneering at strawberries in supermarkets, realizes that the strawberries seem to want to be there.

Happy New Year to you! May the coming year bring much sweetness and bounty!

Harvested honey and moved a hive

2010-08-19T21:05:00.000-07:00

In the last couple of weeks, we've been busy! We harvested our Urania hive, and moved our Terpsichore hive.

+++ The Harvest!+++

The harvest was on Friday, August 6. I was getting ready to go to work, so I was hoping around. It was so strange not to be part of the harvest! I stuck around long enough to stick my fingers in the sun warmed wax, always the best part of beekeeping!

This is the first time we've harvested Urania 2 (U2). U1 was a sweet, docile hive. We would "talk" for the bees in psuedo stoner - surfer voices. "Oh hey man. Er, buzz. Yeah. Hey. Buzz." U2 is much more OUT OF MY WAY I AM BUSY HERE. I kept thinking that once they saw how good the food selection was around here, that they would settle down. Well... they haven't. But, they are a strong hive and a productive hive.

Getting ready. Umbrellas are an under appreciated component of beekeeping equipment.

U2 before harvest.

Smoke time! We anticipated the worst - but surprisingly, no stings at all!

M took off the top super first, and set it aside. He then pulled frames from the bottom super, brushed them on to the top super, and then took the frame to the extraction tank. This worked great - the girls were distracted by all the things to do, and he didn't have a ton of followers to the extraction tank.

Frames removed. (the two with no bees on them were brand new frames with no drawn comb)

Perfection!

I love the way the sheets of wax pull off the frames. So gorgeous!

The first pour. This honey is pretty light in color, with the slightest green tint. M commented that this may be worth entering into the county fair next year.

All bottled! We took these stir sticks to allow folks to try the honey, giving us a few extra sales.

I'm thrilled that Luke's Local bought a jar of our honey for their coffee and tea station. Local honey at a local stop! (Thank you for supporting your local bees and beekeepers!!!)

+++ The Hive Move!+++

Terpsichore, our oldest hive, had to be moved to a new property. Terpsichore is a strong hive with no nonsense bees. I received a sting from them last year, so I'm a bit wary of this hive. Our plan was to split the hive in half for the move: honey supers separated from brood boxes. This was to reduce the total weight and improve the mobility. After sunset last Friday night, we went to shut the bees in for the night. M lifted the honey supers off and walked them a few feet to the right of the brood boxes. I bent over to pick up the extra lid to cover the brood boxes and ONE TWO THREE got stung twice in the thigh and once in the butt. Fearing more coming, I said "I'm gone!" walked quickly down the hill to the truck, and ripped my pants off to get the stingers out. (And if you were driving on Highway 9 that night, hello to you too!) M had finished covering the bees and met me down there.

(Earlier in the day I had been watering my garden. I went to turn off the hose bib and got a sharp pain in my upper right arm. A U2 bee, for reasons totally unknown to me, had decided to follow me about fifteen feet from the hive and sting me in the arm. What the????)

We got up the next morning to go move Terpsi while it was still cool and foggy. I was _not_ looking forward to this. It's one thing to be stung and keep on, it's another to be stung four times in a day and go work with a hive that is going to be really ticked off by what you're about to do. We loaded the hives up in the truck without incident.

We drove out to Terpsi's new house (a gorgeous garden on the mountain top) and started the unloading process. Overall, things started smoothly. We got everything ready for the final move this lid and set these supers on! and poor M - he lifted the honey supers about two inches and they slipped out of his grasp. The bees were MAD. They were already sick of us, but this put them over the edge. His work pants were dotted with stingers (none penetrated, I am getting some of those pants!!!) but he did get one sting on the forearm. He finished setting up the hive, and already he saw the girls sticking their butts up signaling "come home".

Silly me. I wanted a photo of the new location, and walked near the hive from a different angle. A bee flying by got caught in my hair and walked up under my head scarf. I tried and tried to free her, but finally realized, let's just get it over with. Strangely, getting stung on the head isn't that bad. That, or I was already so full of bee venom that it didn't bug me!

The honey is selling well. The stings have all healed. That brings my lifetime sting count to nine. (one when I was five, three last year from hiving the bees, getting the Terpsi sting, and being dumb enough to put my hand on a bee on my pants), and five from this weekend. Crazy!

My yoga teacher, bless his concern. "You did not die did you?" No. I'm still here, and still a beekeeper!

Plum Wine, 2010

2010-07-27T22:36:00.000-07:00

Mostly because I hated to see any plums wasted (and wasn't brave enough to try canning yet!) I decided to make a plum wine.

I gathered as many plums as I could from my little tree. My recipe (making about eight gallons) called for three pounds per gallon. I took the average weight of my plums, and I realized I needed about 150 plums. I called my friend C and asked if he had any plums. He did, so I ran over to his home with a bucket. We had a great time gathering plums from his much larger tree, including him climbing on the roof and throwing them down to my bucket, mostly getting them in!

With both lots, I sliced and squeezed them into the buckets. I left on the skins for color and the stones for tannins. It's messy fun work.

I took a quick Specific Gravity reading of the plums from just my house. We do this to find out the potential alcohol content. The wine needs enough alcohol to be a preservative, but too much and it's jet fuel. The Specific Gravity (or SpGr) reads the density of the sugar in the solution, also known as the brix. By knowing how much sugar we start with, we can roughly calculate how much alcohol we will end up with since we know how yeast converts sugar to alcohol.

The hydrometers for beer and wine making also have potential alcohol printed on them as well.

The plums at C's house had a closer potential alcohol of about 13%, we ended up with an overall potential alcohol of 12%, which is right where we wanted it.

All of the plums, most of the bottle of orange juice, and five pounds of sugar were mixed together with boiling water and six campden tablets to sterilize. It was allowed to sit overnight.

Before adding the yeast, I took one more SpGr reading. Mostly, I'm impressed by the color. That is pink!

Yeast decision time. I read on one site "All purpose wine yeast for full bodied reds and whites, and for fruit wines. Excellent complexity. Very nice with plum, rhubarb wine, merlot, chard zinfandel." and my decision was made, Montrachet it was!

The yeast was added to some of the orange juice that was set aside, and once it was bubbling, it was added to the plum juice. Montrachet yeast is a slow yeast, which is good - I haven't had it explode on me! The morning after innoculation, it had some bubbles.

Later that night, a proper cap had formed.

For the next two weeks, the wine fermented away. A few times a day, the cap was punched down. (this is wine talk for "we stirred it".) After two weeks, it was ready for racking (moving) into the six gallon carboys it will age in.

...two weeks later...

The racking was going smoothly, but then we ran into trouble. The bulk of the free liquid was gone, and we weren't to the top of the carboy yet.

What was left in the bucket was the leftover fruit and stones.

Time to strain and then add the juice. The bad thing about this is it leads to heavy amounts of sediment, something each racking is designed to clear up, but at the cost of volume.

We were able to collect enough juice to fill the carboy.

The 2010 plum wine was added to the other carboys for aging. We use Mardi Gras beads to label each of the wines. So pink compared to the other wines!

Camping: Samuel P Taylor

2010-07-11T22:30:00.000-07:00

We took off for a weekend of camping at Samuel P. Taylor Park.

Friday was for arrival, setting up camp, getting a camp fire roaring, and then eating and drinking!

Saturday we went to Point Reyes National Seashore Lighthouse.

Looking out over the view, I wondered what was beyond the fog.

When in doubt, find a map.

We asked the Ranger what it looks like on a clear day. "I don't remember!" she said with a smile. We asked if the lovely gift shop photos were photoshopped.

Even with the fog, the wildflowers were spectacular.

The lighthouse itself is down a long flight of stairs. Stairs that begin with a warning sign that says "Caution: this is a strenuous climb and equivalent to climbing up thirty stories!" We took them on. We walked down. And down. And down. (my thanks to the folks that took these photos posted on the links: they better describe the walk!)

We arrive at the lighthouse. I couldn't tell if it was the sheer cliff drops or the walk that had my legs a bit shaky!

The lighthouse is now a museum. There was a nice presentation of both information on the lighthouse and the history of the lives around it. Looking on line, there are more entries from the keepers logs.

Each lighthouse, I found, has a different signal pattern to help mariners identify their location.

There were small breaks in the fog that allowed us to look at the ocean below.

Exploring completed (and we were chilled!), it was time to start back up the stairs.

More stops to ~~rest~~ take photos.

This alga was gorgeous! Trentepohlia

Here's where we protest the "302" steps thing. See that long smooth part? It was a steep graded ramp, but didn't count in the step count! Unfair!

The climb definitely warmed us up! My calves are still tender!

We left the lighthouse and headed to Drakes Beach.

The wide open shoreline was perfect for walking.

Tide pools with sea stars.

The water was shockingly cold and refreshing!

The cliffs were striking.

I enjoyed how smooth the transition between ocean and sand and tide pools were.

We left the cool seashore and headed back into town. We stopped in Point Reyes Station to check out Cowgirl Creamery.

Oh, yum! We behaved ourselves, only sampling the fresh cheve. Delicious!

A full day of adventures, we headed back to the campsite for dinner.

Now that is one of my favorite parts of camping! Was thrilled that dinner included zucchini, cucumbers, and lettuce from our gardens.

Most of my friends have been turned off of s'mores completely. Years ago I had gourmet s'mores at the Sonoma Mission Inn, which converted me to an adult s'mores believer! I'm happy to say that I have converted more folks this weekend.

To soften the chocolate, we tried getting the cracker and chocolate closer to the heat. We found this got things a bit *too* warm! Ah well, always a work in progress!

Sunday was for cleaning up and breaking down. We enjoyed breakfast before heading down Highway 1 for home.

A great weekend!

summer explosion in the garden.

2010-07-11T21:17:00.000-07:00

The cool and wet spring has given way to a warm and sunny summer. Our own little corner of the world is experiencing a typical season: foggy cool mornings, clear and sunny afternoons with temperatures about 70 - 80 Fahrenheit. I spent some time watering and weeding, and taking some photos.

I was feeling frustrated as I keep finding plums that look like this. Could be the raccoons, and we've seen birds also going for the fruit. As I scooped half-eaten plums from the ground and into the compost bucket, I wondered if all the work was worth it. And as I kept working, I found yes - it's very worth it.

a honeybee in the marjoram and oregeno

soybeans! I can't believe it, this is the first time I've been able to grow one of these from seed.

Literally, the fruits of a days work. Well worth it! Turns out that was the last of the plums.

A week later, I return from camping and find that our tomatoes are begining to ripen.

Delicious!

Bottling wine

2010-06-26T22:19:00.000-07:00

In anticipation of the summer fruits, I bottled our Pomegranate 2007 wine into bottles.

First, the bottles are soaked in a potassium metabisulfate solution. (very dilute!)

The corks are also soaked to soften them.

The carboy (it's a six gallon glass carboy) is moved to the counter to allow sediment to settle.

One at a time, wine is siphoned carboy to bottle. The red thing is the hand corker.

The job is done quickly.

Poor light, but one shot for color.

Planning for a bike ride and perhaps making some plum wine tomorrow. Summer is finally here!

Capturing a swarm

2010-05-09T09:46:00.000-07:00

I was at work Monday morning when one of our groundskeepers, Scott, knocked on my door. "A swarm has just landed in a tree! You were the first person I thought of!"

I followed him out of the building and towards a nearby tree.

In the middle of the photo there's the cluster of bees. This is a young redwood tree. Not knowing how long the swarm would stay, I knew we needed to act quickly. M does not have a cell phone (argh!), but he had mentioned that he'd be going to check on Erato. Perfect! C does, I called him, M was there, and he promised to be at the campus in an hour. I said I'd look for a ladder and a box for the swarm to go in. I'm glad most of my co-workers know I am a train / bike or train / walk commuter and did not ask why I didn't have my jacket. ;)

The great thing about working on a college campus is the Facilities group. They have the good toys. We arranged to meet up in an hour, and I was impressed by what they brought - a lift machine!

M gave directions to Scooter on the ground. Scooter was a pro at this - he got M to the swarm exactly without damaging the tree. Later M would tell me that he wants that lift. Ha! It would make life easy!

I was super proud of the other Facilities members that bravely hung out. They were under the swarm at several times. Overall, they were excited and thought it was "cool!"

The smoker is up there with him. The lift is fine!

"Do you have another box?" Uhoh. He wasn't completely sure the queen was in the first box, so there was a mad scramble to find a second box. Monday is a bad day for this - all of our cardboard recycling has been removed.

We did manage to find a second box, thrown to us from the second floor of the campus center. By now, we had attracted a fair amount of attention. Most of it was oblivious, folks were confused by the path between two buildings being closed by the lift. I keep thinking there's a perception filter with regards to bees: folks choose not to see them. (Happily, not a single sting was reported.)

Done! The boxes each have a frame of honey in them (thank you Urania 2!) to feed the girls. I heard later that they were very contentedly sipping up the honey. I imagine they were tired from their flight and happy to have a taste of home, where ever that home was. It ended up the first box (the red one) did capture the queen, the boxes were left next to each other Monday afternoon and all of the bees found a way to escape the brown box and a way into the red one. Such loyalty!

This was more work than the first swarm we captured. I still think it's a pretty great example of how good a swarm capture can be. I'm thrilled Scott told me about the swarm (we gave him a jar of honey as thanks, a finders fee). I'm grateful I work with folks that are willing to lend a hand to see insects saved. I'm glad no one thought the best thing was a can of insecticide. Knowing how overworked and in demand our facilities guys are, I'm grateful for their support. Really glad I was able to find M and give these bees a hopefully happier story. And to the bees, yay! Welcome, hive #21!!!

(And Happy Mother's Day to all of those Queens, mother to so many productive and gorgeous golden bees! Happy Mother's Day to all beekeepers, who provide food, shelter, and love. Happy Mother's Day to all beings everywhere that nurture anything!)

Virgil said that the bees "partake of an Essence Divine and drink Heaven's well-springs."

2010-04-20T21:34:00.000-07:00

It's been a very busy April so far. And we are left with muses!

Urania. The hive at my own house, from her we harvested over 150 pounds of honey last year. The hive died off around the new year, but then a swarm found the hive and is living there now.

Terpsichore. Now a year old, going strong and recently given a new hive remodel. She's a strong hive and likely to be our next harvest.

Thalia. Four hives in this grassy meadow. I'm charmed by the stories the name Thalia brought out from the property owners.

Polyhymnia. Six hives on a sunny hillside surrounded by a peaceful retreat. Fruit trees, berries, gardens and more.

It's either Calliope or Clio. Four hives in a sun drenched agricultural area. An organic farm is a few miles away, the goal is to add more hives in this area.

Erato. Three hives on the rooftop of a downtown home. This one has a "super queen" - the pheromones from one hive pulled most of the neighboring hive's bees into her fold. They were storing honey and pollen in drawn comb within days.

Euterpe. Hived last night, this hive makes the 20th hive!

A Day in the Life of a Beekeeper.

2010-04-20T19:12:00.000-07:00

M's gone pro. After weeks of prep work, the bees all arrived and it was time to get them into their homes. I took a day off work to lend a hand (not to mention a back, legs, feet, truck, etc...) and took plenty of photos.

The day started with tea. It continued with a lot more tea. Throughout the day we'd say "Beekeepers and armies run on hot sweet tea!" (Just finished reading Terry Pratchett's Monstrous Regiment...)

While M did some last minute construction and painting, I mixed up some bee food - poured fondant!

(We love the cooking shows, and I realized why all those bakers either buy their fondant or use a mixer - that stuff is tough to mix by hand and not make a giant mess!)

Fondant ready to go! (we're mixed on using this as food. In the hot locations, it dried out very fast. But it didn't require punching holes in a mason jar lid either, so we'll see. Currently it's all we've used to feed the bees in addition to the can of syrup they arrived with.)

We had packed the bulk of the materials into the truck the night before. Off we went through the Santa Cruz mountains to a gorgeous location. It was a bit of a drive to get there, more than once I asked M if he was sure he wasn't going to leave me stranded, and a few bars of Dueling Banjos was hummed. We were going slow on the road, the photo is just blurry from the bumps!

(At one point he said the truck felt sluggish. We're going up a hill with 80% some odd grade, and 24 cinder blocks and plenty of wood in the back. That's 1020 pounds of concrete alone on little trucks 4 cylinders!)

Eventually, we arrive! Before unloading, we took a walk around the property to scout a good site for the six hives.

The water features are all rain water. The property has large cisterns that collect water runoff and then cycle it through the fountains and water features.

Fruit trees all over.

Did I mention they are off the grid?

We found a spot that was ideal for the bees (lots of early morning sunlight), ideal for the people (not too close to walking paths), and ideal for a beekeeper (fairly close to a road for loading and unloading.) Time to unload!

The hive bases and stands were unloaded first. The "runways" are each painted different colors to help each bee identify her home. (and it's pretty!)

I set to work unpacking the cinder blocks that would make the base of the stands. The cinder blocks add height to help the bees fight off raccoons and skunks (not to mention saving a beekeeper from bending!) and help with the ant-proof bases.

Cinder blocks would be unloaded from the truck three or four at a time on the hand truck, then rolled to the top of the path where the hand truck is in the photo.

From there, I would walk each one down to stack just above the hive locations. I tried wheeling it down, the weight of the hand truck was more of a fight then just walking them. (And one or two jumped free, nearly crushing blackberry bushes!)

Finally! Almost done! While I was hard at work unloading the truck, M was moving earth. Literally.

He made two platforms for the hives - three to each side.

We got the chicken wire (another raccoon and skunk deterrent) down, and set the cinder blocks as well. And meet Charlie, the resident dog!

The hive stands were placed on next. We had four of the bottom boards with us as well, so those were set. Empty truck, time to head back for a second load of goodies and lunch! (and tea!)

Back at the house, M finished up some more painting and construction while I loaded the truck. I loved how colorful it was looking. And I think the bed cupholders are hilarious.

We quickly unloaded the truck and set the rest of the components of the hives up: brown hive stands and brown bottom boards. Green mite traps. Red brood supers with frames. Blue brood supers with no frames. Blue inner and telescoping covers.

It's a bit hard to see with the sun reflection, but the pattern of colors for the runways was varied. Since there were three colors and six hives, the colors repeated twice. The goal is that the bees would know they were the blue on the edge, or the green in the middle.

The hives set, we ran back to the house again to pick up the most important piece...

bees!!!! Six packages of Italian honeybees.

Back at the apiary, we suited up. The owners both arrived home around this time. We got Jody to put a jacket on with us, but Noel choose to watch from afar. I put petroleum jelly on the hive stand bars (keeps ants out) while M removed the wood from the packages. Smoker lit in case of stings, and down the hill we went.

The hiving went smoothly, we worked easily together to get the bees into the hives, the queens placed in their packages between frames, and the hives closed with both their cans of syrup and a bit of fondant patty on some wax paper on the inner cover. We moved all of our tools back to the truck, took off our suits, and looked at the view.

I think the bees are going to be very, very happy.

As we drove away, I had M stop the truck so I could take a few more photos of the property, complete with the "dream come true" beehives.

I think they fit in beautifully!

And keeping with our Muses, this apiary has been named Polyhymnia. It's the perfect name for this lovely retreat center that wishes for its guests to walk the grounds and snack on the fruit that they find growing as they head to a drumming circle.

As we drove back, we stopped by Thalia to see how she is doing. Thalia had been hived a few days before Polyhymnia. Her bees were active and happy.

We collected the packages that had been left for straggler bees to escape from, fed them some fondant, and closed them up for the evening.

And finally.... dinner! Hot tea on the drive home! A shower! and some very well earned rest!

garden, garden

2010-04-20T17:41:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, the winter garden was pulled up and the spring garden was planted.

By pulling up the fava beans, the leeks were discovered!

Some of them were starting to make flowers, so we knew it was time for them to come up as well. Along with the leek harvest, the sugar snap peas and fava beans also came up.

Ah! This is the reason it smells so good to come home.

I was delighted to see our apple tree has flowered! I don't know what it is - but apple flowers just make me giddy.

Finally, the spring garden was mostly planted. More carrots, leeks, and sugar snap peas. Lemon and straight cucumbers (those are in the diatomaceous earth island) Lettuce and soy beans are in the pots on the deck. All of these came up from seed. We also added some bought bell pepper, Spanish pepper, and Serrano chili pepper seedlings. Tomatoes, zucchini, basil, and garlic are still awaiting planting in the big wooden planter by the beehive. Just ran out of time!

where has the time gone?

2010-04-11T22:28:00.000-07:00

so much happening, and so little time to update! First - what is this?

I found this in the garden as I was weeding. I gave it a slight squeeze to see if it was hollow, and it moved! The pointed end wiggled just a bit. I set it down under the rose plants where it wouldn't be disturbed. Would love to know what it is!

About a month ago M arrived to the house and saw a butterfly inside of the fire pit. (The fire pit is pictured here, not the butterfly!) He released it, and we both thought, what an odd place for a butterfly to get into.

With more inspection, we found that it was a caterpillar that crawled in, the chrysalis was still intact.

The seedlings have mostly done well. Peas are going wild (they are several inches taller than this photo), tomatoes are sprouting, cucumbers and lemon cucumbers are getting their true leaves, and one soy bean sprouted. Carrots and leeks are both coming up, as is zucchini and lettuce. It looks like the peppers are a no show, so we'll have to get seedling plants.

The last of the turnips were picked. Also collected the first of the fava beans and a good amoulnt of sugar peas. The peas went for lunch at my twin's house. I'm delighted that my thirteen month old niece likes garden peas.

The fava bean plants are dominating the garden and the house at this point. Those are leeks just peeking out under there too! The recent rain and winds have thrashed the plants (and let's be honest, their size didn't help!) I'm not sure how much longer these guys will be in the garden, we could use the space, and I'd like to not have to carry my bike over them.

Ah, looking at all the garden photos makes me anxious to get my hands in the dirt again! I'm grateful for today's rain (nearly an inch!), but I'm missing the soil!

Free-bees!

2010-03-23T21:17:00.000-07:00

So amazing! We hadn't gotten to cleaning up and removing the hive from the rain, and then last Wednesday M was working out in the yard. He heard a sound that he described later as sounding like several leaf blowers starting at once. He got inside the house, and remembered my camera is in the desk. I'm so excited he got photos!!!

He gave the bees a few hours to settle in, and then checked on the hive. They had settled in. We left the bees alone until Sunday afternoon. We wanted to give them new brood boxes, and some new frames as well.

Over the days between the swarm arriving and the hive inspection, we saw the bees robbing the extra brood box. Now I'm thinking the cloud of bees I saw the Sunday before were scouts. I'm thrilled they found our hive desireable.

Sunday we decided to formally meet the new bees.

The old hive. The spare brood box was left to the side for robbing. The makeshift table (in pots of oil to keep ants off) tipped over against the fence, definitely time to go!

The new brood boxes. M picked up frame spacers to go inside, they hold 8 or 9 frames each. I have to say - very handy for putting frames in! No careful thumb and finger measuring.

We moved the old frames and bees into the red brood box, and added the blue brood box with frames. We did not see the queen, but we did see a few bee clusters while we worked, so we thought it a safe guess that the queen was among them. The bees are doing a good job removing the mold that was on the frames. We're going to give them a couple more weeks before the next inspection. At that time our plan is to give them a new mite board and bottom board.

The Urania name (the muse of astronomy) seemed too appropriate. A swarm descended from on high, and found a home here. I'm thrilled. :)

Spring Garden Prep

2010-03-13T14:35:00.000-08:00

At last! The rain has paused, the sun is shining, and it's a day I am off. The planets have aligned, and the garden box has been built. We are ready for spring and summer!

This is the "before" photo. We placed the box here as it's a pretty barren part of the garden. Loads of digging, buckets of compost, heaps of worm tea, and it still doesn't want to produce. Last year we grew tomato plants here in soil bags (the soil in there was from those bags!) and it worked out pretty well. But this year - more soil! more tomatoes! more garden!

Last week I found out the city does free weekly compost give aways. M drove the truck down to the site on Thursday, and filled up the bed with heaps of dark, stinky, wonderful dirt. After that workout, he came back here and moved the soil to the box, the future strawberry home, and around the garden. I just need a second to applaud this work. I live in an in-law studio, so I'm a good football field away from where we park. I love the privacy, but I silently curse the distance anytime I'm carrying something heavy. He moved the soil by shoveling it into one of our big green yard waste bins, rolling the bin back, and then up-ending it over the garden box. Those bins have a "do not load over 200 pounds" warning on them - I imagine he got close to it with this dirt! I got home from work around 7:30 Thursday night to find him "shattered". And he still made us dinner. Salt n Pepper said it well - What a man!

I will say that as I arrived home, the smell of the compost hit me halfway down the walk. It's strong.

After yoga and coffee this morning (This garden work brought to you by a small Peet's drip coffee!) I started making seedling trays. The garden box doubled as a great work area! I filled seedling containers, listened to NPR, and was amused by the neighbors kids playing next door.

It was a perfect morning, one my dirt hands did not capture on film. Bees buzzed between the rosemary flowers and the frames of honey that we left for them to rob. A hummingbird hovered inches from my head and arm, darting to the rosemary flowers and fave bean flowers. Mia came out to stand on my lap as I pressed seeds into the soil. Birds chirped from the trees, reminding me to refill their seed. Fluffy bumblebees buzzed around the fava bean plants. I couldn't have asked for more.

I managed to overfill our little greenhouse. If half of the seeds germinate, we'll be in great shape. I'm also hoping to get seeds started for Abeille a Miel as well with this push. Germination for these seeds will be anywhere from five to twenty five days, so we'll know soon enough if the seeds took.

Germination times:

carrot = 14 - 21 days.

yolo bell peppers = 10 - 25 days.

soy beans, leeks, roma tomatoes, heirloom tomatoes = 10 - 15 days.

zucchini, lemon cucumbers, straight cucumbers, sugar snap peas, cherry tomatoes = 5 - 10 days

all square containers have sugar snap peas, all rounds are tomatoes.

Took a bag of sweet pea seeds that we'd saved two years ago and scattered them about the flower garden patch. If they take, awesome! we'll have flowers and nitrogen fixing roots. If they don't ... compost.

The fava beans are growing right along. Thank you bumble bees and hummingbirds!

(these plants are starting to dominate the garden, so I'm hoping they get to harvest quick! now we know for the future - tie them up early!!)

Once all the work was done, I filled the birdseed up, swept the sidewalk and deck, and gave the greenhouse a watering before closing it up. The kids next door were playing a game of some kind, and then suddenly I heard the oldest one ask in a loud clear voice, What on earth is that smell? I laughed and cringed at the same time. Oh man. We're *that* neighbor!

Bear with it! I hope to provide you good tomatoes this summer!

I hardley knew ye.

2010-02-26T11:51:00.000-08:00

M took the hive apart Thursday afternoon to take a look, and possibly combine good frames into one brood box to give the bees less space to manage. There was no sign of the queen. He said there was only about a dozen bees still hanging out.

The brood frames have pollen and honey stored in them. They are covered with mold as well. Talking about it, we think something else caused the bees to go and the mold was a secondary opportunistic infection. We don't seen any signs of foul brood or chalk brood - there is no brood. Just honey and bee bread. We know the hive was healthy and thriving in mid-October. I found the inner hive cover to not be glued down in late December. Something must have gone astray after the last harvest.

I started a bit of a hive autopsy, but remaining (and robber?) bees were about, so I left them. I couldn't help but think I was being callous to be pulling the hive apart so soon, reminded me of the delicate process of cleaning up after a bad call on the ambulance. I backed away. Hopefully the bees can salvage honey and benefit other bees. There are other days for examination.

We took a walk to the store for dinner. It was good to walk and process. Losing a hive is a lot harder than I thought it would be. There is an air of sadness about the house tonight.

There are questions that will never be answered. That's ultimately what we are left with. An amazing year of a new experience, 175 pounds of honey, a good amount of money from honey sales, a few stings, and a lot of questions.

This afternoon, I poured a glass of wine and M a pint of beer, and we sat on the deck overlooking the garden. We choose to hope the bees went to find a more positive future. We listened to the ravens, and watched a pair of crows groom each other. A hummingbird darted around. A bumble bee buzzed loudly by. Mia hoped from lap to lap. Looking at the strong garden and the bursting plum tree, it's good to feel hopeful. It's good to think about setting up a new hive. And there is a lot of sweetness left.

Thank you, bees. You brought sweetness into my life. You made people that used terms like "bee vomit" turn into honey aficionados. Your labors were the gift of choice. You gave drawn comb to your sisters. Your honey traveled half of the globe, China to Wales, with many stops in between. Through you I met an amazing community, and I learned a lot about myself. I'm sorry you left. You were loved. You changed lives.

A farm morning

2010-02-24T13:26:00.000-08:00

Mondays and Wednesdays at work are my early days to accomodate one of the labs. I was up early this morning, and with time to kill before getting to the train station, I decided to get a few tasks done around the house and yard. This also led to examining the beehive a bit, and thinking more about what changed.

This is also a bit of an update on garden work done last weekend. The potato bush was cut down! While we tend to be of the "don't kill plants" mentality, the potato bush violated our basic needs for plants. Can we eat it? Does it smell nice? Can we use it? Does it help? While I have seen a bee sipping water from a drop on a leaf, the bees weren't super fond of it. With the mold problem, we're also concerned that the overbearing bush was creating decreased ventilation and excess shade. That corner has always been a bit damp. Right now, any help we can give the hive is desireable.

I've been thinking a lot about the bees, and what went wrong. The trouble here is that it's not a clean experiment. There are just too many variables, one being that we are new to beekeeping and just don't have the years of experience to know our bums from our elbows. I'm reminded of tales of hubris. After having several months of Urania the Wonder Hive, I thought nothing could go wrong.

Alarm bells did go off back in December when I went to check the mite board, and found the inner cover and honey super lifted off easily. No hive tool required easy. This was unlike the bees - they seemed to love propolis and all of it's stickyness passionately. I knew opening the hive was risky then with our cool and damp weather, so I think the feeling that I may be doing more harm than good overwhelmed me.

January was a wet month, and February has followed suit. I'm grateful for the rain, but I don't think it helped the bees cleanse, clean up, or air out the hive.

With the potato bush gone, I was able to see the front of the hive. It's covered with bee poop. One of the things we think may have harmed the health of the colony was the powdered sugar mite treatments. I feel awful about this. Powdered sugar has indigestible starch, and our bees really didn't have a mite problem. What can I say? I was following the advice from the Guild. We will not be doing this treatment again.

So was it the weather? Did the hive swarm? Was there some illness? Was this "CCD"? Was it the powdered sugar? We don't know. It appears the queen is still with the colony. The bees are acting defensive once we open the brood boxes up, and there are no drones. There are no signs of egg laying workers. There is also very little hive activity from what we could see. Getting this photo a few months ago would have brought out the guard bees. Now all is quiet around the entrance.

As we see it, we have a few options. Weather cooperating, open up the two brood boxes, and remove as many moldy frames as possible. Condense Urania down to one brood box with as many clean (and drawn) frames as possible. Replace the moldy hive stand, mite board drawer, etc etc. A more radical option is to replace the entire hive, including new frames. We are considering ordering a new package of bees and basically starting over. As heart breaking as this is, at least the timing is good.

Who would have thought a thousand insects would occupy a place in the heart?

Enough, I'm depressing myself. On to better news. We got a lot of weeding done, transplanted some of the flower garden, and started to move strawberries around to fix the drip irrigation system.

(to compare - before 1 and 2. A huge thing was getting the lavendar transplanted and off the sidewalk! Poor thing had been bullied by the lemon geranium.) I love the ever-evolving look of the garden.

We filled two green bins with oxalis, the potato bush, and other leaves and debris.

This morning I took out the recycling for curbside pick up and took the kitchen compost back for the worms. I noticed the water fountain, filled from the rain, had some swimmers in it. I went over and dumped out the water, trying to avoid my shoes. I've considered getting mosquito fish, but the fountain is usually left empty to avoid the racoons using it for a wash. I was considering alternatives when a pair of hummingbirds darted out from the overhanging butterfly bush and chirpped loudly. It was a good reminder that there's a whole eco system in the yard.

(that industrial bucket? It holds the birdseed, and yes, the raccoons have already gnawed through one lid.)

Oooh! Thanks to Lifehacker and University of Nebraska at Lincoln, my bird feeder has been squirrel free! I mix a tiny bit of hot sauce with the bird seed. Birds can not detect capsaicin, but squirrels can. Thankfully the grey squirrels in my neighborhood don't have a longing for hot sunflower seeds.

After feeding the birds, I took a look at the fruits and veg. The sugar snap peas are blooming away, and we have a few peas growing. The fava beans also have a few tiny pods on them. (many thinks to the bumble bees!) We've slowly been eating and sharing our turnips. The carrots are growing well, but are still small. The arugula took over the lettuce patch and bolted.

I remembered this handy graph of planting and germination times, and it's amusing me today. The runner beans died in the frost, the turnips never appeared. The cabbage is growing slowly, and I'm wondering if that "Dec 1" meant next Dec 1. The spinach also did not germinate.

Finally - watch this space! ;) This is the planned location for a garden box. The goal is to put tomatoes and basil in it for the spring. We'll also be removing the lemon grass and transplanting it to another part of the garden. I'm excited to have a proper place for the tomatoes that can use the existing drip system and prevent the tomato plants from bullying the rest of the garden.

My lunch time is about up. Good to remember the fullness and life in the garden.

First hive inspection of '10.

2010-02-13T21:03:00.000-08:00

A week ago, I visited a friends house, and saw many honey bees around her garden. The number of bees and their activity made me wonder (ok, worry) about our own quiet hive. We took advantage of the mild weather on Friday to check the hive. It's not terrible, but it wasn't good either.

We had left the hive for the winter with two loaded honey supers sitting on the two brood boxes, with no queen excluder. Removing the telescoping and inner cover there was the first sign of something being off - it wasn't glued down at all. M was working on the hive and called to me "Come smell this." My heart sank. I dreaded smelling something foul or rotting.

I joined him, and there it was - the faint smell of alcohol. The excess moisture in the hive was causing the honey to ferment. We moved off the two honey supers and found one fairly light (as it was when we put it in - we wanted to make sure the bees had space in case they were still collecting nectar) and the other full with capped honey. It looked as if they hadn't touched either honey super in the last four months. We went down to the top brood super, and found our problem.

Mold.

This is a photo of frame 2 or 8 from the brood box. You can see the larger drone cells on the bottom. M pulled a more center focused frame from the brood box, which had workers working away on it. We noticed that frame was free of mold, but it dawned on us - the queen won't start laying till she finds pollen in the hive. The workers won't bring in pollen until they have a place to store it. They won't be able to store it until the hive is cleaned.

To say I was bummed out is an understatement. Going from Urania, super hive! to seeing such a small number of bees fighting a massive mold infestation... it's just too sad. I wondered how I could have helped, what did I do wrong. We discussed everything from hair dryers to frames in the oven, but the only option that is real is time, improved ventilation, and hopefully better weather.

All these fears of our bees starving, and it's possible we gave them more room then they could manage. Well, we know for next year. They had plenty of honey in their brood boxes. Gorgeous little bees, you know how to care for yourselves far better than us clumsy apes.

There was several ants walking through the hive. Some were very near a splinter of wood in the telescoping cover. Hopefully they haven't built a nest there. All the rain has washed away the oil on the bars that prevented their crossing into the hive.

As luck would have it, M has a bunch of hive parts that he's working on. The plan is to replace the brood boxes, covers, and some frames with new pieces. We can then take the used equipment and give it a good scrubbing and allow it to dry out before using it in the future. (a note on why extra equipment is handy!) It's weird to think of Urania as being so completely replaced, that the 09 wonder hive is getting such major reconstruction.

A few days before we went into the hive, I dreamed that the bees were waiting for our plum tree to bloom. With the cool weather and the rain, it's easy to consider they may be just laying low with their stores of honey, waiting for great weather. Seeing the condition of the hive, I think they have their many hands full.

The good news is our plum tree is close to blooming. Let's hope dreams come true.

** * ** *** ** * * ** * *** * **

I spent some of the day out in the garden cleaning up some of the garden. We planted loads of fava beans in the fall, and they have grown into hardy and sturdy plants. They have flowered, but we have yet to see any beans developing. Of course, I want fava beans! But even if no beans grow, the nitrogen fixing abilities of their roots would make them good plants to have grown.

As I was weeding and pruning away, I heard the distinctive buzz of a bumble bee. I watched a fat black and yellow bee move flower to flower, proboscis well extended. It was a delight to see her. "Thank you!" I whispered to her. If we get a single bean from these plants, I know who we owe thanks to. (video of our busy bee)

The turnips and carrots are doing fantastic. So are the sugar peas and lettuce.

I pulled up last spring's kale (wicked roots on those!) and bell peppers. I was amused to find volunteer sugar peas growing in the carrots, and self-seeded parsley growing a good fifteen feet from where we planted it. Fine by me, we eat plenty of that!

A good productive day outdoors. I was grateful for the gorgeous weather, the chance for the bees to dry up a bit, and the opportunity for me to get my hands in the ground.

Cool weather, cool garden

2009-12-06T18:36:00.000-08:00

With the shorter days and cooler weather, things have slowed down outdoors.

It looks as though our top honey super has a crack in it. We're leaving the bees alone until around the Solstice. If there's a warm enough day, we'll open the hive up and take a peak. The Ecalyptus trees are flowering now, and swarms in mid-January aren't unheard of around here.

Unfortunately, the cold weather has hit a number of bees. I'm reminded of Barbara's Lazarus bees, with the exception that these ladies were found too late.

Fava plants are flowering.

The leeks are doing fantastic, they'll be a year in the spring.

Bell peppers still growing.

Beans and peas are pacing themselves. The pea plant on the end that is the high performer amuses me.

More carrots this year than last.

The turnips are growing beautifully. Figured out why you only have micro greens - the mature plants have thorns!

Our strawberry plants are simultaneously flowering and dying back.

Plum tree is losing its leaves.

All in all, it's still a gorgeous site to come home to.

Even if that means crossing the path of the mutant lemongrass!

Ridge Trail Service Day.

2009-11-08T13:35:00.000-08:00

I didn't realize there was something that could get me out of bed on a Saturday morning at 5:30am until yesterday: The Bay Area Ridge Trail - REI Service Day!

I left my home at about 6:30am to drive to the east bay to pick up my carless-by-choice cousin. (She does use city car share if family car share is not an option.) ;) I was happy to have a buddy for this, and Missy is always up for a hike or adventure. We signed up for the Skyline Trail in Berkeley. This is part of Tilden Park, neighbor to Sibley Park.

There were several of these events going around the entire bay area. I loved thinking of our fellow volunteers spread out across the bay, also with the goal of making the 550 mile trail loop a possibility.

The Bay Area Ridge Trail, REI, and EBMUD put on the event at this location. The coordinators and rangers were AMAZING! We arrived to the park at about 7:45 to find lots of great signage and easy parking. We headed to the clearing with the tents set up and were greeted. "Registration isn't set up, so please enjoy breakfast!" Good priorities! :) Peet's Coffee provided the breakfast, and I'll never say no to their tasty coffee.

The weather was sunny, clear, and cold! It was funny to see most of us standing like prarie dogs soaking up the sun and avoiding the showers.

Soon, we were broken up into smaller groups and headed out to our tasks. The group we were in was fun, light hearted, and hard working. We were charged with removing some old wooden steps, making water bars (rocks in the trail to direct the flow of water across), improving trail grades, and widening parts of the trail. We had all kinds of fun tools - shovels (our group broke two), pulaskis, huge leverage spikes, McClouds, rakes, etc. FUN.

The tasks and duties were shared by informal rotation. I was impressed by the before and after - the trails were really improved by the work done. I've got a new appreciation for trails after realizing the work that goes into them.

The park is also stunning. A mix of exposed and open. We turned at one corner and were greeted by the site of the open valley.

I am definitely planning to return to Tilden for a hike. Both Missy and I felt like we got a good work out from swinging mud, rocks, axe's and dirt, but we didn't travel far into the trail.

Tilden also haves a lot of other attractions for families. There is a small steam train that runs through part of the park, and from the many excited kids waiting to get on it, it's popular.

The rangers also told me about the good deals on an EBMUD parking pass. This may be an option to inspire some more visits to the East Bay trails.

At the end of our work, the rangers were happy, the volunteers were dirty, and the cooks had bbq'ed up a fantastic meal. Prizes were awarded by drawing (neither of us won), goodie bags were handed out, and we all got t-shirts.

Fed, dirty, and happy, we left the skyline trail and drove back to Missy's. I stopped at one view point to really enjoy the amazing views. It was a rare clear day across the bay. We could see the bay bridge connecting Oakland to San Francisco. The Golden Gate in the distance spans the Golden Strait to the north bay.

It was breathtakingly beautiful. A good reminder of why the Ridge Trail is being built.

Fall garden, fall bees

2009-10-29T21:19:00.000-07:00

I took a sample of each of our harvests for comparison. If this was good science, they'd be in identical jars and identical volumes. But instead, we have this!

Applied the second of three powdered sugar treatments to the hive, a hike in the east bay, the garden is growing strong, and will these raccoons please leave?

Before.

I have not seen any signs of Varroa in the hive (on bee, on mite board, or any evidence of malformed bees), but better safe than sorry. With the last harvest of summer done, we've been treating for varroa in this rather gentle way. The hive is dusted with powdered sugar, one cup / brood box, once a week for three weeks. It's times like these I'm grateful for the gentle mood of Urania. The girls *do*not*like* being sugared. I'm highly amused by the ghost bees. After:

I wasn't able to get a photo of a sugared bee. My interest was much more in getting the sugar brushed down off the frames and into the hive, and then shutting the hive up.

The science is the fine granules of the powdered sugar choke the Varroa mite. The challenge with fighting mites (an arachnid) is keeping your bee (insecta) friends happy. The bees, hygenic in nature, will clean each other. Mites that do not choke to death may be groomed off. At the end of the day - the goal is to send our girls into winter as strong as possible. I was thrilled to see so many with their pollen sacks full. I didn't see any drones. Farewell, my cute little bear bess. Until next spring!

Last Sunday I grabbed my cousin and we went for an "easy" hike at Bishop Ranch Preserve. I hadn't been on a hike in awhile, and my cousin was recovering from the Nike Women's Half Marathon. (p.s. GO MISSY!!! I am so proud of you for running that!) We decided something easy (per Bay Area Hiker) would be perfect. Sadly, we didn't follow her route. The up, up, up was brutal! But the views on this clear day...

gorgeous!

Also saw some wild flowers near the top of the ridge.

Closer to home, the garden is thriving. Turnips, cabbage, fava beans, pole beans, sugar snap peas, lettuce, arugula, carrots, and spinach are all making strong shows. It's fantastsic!

On the not so great side, the raccoons have been taking a stronger stand than usual. The cat door is getting closed earlier and earlier to keep raccoons out. They have flipped all of the bee water bowls over, they've harrased our rosemary seedlings, and we found a half-eaten apple today. They've been pushing over the honey equipment in the shed, and insult to injury... they ate the daffodil bulbs Abeille a Miel gave me. I'm trying to remember all the happy web of life lessons, but right now, I just want them to find another yard.

Growing Challenge: tiny seedlings for a big garden

2009-10-18T20:43:00.000-07:00

"Lettuce" show off the seedlings! :-D

Cabbage is doing strong.

That is a shocking amount of turnips!

Carrots are making their first appearances - the tiny slivers that look a bit grass like.

Bush beans and peas coming up. Love this delicate stage - the vulnerable neck of the seedling, the last of the seed still clinging.

Fava beans! Remind me of tiny bouquets.

Sweet peas!!! We don't do many non-edibles, but these are worth it.

Spinach, yum!

Looking at the graph, only the parsnips are yet to make an appearance, and their week should be next week. I'm so pleased with the cool weather garden, why did we wait so long to try this?

October Honey Harvest

2009-10-18T20:27:00.000-07:00

An overcast Sunday was the perfect time to do what we think is the final harvest of the summer on Urania, as well as start the fall preparations.

My impression of the work today - we're getting the hang of this!

An ounce of preparation is worth a pound of extra work! (or something like that)

bucket of tools? check!

this looks crazy - but if there's a lot of ants around, it's a huge saver. The flat is placed on the ground to make the ground a bit more even. The, a small table is placed on this, with the feet in little tubs (old Lush containers in my case!) The containers are filled with a bit of motor oil. I placed an inverted tray from my vermicomposter on top of this to make a big enough surface to hold a honey super. (the table is about the size of a dinner plate.) I've used an old milk crate before as well. The honey super is now ready to accept harvested frames, and the whole thing can sit for a few days to let the bees do the clean up without attracting ants. victory!

M added a board to the extractor legs, this helped a lot! C also made a piece of fabric to go around the bottom grey bin to allow the honey to move off the wax and through while keeping the bees out.

First super off! It was *heavy*!

First frame out. Gorgeous! A bit of burr comb tore off - the spilled honey gave the girls something to go after quick!

Uncapping. It's so pretty, it's like you can hear the soft sigh of wax coming off.

This was fun to see! In several frames, we found cells with a red honey in them.

the aftermath. :-P We removed the queen excluder from the hive. The hive looks so short now!

The white powder near the hive is powdered sugar. One cup / brood box is dusted on the bees once a week for three weeks. This should reduce any varroa mites in the hive before winter. (Haven't seen any on the trap, but this treatment is mild enough that I'm willing to do it to be on the safe side.) The bees aren't super happy to be dusted with sugar, and when they fly off / walk around it's pretty funny - they look like ghost bees!

One frame was removed that is about one half of capped honey. M is going to talk at a preschool about beekeeping soon. We thought this would be a great addition - the kids can see drawn comb and capped honey. I'm very amused my freezer is perfectly sized for a frame!

There was more honey than bucket space! The sieve was balanced on wooden spoons above the bucket to allow the last of it to filter through. (and yes, Mann Lake, we'll totally accept sponsorship!)

It was hypnotic to watch the honey rain down.

A very productive day!

Next: two more treatments of powdered sugar. Some of the bees we saw today had full pollen baskets, a great sign! We'll check on the bees after a month or two to see where they are at. It's a balance of making sure they have enough room & not disturbing the hive and loosing heat. I'm looking forward to hearing from the guild members what kind of activity they anticipate.

growing challenge: Cool garden check in.

2009-10-11T19:51:00.000-07:00

It's been one week! According to the chart, we should see lettuce, cabbage, bush beans, spinach, sugar snap peas, and turnips. And what do we have?

Four out of six!!!

The turnips are the most impressive. They are showing one large green streak under their protective screen. I'm realizing we'll need to balance the need to keep the cat out vs. the parsnips growing through the screen. May try to lift them on blocks or bricks to provide a bit more space and protection.

The "Lettuce" patch is a mix of butterhead lettuce, arugula, and romaine lettuce. eep! We may need to thin. Or find a bunny.

A few tiny cabbage plants are poking their heads up.

Sugar snap pea! I was so excited to see this teeny sprout. Grow seed grow!

I did not see any bush beans or spinach. Hopefully the seeds are doing ok. Starting tomorrow we're supposed to get weather. The forecast says Monday night to Tuesday morning we are to get some high winds and a half inch or more of rain. It's windy now, but that's not unusual. I'm excited for it to start raining. I think not driving makes me love the weather more. When I was driving, the sillyness of drivers when subjected to weather would make me insane. (the lack of gutter clean up planning and thus road flooding also made me insane.) The train and bike or train, rail or bus, and walking give plenty of time to watch and enjoy the rain. And I've got extra socks at work, so I'm safe from wet feet.

I also stood and watched the hive for a bit. Urania is very ready for harvesting again. Loved seeing the industrious golden bees sliding in and out of their hive. I'm seeing fewer and fewer drones around. Once we harvest, we're going to do a three-time powdered sugar treatment for Varroa. Not sure how the fall / winter is going to be. Most of the books out there seem to be written for areas with big cold winters. It's rare for it to freeze here, and plenty of things flower year round. Will we leave the hive untouched until Spring? Will we have winter harvests? The current plan it to harvest at least two of the honey supers, if not all three. Then we want to put back at least one, if for no reason other than providing the girls room. They have plenty of stores, the hive definitely passes the heft test. The other thing we are directed to do is remove the queen excluder. Heat rises, so if the hive moves up to keep warm, we don't want the queen left behind.

(this would be so much more regal if she didn't have cobwebs all over her face.)

Time for a glass of wine, some chicken soup, and some relaxation! Hope everyone had a great weekend.

drones v. workers, cool weather garden, and kitty-be-gone

2009-10-04T21:10:00.000-07:00

The cool weather garden was planted today!

Most of us *erhm* got out of bed after going through the bowl of seeds (a bowl that holds all of the envelopes and seed packets). The garden dirt was turned once more, and the planting started.

While doing the rest of the prep, we found some "parsley eating wankers!!!" They were removed from the parsley and relocated. Sadly, they had managed to eat through most of the leaves. Brats! We want to eat the parsley!

Tried something new with the popsicle stick labels - gave them a prep coat of red paint, wrote the name on with sharpie, and then gave them a clear coat. Yes, the clear coat has glitter. Even a garden can use a little flair. ;)

Everything planted and watered. Tools put away, deck and walkways swept, and garden refuse collected for the green bins.

The summer arugula and bell peppers were still growing strong, so they were left. We worked the rest of the garden in around them.

The last step was rolling out this wire mesh that was hanging around the shed. For reasons unknown, Mia has suddenly adopted this bit of yard as her new litter box. The mesh will hopefully allow in plenty of water and light, but prevent any cat paws from scratching.

Oh! We planted our tomato plants in soil bags with their tops cut off this year. It was a first time for us, and the goal was two-fold: to make use of the stretch of ground that refuses to be fertile despite all the love and attention it's received, and to grow tomatoes without having the bushy plants choke out the other garden members. The cool summer meant we had a lot of green tomatoes that were slow to redden. Most folks in this area had the same results, or had fungus & mold problems. I pulled the spent plants last weekend, and was impressed by the root systems. I recommend this style with some modifications - the bags had some splitting, and a drip system was the way to go for watering.

Back to today - took measurements of the garden and made a graph of the garden. The garden measures 16' by 5'8". (And be kind with judgement of my graph, there's a reason I work in Science and not art!) The dark brown is the deck and path, and the grey is the house and walkways. (in other words - the very definite physical boundaries!) The white boxes are the pre-existing herbs and veggies.

Also threw together the days to germinate and harvest. It's weird that everything should be up after a week, but we're looking at December for harvesting! I do hope everything germinates.

On to the bees! Last weekend I saw a teeny worker hanging out on the table. She was fuzzy and had good looking wings, making me thing she was young. After an hour, she hadn't moved. I was concerned, she didn't seem to notice me as I moved around her, set a basket of harvest near her, etc.

Her listlessness got to me. I decided to get a bit of honey and see if I could coax her to a meal and into feeling better.

Yay! She liked the honey! Not too long after she took some honey, she walked around the table a bit and then left.

Last, I caught a drone and a worker walking around on the sidewalk not too far from each other.

Good scale of how different in size these two are from each other. The first time I saw a drone I was shocked. "That bee is huge!" The drones are getting fewer in numbers as the cooler weather approaches.

We are due for a harvest of at least two honey supers, maybe three. The smell of honey is intense. The bees are louder than usual, and they have been washboarding - all signs we've notice for them being out of space in their hive. Time for us to help give them some space!

because Amanda said she missed my updates. ;)

2009-09-22T23:05:00.000-07:00

We're in a bit of a holding pattern. Wine is aging, the garden is having a short rest before the winter planting, and the bees are abuzz. Last Saturday a group of us went up to hike Sibley Park to celebrate the last weekend of Summer. It was amazing to see the views - last trip it was so fogged in!

Last Friday I took a case of honey to work. Fridays are the quietest day on the campus. I sent out an email to all users and said "$10 per jar, stop by" and went about my work, no where near the computer. Within a few minutes I had my first customer (that wasn't in my department!) asking for three jars. I was floored. I wasn't sure I'd sell any in my remote and locked room, and suddenly I wondered if I had enough!

In under two hours, all jars were sold! The final one was spoken for - one of my instructors wanted it, but was in class. I teased him later "could have sold your jar for $50!" I had a stream of emails from folks asking me to save a jar for them, send one to our sister campus, sell on Thursdays when they are on campus, etc. Wow! I created a honey list of folks to contact first next time I have some honey to sell.

It was a great experience overall. I put a picture of the girls up on my computer screen so folks could "meet" the bees that brought them honey. People were interested in knowing more about the bees and the honey. I was surprised to see one person coming in that has always called honey "bee vomit". I laughed as he walked in and asked for a jar. He was buying for a friend, but still insists it's bee vomit. Being on a college campus, there's frequently a divide between administration, faculty, and staff. It was nice to see how the honey literally sweetened things. Some folks brought the honey as gifts, which flatters and amazes me. Yes, I think it's the best honey ever, but I'm pretty biased!

A few days later and I'm still getting emails from "can I buy some" to "I'll pay you now for honey later!" and "can I come pick my honey up now?" We've got interest for another case, easily. I had one person write to tell me she and her husband loved the honey, and she'd like to get a jar for her son. I'm all smiles.

Barbara asked a question about my neighbors on a recent post. A picture is worth a thousand words in answering...

I live in an urban environment, and my hive is steps from my front door. That said - I'm in an in-law type house, which helps give me a lot of privacy. The bee hive is where the bright blue square is located.

My neighbors on the NE side have a shed right there, and a dog run along our common fence. The neighbor that is in my "front yard" does not use his back yard - he's actually offered to let us use it for a second garden. My neighbors on the SW are also my landlords. ;) They do know completely, I went to them for their blessing before we set up the hive. (we had bought it - we had a back up set up plan!) I remember asking - the first question I got was "do we get any honey?" They called a few days later to say, yes, hive ok! Their cautious yes turned into overall enthusiasm after harvesting. Turns out their daughter adores honey. They are calling her a honey bear. :)

The big safety concern now is after the kids next door saw us in our jackets they want to see more! Our first harvest, they ran back a few times, with us gently shooing them away. They are usually totally respectful of the different spaces, but I think the appeal of weird looking clothes was too much! For the second harvest we latched the fence between us to keep them away. I'm happy to share the honey, but the last thing I want is an unsuspecting person being stung.

On the horizon - we're melting wax slowly and surely. One more harvest is planned before the end of the season. We need to clean some bottles and rack wine. The fall garden needs planting. The heel of the sock I'm working on is almost turned. And I need to find a cycling jacket! Things are good.

Fall Garden

2009-09-13T13:08:00.000-07:00

Compost tea, worm castings, a sturdy shovel, hand spade, hand rake, and good clippers.

Getting the garden cleaned up from summer and ready for fall.

All of the plants were fed compost tea. The vegetable garden soil was turned with fresh worm castings. Everything was left to rest and combine before planting.

We picked up seeds at OSH for the fall garden, going by the advice of a fall and winter garden article sent out by Park Seed.

A full day of beehive inspection and garden work called for some cool drinks!

It's tiring work!

September 6 hive inspection.

2009-09-13T12:13:00.000-07:00

Last weekend there was a hive inspection of Urania and garden clean up. Part of this was inspired by the September Bee Guild meeting - It's time to get ready for Fall!

The goal of the hive inspection was to see how things had progressed since the August 15 harvest. We wanted to make sure the queen was under the queen excluder. How were the girls dealing with the excluder? And finally - when we put the excluder on, we trapped some drones in the honey supers. I'd noticed the hive was starting to clear out the drone population, and they seemed a bit short tempered on hive visits during the week (in which I usually open up the telescoping cover and look around in street clothes).

Initial impressions: the girls LOVE propylis. Once the telescoping and inner cover were removed, we took a peek into the August 15 super. They are quickly filling this up with nectar, and a good amount of the comb was capped. Noticed a good amount of burr comb on the frames, which is something I've noticed they do when a super is close to harvest time. This super was removed and set to the side.

The July 30 super had a lot more burr comb! They had actually built the comb from one super to the next, attaching the frames. This makes removing supers a bit tricky - not only are you dealing with propylis, weight, and bees - it's a bit like unstitching the insides.

This super was also moved and set to the side. (my best advice for a new beekeeper? have a sturdy table nearby!) The torn comb and spilling honey soon got the attention of the bees.

We gave the girls a bit of time to get the drones out. They were in a very pleasant mood. We hung out just watching them, something I still find totally fascinating.

We talked about removing the queen excluder for the fall / winter, but with two supers being so close to harvest ready, we decided to leave it on, add an empty super, and do one more harvest in about four weeks. Glad to see the excluder was pretty clean, I was worried there would be dead bees stuck in it.

We removed the burr comb, and reassembled the hive. The first super on was an empty honey super containing seven frames of drawn comb and two frames of foundation only.

The next super that went on was the August 15 super. The entire tower was topped off with the July 30 super. We left the telescoping cover off for a bit to give the girls a last chance to remove any drones that remained in the honey supers. The inner cover was on to give the hive some protection. Once I saw a wasp hovering nearby, the telescoping cover was snapped back on.

The scrapped off comb and spilled honey on the spare bottom board attracted some bees to it. It looked like a bar of honey that the bees were too happy to belly up to! They do a great job of clean up.

We took one of the pieces of comb to bite into. I admit the love of honeycomb is mostly lost on me- unless it's sunwarmed and fresh from the hive. Then it's a rare and precious treat. Honey straight from the hive, deliciously warmed has no comparison!

The future plan: harvest two supers in early October. Remove the queen excluder and leave the September 6 super on the hive to give the bees extra nectar and honey, realizing that the queen may take this over. Do three powdered sugar treatments over three weeks to kill any varroa mites. Consider feeding pollen patties to keep the queen laying through November. And then it's up to the weather and the bees to get through the winter.

Bee inspection done, it was time to move on to the garden work!

Encapsulating August.

2009-08-30T18:42:00.000-07:00

Chronological would not really be possible at this point without cross referencing, so - topics! Compost, garden, bees and honey, wine, and house.

compost
The worms have really gone through their food lately. I added a full green bin today and was pleased to see how well the food is breaking down. I ran out of worm tea about a month ago, so it's good to see things going well.

Found this small white mushroom growing in the compost - cool! No idea what kind it is.

I've often seen these small brown-red things in the compost and hadn't given them a lot of thought. Since becoming a beekeeper, I've got varroa mites on the brain more. Is there any chance this is varroa? Looking through Worms Eat My Garbage, it looks like these may be beetle mites or mold mites. They seem a part of the compost, but I do wonder what they are.

Nothing jumped out at me when I opened the bin today, thankfully!

garden
The transition between summer and fall is showing. Peppers and tomatoes are still ripening away, but the apples are quickly growing and ripening.

Our summer started out mild, and the tomatoes were slow to ripen. Recent increases in temp means that we've got plenty of juicy, sweet red tomatoes to eat. So worth the wait!

Recent transplants (lemon geranium and the lemon tree) are doing fine.

Also added a "bee bar". ;) Using a large old plant saucer and small pebbles left over from setting up an orchid, it's filled with water. The pebbles provide the bees footing so they can get sips of water.

The saucer is placed in a well protected and shady area. The neaby "Hot Lips" Salvia attracts big black bumble bees, so I want everyone to get their water.

bees and honey.
They've been busy! We've noticed thicker "bee clouds" around the hive on the hottest days. The hive entrance faces the corner of the fence, and we've wondered if the bees make this cloud to increase ventilation throughout the hive.

It does look like swarming bees, but honestly - if Urania swarmed every time there was a big bee cloud, it's doubtful we'd have a bee left.

The girls have been a bit short tempered. I've wanted to open up the inner cover to see how they are doing with the recent addition of the excluder, but they haven't been as patient as usual. I've also been moving about in street clothes, so I am more likely to back off quickly to avoid angering the hive and getting stung. We know drones got trapped between the excluder and inner cover when the excluder was put on. This, the hotter weather, the excluder, the recent harvest, the increase in racoon activity... there is too many things that could be getting their ire up.

Lots of activity!

The wind picked up this evening, cooling everything. The sun moved past the house, putting the hive in a bit of a shadow.

The hive is much quieter now. I've noticed the bees seem to sleep in later and turn in earlier in cooler weather, and stay out later and get up earlier if the weather is hot or humid.

The last honey harvest yielded about six gallons of honey (definitely five, plus a good deal more!) that went into bottles and our ten gallon plastic bucket for mead. This is our first mead. We boiled the honey to remove the scum (impurities, wax, etc), added water, and let it sit overnight. Yeast, yeast nutrient, yeast energizer, citric acid, and black tea (for tannins) was added. Being so used to fruit wines, it's interesting to see how wine developes with no fruit, seeds, or skins. It smells delicious. It sounds alive, with a constant fizz hum.

Finally, after we had harvested the honey last time, some of the bees thought that there were excellent stores of honey inside the house from a careless placement of the collecting tub too near the sliding glass door. Many bees got inside the house, and they unfortunately died from being trapped indoors, and frantically flying themselves to death. To help all parties, a screen door was added to the cat door. It took my little furry roommate a day to get used to the idea (like I told her - you'll decide if the discomfort of the screen is greater than the desire to go outside!), and she adjusted quickly. Not finding bees or flies in the house is well worth it.

house
This is why professionals are called. The bathroom sink has been draining so slowly and hasn't responded to vinegar & baking soda washes. I decided to give plumbing a go and clear the blockage myself. The entire job was successful and took about twenty minutes. Fifteen of those was convincing someone that really, it isn't interesting. The tub is not for you. This is not a new house. She kept trying to stand on the edge of the tub, causing it to flip up. This was *not* what I wanted to happen once the tub had water and hair clog in it! bleech!

Since it's cooled down, time to make some granola bars for the week.

August has flown by.

2009-08-23T18:40:00.000-07:00

I can't believe the end of August is approaching! Summers tend to fly by as it is - it's the busiest time of year. The long daylight hours support work, volunteering, gardening, wine making, beekeeping, hiking, travel, birthdays, and everything in between. I'm always surprised by how quickly the weekends book up, and by how soon the summer seems to draw to a close. Driving through Highway 9 today I realized how many of the trees have leaves changing color.

I spent the last week on the other coast - Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard, and Newport, Rhode Island. On the Newport Cliff walk I saw plenty of bees working the plentiful flowers. Hello Atlantic bees!

I took two bottles of homemade wine (Blackberry and Elderberry) with me for my friend, along with two bottles of honey. With the current restrictions on flying with liquids, I had to check all of these. The wine bottles were in a wooden wine shipper box in my checked luggage. The honey jars were stuffed into my hiking shoes to help protect them on the trip. When I opened the bag to check on how the glass all did, I realized the jars of honey had flipped around in my shoe - not possible! I found a "your bag has been inspected" tag when I unpacked. I wonder what the TSA folks thought finding the honey and wine! Happily, everything made it safe and sound, the wine was enjoyed and the honey was declared delicious.

On Saturday, August 15 we did the second honey harvest of Urania hive. The plan was to take off the 30Jul09 super and set to the side, remove the 30Jun09 and 12Jul09 supers for harvesting, and add a new 15Aug09 super. We opened up the hive, moved off the newest super, and saw that it is already progressing quickly to being full. When removing the two harvest supers, we realized the burr comb had gone from troublesome to problematic - the girls had built comb up from the brood super into the honey super, and the queen was laying there. With a heavy heart, we stripped the brood cells and burr comb, and added the queen excluder. The burr comb was placed into one of the wine buckets to allow any brood to emerge, and allow the bees to remove any pollen or wax that they wanted. The bees were less than pleased with the interruption of their hive, but they chose to bump rather than sting.

The extraction went quickly- practice does help! We took a break between the two supers, and as M sat on the bench (no jacket, gloves, or veil), he accidentally sat his hand right on top of a bee that was walking on his jeans. He got stung, but we got his hand under ice water and with baking soda fairly quickly.

I took a try at using the uncapping knife, and now I appreciate how easy M makes it look! Using both hands and having him hold the frame, I was still struggling. High angel, slippery materials, and general awkwardness - I was all to happy to hand the job back over!

The frames, once spun, were stored in an empty super for the bees to clean. This time I set a small table out with feet in old LUSH tubs with a bit of motor oil in them. On the table I inverted a large milk crate to provide space, and the super got set on this. This kept ants out of the honey super and allowed the bees to clean things up with no competition. It also made storing our clean supers and frames much easier!

We didn't get any photos of the harvest. We were under a bit of a time crunch since we hadn't expected to do the harvest so soon, and I had a plane to catch. Finding the brood put a bit of a surprise into our day. Even if it's for the good of the hive - it's never easy to sacrifice brood.

We did get another five gallons, at least. We bottled about 40 pint jars (we ran out of jars!) and have another gallon or so more in the bucket that will be used to make mead shortly. We've also collected another three freezer bags full of wax for melting.

In a couple of weeks we'll check the hive again to see how the girls are doing with the excluder. We need to rule out any chance that the queen got trapped upstairs. The next guild meeting is focusing on Fall / Winter preparation. Our guess is we'll have one more harvest before fall really sets in.

This morning we took some time to check on Terpsichore and add a second honey super to the hive. The hive is going strong, and they are definitely storing honey up. They are funny bees! Active and healthy, but much more responsive and on guard than Urania. At the same time, they have a lot more to defend / worry about. Hail Terpsi!

Oh! My friends that visited recently to meet the bees sent me some photos of the visit.

beekeeper me! ;)

cycling

2009-08-12T12:57:00.000-07:00

I. am. dying. with. laughter.

Thanks to the Timbuk2 blog for pointing out this gem: Performance.

(says the person that has a bike with brakes and gears, but it's been pointed out to me on the train that I could get a faster street bike. And I have not one, but two timbuk2 bags.)

My commute has changed a bit. I've been biking between work and the Santa Clara station. This is about half roads through commercial and residential property. The gem of the commute is taking the San Tomas Aquino / Saratoga Creek Trail. It's about two miles of mixed use path that runs under any cross traffic. The creek is running even now, and is alive with cattails, mallards, egrets, and several other small birds. Anytime of day there are joggers, walkers, and other cyclists. It's been a treat to commute on.

Looking at the trail map and the Bay Trail, it looks like I should be able to bike from the Mountain View station to the Stevens Creek Trail, then connect to the Bay Trail. The problem I see (looking at maps on the internet) is once I hit the bay, the trail I need between the water and NASA is a future trail. Once that segmet is built, then I could follow the Bay Trail to the San Tomas Aquino Trail, and viola! Mountain View to work ride that only involves about a half mile sharing the road with cars.

That said - the current San Tomas Aquino map says that the section of trail to Monroe doesn't exist, and my ability to ride on it says otherwise. An adventure is planned! Sometime before the end of the month, I'll ride out and see what I find at the end of the Stevens Creek Trail.

It's things like this that make me consider joining the local bike coalition. But their meetings are on the same nights as the bee guild. Argh! what's a beekeeping bicyclist to do?

Yoga

2009-08-10T14:38:00.000-07:00

Just reading the Eveything Yoga Blog, and there was a great entry about Summertime Yoga, yoga that compliments our favorite summer activities.

Through the entry I found Yoga for Hikers, Yoga for Cyclists, Yoga for Swimmers, and a sequence of poses for after a day in the garden.

Feeling playful, I google'd "Yoga for Beekeepers" and I found a workshop in 2001 that included a session! too funny!

Sunday Adventure: Sibley Volcanic Regional Preserve

2009-08-05T22:01:00.000-07:00

Some close friends got to talking about labyrinths, and mentioned Sibley Volcanic Regional Preserve. (Take a look on google earth if you have the inclination - it's impressive from the air!) The conversation caught my attention, and I decided to cross the bay for a hike. My cousin (who is training to run a half marathon to fight Leukemia) was interested as well. We decided to go early Sunday to avoid the heat on this exposed trail. I met my cousin, we stopped quickly for coffees and egg sandwiches, and then drove up up up the Berkeley Mountains to the trailhead.

On the drive up, I realized why only google maps says to drive up Thorndale. It is steep, steep, steep! It is also a single lane residential road with some deep hairpin turns. I strongly advise getting there via Hwy 24 instead. Once in the parking lot, my first impression was "cyclists!" There was about 30 cyclists gathered together in the lot. I found a parking spot, we finished our breakfasts and headed out.

The visitor center there is a fantastic start. Highlighting the different types of rocks, showing the trail, and providing self-guided tour maps, it's definitely the place to start. Bonus - it has bathrooms too! It turns out this little park has gotten a lot of attention, as you can see with this KQED segment. Honestly, I am a bit embarrased that even after living in the east bay for a few years, I'd never even known there was a volcano there, let alone the chance to hike in its belly. We picked up a self guided tour guide, which included the park map. I also had the always amazing Bay Area Hiker Info in my back pocket detailing our intended hike. (notice I say intended? yeah.)

The other thing to note: we didn't need to worry about the sun. At. All.

The trailhead starts under the treeline. The trail is easy to follow and a slight incline, but the exposed roots and rocks require attention. I found a few elderberry trees with flowers and fruit, and pointed these out to my cousin, as she had just tried our Elderberry wine the day before.

After about a half mile in, the tree line breaks and the trail opens up and flattens out. Trees give way to grasses and shrubs. I think this is where some of the fantastic views are.

I've said it before, but it's worth repeating. Bay Area Hiker is awesome. All said - the park has changed quite a bit in the eight years since it's been documented. It was pretty cool to see that, and it's worth noting before heading out on the trail.

We found the first labyrinth easily enough. From the top of the trail, I got this shot looking down. There are two ways to get down: a fairly steep trail that descends from the lookout point, and a fire road that gently slopes away from the lookout, and back down into the quarry pit. Take the fire road. Trust me.

(we ended up talking to the four women in this photo later, they were great to talk to. Very curious about where the other labyrinths were, funny, and easy going.)

Here's a photo of option one to get down.

I took the last bit crab crawling, and my cousin chose to sat and scoot. Loose gravel, sand, and erosion is not the hikers friend.

Alternatively, this is your option two. A gentle incline, gravel rich path that while may add to your pedometer, it's well worth it.

The fire road popped us back out not too far from the lookout point (the fence area.)

We left the first main labyrinth (there are two smaller ones in the same quarry pit) and hiked on to the second. We got back to the Volcanic Trail, and here's where my notorious hiking sense of directions kicked in. We somehow ended up on the Quarry Trail, and realized it at the Quarry Road. We met up with some nice folks that I imagine were bird watchers (one was carrying a digiscope) who asked to see our map. We talked about the park a bit, and then we struggled with the cattle gate for a bit. ;) We decided to head down the Quarry Road, and catch the Ridge Trail back to the parking lot.

As we walked down Quarry Road, we came across a second parking lot. A couple was getting out, and the man asked us if we saw any sun on the trail. Nope! I did realize - this was one of the friendliest and most social hiking spots I've been on. People are generally kind in the nod-and-walk-by kind of way, but the folks here were practically exchanging phone numbers.

We picked up the Bay Area Ridge Trail and headed back to the lot. It was all too scenic. It was funny - we had definitely gone up as we started the hike. The middle part of the hike seemed pretty even with ups and downs. The Quarry Road did descend, but much more than we thought! The Ridge Trail was beautiful, shady, and UP. We were laughing as we hiked - this has to go downhill at some point! But nope - the trail crested, and we were back in the parking lot.

What is hard to capture in words or photos is that there is something to this park. It's beautiful, but simple. There is a complexity in the rocks and predictability in the life. Maybe there is some energy still leaking out from the heart of the volcano. Not having walked through other calderas before, there is no way to compare. I'm definitely planning to go back, and want to explore the other trails of this phenomenal park.

one proud beek.

2009-08-01T21:57:00.000-07:00

My cousin Missy came out today to meet the bees. Some other friends of mine are interested in the bees, so I told them to come out as well for a visit to see the hive. I had M's jacket with veil, which my cousin could wear. Melissa opted to stay in the living room with their baby (the observation window!) and Jim wore long sleeves and a hat. I had a mesh bag he could use as a temporary veil, but he decided to skip it.

I got the smoker lit, and explained that while it was good to have going, I doubted that we would need it. Despite the hive being handled a couple of days ago, the bees had been in a pleasant mood as I watered and worked around the garden. We had some heavy racoon activity here last night (including the racoons using one of the bees water dishes for their filthy paws!) but the bees seemed undisturbed. I also walked them through, verbally, what I planned to do, and gave them bee brushing jobs.

The telescoping cover came off easily, and the inner cover came off with gentle prying from the hive tool. The big question: Had the swarm been accepted into Urania? Were the bees cleaning the mold off the drawn comb? What was the overall mood of the hive?

I'm pleased to report that it appears the swarm has blended in perfectly to Urania. The newest honey super was full of activity. The bees have drawn new comb on to the outsides of the frames. I carefully removed one frame and took a look. Each cell had a deposit of unripe honey in it, beautifully catching the sunlight in a hundred reflections. (very much like this!) I showed Jim and Missy the frame. Jim was impressed by the sheer number of bees. The bees were ignoring us, they didn't even change their tone as the hive was opened. We could see several bees with their heads deep in the cells, something that still delights me. I don't know why bee butts are so funny!

Once I nestled the frame back in, I decided not to remove any. (The top super has nine frames in it, the other two have eight.) I didn't want to worry about removing bees from a frame of immature honey, or how to store a single frame for cleaning without attracting ants. (oh! Did not see any ants in the super either, good girls!) I then moved the entire super to the table to get a look at the super added in July.

This super was much more processed. As far as I could tell, the majority of it is capped and mature honey. I carefully pried one frame out, and lifted it from the super. As I did, honey comb at the bottom broke, causing a small waterfall of honey to pour forth. "Stick out your fingers, this is honey!" Jim wasted no time :) - much easier for him without the veil on! I used a hive tool to capture a bit for him to take to Mel inside. I took a taste a bit later, and I think it's got a slightly more amber-y taste than the last batch. Absolutely delicious, just a bit different.

One bee jumped at the easy meal on my frame grip. I showed Missy and Jim how she was using her proboscis to capture the honey. I also pointed out that she was interested in honey only, that even with me pointing at her and waving her around, she never made a defensive mood. I waited until she had her fill before setting the tool down. Once I had freed my hands, I put the hive back together. Missy was excellent on bee brush patrol. :)

Mel did get some photos on her camera. It was too tempting not too - M's jacket was just a bit oversized on Missy. ;)

Once dusk set in we all walked out and put our ears up to the hive to hear the contented buzzing of a healthy hive.

I'm so proud of the bees. They are endlessly cool and forever fascinating. They give far more than they take. I'm grateful to their gentle and quiet behavior today while meeting people that haven't spent much time around bees before. I'm really impressed by how calm Missy and Jim were while being surrounded by thousands of bees. And clearly, a new harvest is coming soon!

psuedo-swarm?

2009-07-31T20:25:00.000-07:00

I recently captured a small swarm. We had some debate about taking it on as a third hive, but the expense of a new hive was really the factor that led us to deciding against it. Both M and I had noticed that the Urania bees, normally easy going, were defensive and impatient. They were likely to bump us as we went about our normal business near the hive. I opened the telescoping cover to see how things were and found a gang of bees with their tails up. I closed the cover right away, not wanting to challenge the patience of angry honey bees.

I moved the honey super with the swarm to the other side of the garden. Right away the Urania girls calmed down. I'm curious -- there are plenty of folks with hives side by side, and then there's our hive getting pissy with a honey super and about 200 bees two feet away and on the ground. How close is too close in beehives? And what makes two hives compatible?

Back to the swarm - I contacted Mark from the local bee guild. We talked on the phone, he was excited that I'd done the heavy lifting part of the capture. ;) I explained that all we wanted was to find a home for the girls. He also thought it was a proper swarm when he heard they had been building comb on my fence. He came out Wednesday afternoon and met with M. They opened the hive and took a look. They did not find a queen, but the workers were working on the drawn comb frames in the honey super and even storing pollen in some cells. Mark speculated that the queen and some of the workers may have swarmed again, leaving behind this community of lonely girls.

What I've read so far has said that queenless bees are despondent and unmotivated. Reading about it is one thing, and seeing it is another. The girls were huddled together on the frame making a hamburger sized cluster. When I had pulled the frame out before, there was no buzz, no guard bees flying up, nothing. They just sat in a huddle, dejected. As I said to M today - there is nothing sadder than a sad bee.

Mark recommended that we shake the bees out by the hive, and hope that Urania accepts the bees. The frames in the super the bees have been residing in has attracted a bit of mold. Yesterday, M decided to place the entire super and wayward bees on the top of Urania. Urania and the bees can clean up the frames. The other hope is the Urania bees, not seeing these bees "enter" the hive, will accept them as part of the group. Hopefully the guard bees will just see these bees coming downstairs and think nothing of it. He also noted that the top most honey super (placed on July 5) was about 2/3 full of capped honey.

The hive was acting normally today, busy with activity and not hostile. I'm curious to take a peek on them soon to see if the swarm has broken apart and if Urania is working in the newest super. I imagine they'll be storing honey in there in no time since the frames all have drawn comb. My cousin is coming out tomorrow to meet the bees, so we'll take a peek then as long as the bees allow.

We're tenatively scheduling another harvest for August 22 or 23. The next few weekends are abuzz with birthdays and travel. I'm interested to see what our girls produce next!

Busy because of bees.

2009-07-28T22:22:00.000-07:00

We made a cheap and cheerful solar wax melter from a cooler (about $3 from Orchard Supply and Hardware), some leftover black paint (not enough it seems!), my bread pan, a paper towel, and some saran wrap. We were roughly following this guide.

We tested the paint on the lid of the cooler, some paints and solvents will eat styrofoam. The lid was fine, so M went ahead and painted most of the cooler black. The entire inside got a coat.

The bread pan had some water poured in, and was covered by a paper towel and held by a produce rubber band. A chunk of wax was taken from the bag, chopped a bit, and put on the pan. Next. we sealed it in the cooler with a saran wrap covering, which was tied on with an old piece of garden twine.

The wax was set in Sunday morning, and left.

I got home with just enough time to run to yoga Monday night, and it was dark by the time I got home. This afternoon, I opened up the melter.

wow! We couldn't believe that a paper towel would filter wax, but it appears that all went well.

Once I pulled out the tin (burning my thumbs and fingers slightly!) I saw the rubber band had broken, and some of the wax had dripped out. (Guess we missed the instruction to line the bottom of the container with some aluminum foil in case wax melted out!)

I got the tin inside and broke / peeled the paper towel off. Inside was floating a perfect piece of wax on a pool of water.

(the dark brown bits on the top of the wax washed off with water)

I'm really impressed with the process. The wax heats up, sieves through the paper towel leaving the debris behind. The wax collects on the water, cools, and solidifies into a bar of beeswax.

The paper towel was stiff with debris. The debris had wood chips, dirt, and what is possibly propolis in it.

The water was murky and sticky. I imagine leftover honey is part of it. I let it cool thinking some more wax may collect, but no such luck.

I went to set up the next round of wax to melt. I remembered that I had some old headbands that never did sit on my head correctly. It was the perfect solution to securing the paper towel down. To prevent spills, I did a smaller batch of wax.

We do have the intent to build a proper wax melter, and found a window off of freecycle to act as a cover. There's some good plans out there, and it looks like a project well worth the time.

On a quick bee note: we decided not to keep the swarm, but instead to try to find it a good home. I've contacted a few members of the local bee guild, but am not having much luck with getting return calls at this point. The next meeting is Thursday of next week, so perhaps I can get someone then. I moved the super with the swarm to the other side of the yard, and this has cheered the Urania hive a great deal.

The bee cat has calmed from her experience of the evening. She's curled up on a cushion on the couch to sleep, let her head hang off the side, and began snoring away. The fact that the bee died makes me think she was stung, I feel bad not being able to do anything to help. There's nothing obvious on her tail, and she's not flinching when her tail is handled. She's been eating and drinking. Other than being a bit spooked, everything seems normal. I have no idea what she was doing to attract a bees attention at nearly 9:30 in the evening, and I'm pretty glad the bee didn't signal to its sisters to come help attack the enemy.

A little urban gardening grr.
As I was working in the kitchen, I heard some thunk! noises. I thought it was one of the neighbors in their yards, but then as I went to put in the next batch of wax, I saw two pencils and a marker had been thrown into the garden. I'm irritated that some kids are throwing their toys away, but more irritated that they are getting thrown into the little space carved out. I know these weren't there earlier after having spent a good amount of time with the strawberry plants. I'm also frustrated that things thrown into the yard could hit the hive or the cat. Not good.

Growing challenge: Tomatoes, cucumbers, and strawberries, oh my!

2009-07-28T21:53:00.000-07:00

The recent gopher attacks on our strawberries (along the fence) have caused a few of them to get pushed up with the soil. The good thing is they haven't been uprooted, but many of the plants are now a good couple of inches taller. They are still growing strong and producing tons of berries, so my guess is they aren't bothered. I'm hoping the rain in the fall will help settle the dirt again, until then - we make do.

We've noticed the strawberries at the end (around the corner of the fence, out of view from the photo) are not getting watered properly, and the strawberries with the most gopher activity have had water pooling and spilling onto the sidewalk. Not knowing if the line has been damaged from the gopher or if it was clogged, I re-plumbed part of it today. It was a good chance to also do a bit of cleaning up of the berries and more picking as well. Drip irrigation is well worth the time it takes to install! I picked strawberries as I went down the line, our second basket this week!

Once that was done, I painted the inside of the fountain. It has a leak in it, so I applied an all weather spackle leak repair. I was setting the fountain back up when I noticed it was chipping off - guess I didn't get away with not putting on paint or primer. Over the weekend I applied primer and let that dry completely.

(this blog interrupted by the cat running in madly, in an apparent effort of ditching her own tail. I carried her to the bathroom to contain her and get a better look, and found a bee stuck in her tail. Bee flew up to the light and died. Cat crawled in the sink and was soothed with water from the tap. It's never a dull moment.)

Where was I? Oh yes - got the fountain painted, and left it covered to dry completely, hopefully I can get it up and running tomorrow. The rest of the garden got watered, and I am delighted - the tomatoes are FINALLY turning red! We've also got cucumbers growing strong, but not in the numbers I'd like. (that's a lot!) The bell peppers are doing great, we've already picked a few for eating.

The beets are winding down. They did well, but it turns out I'm a fan of beet greens but not beets themselves. My twin has been happy enough with this, as she has been getting bags of beets over the summer.

I realize it is nearly time to start thinking of our fall and winter garden. time flies!

Very fulfilling work, but clearly, it was exhausting too. (now I feel a bit mean for teasing her, poor thing is spooked!)

We are the buzz.

2009-07-24T13:41:00.000-07:00

I'm loving that people from work, yoga, and other circles are bringing me news clippings relating to gardens, bees, and honey. I'm delighted to be part of such a positive awareness.

Naomi from yoga brought me a copy of this article regarding Cameo Wood's store: Her Majesty's Secret Beekeeper. We'd visited it a couple of weeks ago, but it was still great to see more "sweet" press.

Dave sent me this link today about Urban beekeepers. I admit that I often glance at the rooftops as the train speeds up and down the peninsula, hoping to see a hive on one of the roofs.

Before leaving to go camping last Friday, I dropped a jar of honey off at my neighbors (who is also my landlord!) house. I left a note letting them know the bees thank them. :) They are very respectful of our privacy, so I wasn't surprised that I had not heard anything. I saw both of them on my way in from work yesterday. They were both delighted with the honey, and said their youngest has been nicknamed "honey bear". I was told she has been asking repeatedly to be able to come thank me personally for the honey, and is asking several times a day for a quick taste. (seriously, what makes a beekeeper happier than hearing how great the honey is?) Her grandpa, on hearing that I have bees (and knowing about the wine making and gardening) said, "when the end of the world comes, I want to take Jen with me." I was laughing, and told them about a recent photo I got of the bottled honey and bottled wine all stored. We may not last long after the Apocalypse, I thought, but it'll sure be fun!

Their two kids have been fantastic. They saw us not too long ago in our jackets, and have been eager to get a second (and third and forth!) look. I felt bad about shooing them away from the harvest work, but I can't handle the thought of either of them being stung. I love that they are curious. When we had finished the bulk of the harvest work last time, they came back again. I showed them the bees walking on the sidewalk cleaning up our spills. They were totally fascinated and completely patient. The youngest licked some honey from the table and declared it "Yummy!" I hope they always keep bees in their minds as gentle and generous creatures.

Life is sweet indeed!

Camping and Capturing.

2009-07-19T20:05:00.000-07:00

Camping at Memorial Grove was fantastic. After hiking there in May, we decided to camp there. Three of us arrived Friday around 1:30pm, and the other four were there around six. The site was roomy and we lucked out having neighbors only on one side. There were a lot of wasps there! Happily they were only annoying and not overly aggressive, no one was stung. Plenty of Dark-eyed Oregon Juncos were hopping around the site. The brilliantly colored but slightly harassing Stellar's Jay was also in abundance. We were careful about locking up food, but saw that a raccoon had done some tap dancing on one cutting board, and heard them cruise through the site during the night. The mosquitos were thick! Guess I wasn't careful enough about putting on the insect repellent!

I brought some of our new honey and recently bottled Syrah and Elderberry to share. It's heaven to share fruits from the home and heart with good friends.

Saturday we left the site and headed to Pescadero for beach and tide pool adventures. Loved stretching out to examine the many crabs running around the tide pools. We had a great time there, but it was cold!!! Heading back to the campsite we stopped at Harley Farms to meet the goats, a tiny grey kitten named Smokey, and sample many different goat cheeses. It's a great farm, it makes me happy to know places out there exist. And the cheese - delicious!

Leaving on Sunday Pescadero Creek Road was closed heading back to Hwy 84. We had heard sirens as we were doing a bit of walking around the park prior to leaving. We were directed to turn west instead to Hwy 1. I decided to take Hwy 1 up to Hwy 92 home, and loved the cool and foggy drive. Once I was home I was looking forward to being done unpacking the truck, getting everything put away and sorted, seeing my cat, and getting a shower. Other than that, I just wanted a quiet and lazy Sunday. Everything did get unpacked (ok, I still have dishes to wash), the cat was happy to seem me, the garden was watered, and I got myself cleaned up. But - while watering the garden I noticed the bit of bees that have been hanging out under the inner cover from our honey harvest were still there. I moved the board away, breaking the bunch apart. They buzzed, but didn't really budge. Uh-oh. They were also drawing comb on the fence. Double uh-oh.

I had seen these bees last week and really hoped they were just Urania bees hanging out. I thought they may go back into their hive once the remainder of the honey equipment was put away, so giving them the weekend seemed fair enough.

This afternoon I pulled the inner cover away from the fence and left it resting against the table. I thought they may go back into the hive, but the drawn comb had me worried I had a swarm situation. I was in the house for a few hours when I noticed the air was a bit thick with bees.

My heart absolutely sank. This was not the usual "bee cloud" that surrounds Urania. The air was thick enough with bees that I was actually hesitant to go outside. My big fear / worry was that I was seeing Urania get ready to swarm. And while I'm fine with the idea academically, thinking I was about to see it happen was another matter. However, as I watched during the afternoon, it appeared that I wasn't seeing a swarm leave. It appeared that we had a swarm that had found the house.

My best guess is that scout bees arrived sometime in the last week, found our house to be literally flowing with honey, and decided this was a good place to live. (Admittedly, I'm a little flattered that it appears our hive location is one the bees would naturally choose.)

The mass of bees in the air slowly started to condense down onto the fence, leaving the inner cover bare again. The decision was made to try to capture the swarm. I went through a bit of foot dragging. I'm not sure I want two hives here, despite how productive the area appears. I was feeling tired and wanting to be indulgent and lazy. I wasn't wanting to throw on my bee jacket with how warm it was. wah, wah, wah. :-P

From our beekeeping class, we had learned moving bees into a new house in the evening may help convince them to stay, as they are less likely to fly in the evening. I decided to wait until dusk to suit up.

I took an old bottom board, supported it on the rail of the fence, and put on a honey super with nine frames of drawn comb. The bees had come together in a complete mass by this time, and the Urania bees were mostly in their hive for the night. It may have been pushing my luck a bit - but I left on my cozy lounging pants, tucked them into my ugg boots that I use for camping, and didn't bother with my gloves. I did wear the jacket & veil - bees flying into the face aren't fun.

I then took a dust brush (the herbal bee brushes we normally use are great for moving a couple of bees, but less effective for masses.) and in one motion, pushed the bees off the fence and onto the bottom board. They buzzed, but really didn't react the way that Urania would have done had I done this to them. No bumping, no guard bees flying up to challenge. I'd heard swarms are docile, but seeing really is believing.

They seemed to take to the hive. No more bees remain on the fence, and I saw the bees doing their "come home" mechanism. Workers stick their bums high into the air, and fan their wings to spread Nasonov pheremone out. I was way too freaked out when we put our package into the hive originally to really look for this behavior. No matter what happens with this swarm - watching these bees signal was amazing.

More bees on the fence signaling.

I tore off the wax that the bees had made on the fence. The other little white spots are other areas where the bees were beginning to add more wax. I'm just a bit ! that bees were going to set up house on my fence.

And just to show - yes - I really did this in cotton otter pants, a quick photo of me with the hives.

I've talked with my other bee partners. There's some decisions to make here. M wants a second hive here, but I'm not sure we should. But with how healthy and productive Urania has been, I'm tempted.

Having a second hive either here or next to Terpsichore does mean extra expenses - another Lang stand, another hive, another drive to Woodland. Moving bees isn't just a quick drive operation. We don't know where these bees are from - do they have diseases? mites?

There's a chance we could give the swarm to another bee keeper in the area. (pre-packaged!) The old "A swarm in July is not worth a fly" may not be as true here -- the weather is mild enough that the bees will forage year round. That they have frames with drawn comb cuts back strongly on their work load.

There's also the chance that these bees may vacate tomorrow, but I'm doubting that after seeing how quickly they marched in and signaled.

All these questions and concerns racing through my head, and then I suddenly pause and think, hey! I caught my first swarm!

So is this the future Clio hive, or is this a momentary distraction?

bottled!

2009-07-16T23:19:00.000-07:00

Our first jar! We gave it to our dear friend Christopher when he arrived to pick me up for yoga. He's very happy with it. :)

In total - fifty five jars. They ranged in size from 8 to 16 ounces (which is 0.71 to 1.42 pounds). When you consider the total amount of work it takes a hive to store excess honey... this is staggering. I'm in awe of those beautiful girls flying about the yard.

We had a good amount left in the pail after filling the jars, but were hesitant to bottle it for the amount of bubbles in it. It was added to the Elderberry wine that is in primary fermentation. I'm interested to see what the honey adds to the wine.

I moved the jars of honey to the shed, and stored them next to the bottles of wine. I laughed, thinking - if there's an emergency I'm not well prepared, but I'll be one of the most fun houses in the area. I also scraped the wax from the uncapping tank and stored in two freezer bags. M is looking into making a solar heater to melt the wax. Projects, projects!

The bees have done an excellent job of cleaning the frames. I stored them back into supers in the shed, covered with cardboard to prevent unwelcome guests from getting in. There's a few ants on the frames, once they leave I'll be able to store them in the weather tight container.

M checked the hive today. They have not built out the comb on the newest super and frames yet, which is a relief that we've got a bit of time before the next harvest.

In the news, Florida has banned "fake honey".

Tomorrow morning we are headed to Memorial Park to camp for the weekend. I've just pulled a batch of granola bars out of the oven, made with Urania honey. There's honey packed to take camping, as well as newly bottled Syrah and Elderberry wine. It should be a great weekend!

Honey harvest videos!

2009-07-14T00:32:00.000-07:00

Uncapping a frame of honey.

A moment of weakness! I was watching the bees going over the frames, and was startled suddenly by a bee landing on my hand. I totally forgot about the camera (obviously!) in my sudden attention shift to the bee. She checked out my hand, then left. Phew! I thought - after all this, now is not the time for a sting!

Sun Day.

2009-07-13T23:11:00.001-07:00

Woke up early to make two batches of Ginger Ale and get the deck ready for the extraction. (thankfully - the ginger ale was in plastic bottles and in a tub in the shed. One of them built up too much pressure and popped today.) Around 9am I added a small amount of Bee Quick to a cotton pad on the inner cover to encourage the bees to leave the top two supers. It works on the bees the way a stink bomb works on us - doesn't hurt us, but makes us leave the room. They did NOT like this. As I opened up the cover and set it down on the inner cover, the tone of the hive shifted quickly. I closed the outer cover and left them alone.

Juliette and M were here at about 11. We took a bit of time to discuss game plan, roles, ideas, etc. Over and over was heard - it's a learning experience. We'll find out as we go. Keep the conversation open and go from there. The weather was clear, sunny, and warm. Perfect for the bees.

First, Juliette wanted to see all the equipment. We moved it from the shed to the yard, got set up, and decided that we would work through one super and then check back in / take a break. We lit the smoker (only to use in the event of a sting, we didn't want the bees to start ripping open the capped honey) and then set to work. Endless amounts of gratitude to Juliette - she took all of the amazing photos from the extraction work.

The super would be moved off the hive and onto an old bottom board sitting on the table.

The frames would be pulled out using the frame grips one at a time, brushed with whatever herb we had (marjoram, oregano, and lavendar were used) to remove the bees, and then moved to the uncapping tank.

I've read books saying the honey on a frame should be 75 to 90% capped (covered with a thin piece of wax) before extracting, otherwise it is not mature and you run the risk of fermentation.

I do believe we do not need to worry about fermentation. This photo still blows me away.

Once in the uncapping tank, the comb would be uncapped with the electric knife, and then moved to the extractor for a spin.

That tiny screw on the bar over the tank? Totally a beekeeper invention. It's worth its weight in gold. It doesn't pierce the frames, but it does act as an extra hand to hold the frame steady while uncapping.

Because we had 8 frames, the comb was built out and allowed for an easy uncapping while leaving the frames with intact comb for the bees.

After a spin, the now empty frames would be moved to a spare super to let the girls rob the honey back, which cleans the frames and gives them a treat (not to mention a distraction!)

As the extractor filled, the honey would pour into a bucket with a sieve on it.

The books were clear that wax and pollen would need to be filtered out - but they hadn't mentioned bees. :-/ It was troubling to see the number of bees that flew into a sea of honey, drunk on the smell. We rescued as many as we could. As evening approached, I walked these soaked girls (and drones!) over to the hive so their sisters could clean them up and bring them back into the shelter of the hive.

The honey flowed and flowed. We worked through the first super and stopped for a break. Having lunch was as important as cooling down - those bee suits do get warm after awhile. We were all really enthusiastic with the work done so far. We headed back out after lunch to do the second super.

It went fantastically well (big improvement - keeping the super being worked on covered with a towel. The bees could still get in and out through the bottom, but it reduced the extra numbers) and we finished the work quickly.

We were left with a good amount of wax in the uncapping tank along with honey. The bottom of the top half of the tank had a metal grate covered in a mesh bag which filtered the honey to the lower tank.

Having finished collection from the extractor, we moved the five gallon bucket to under the uncapping tank to collect the honey from there. Seeing honey pour from a tap like water from the sink is an experience. We all silently watched, mesmerized by the patterns formed by the air bubbles.

Before the honey had finished pouring, the level of the honey reached the top of the five gallon bucket.

If google searches are to be believed, 3/4 cups of honey makes a pound of honey. That would convert five gallons of honey to be equal to sixty pounds of honey.

Sixty!!!

Before the night was over we took more honey from the uncapping tank and added it to the Elderberry wine. There's still some out there now, we just aren't sure where we're going to put it at the moment. I was delighted with this - combining two creations - honey and wine. It's not enough honey in the wine to qualify as mead, but we do hope it will add a new depth of flavor. We're pretty sure we've collected closer to seven gallons.

The especially startling thing? We could easily harvest two more supers very soon. We're going to need a bigger bucket.

Per the advice of many books, we're allowing the honey to settle before bottling. We are planning to make mead. I'm flattered by the number of people that have offered to barter or purchase the honey. My Mom has already paid forward, showing up last night with twenty four canning jars. Labels are being discussed. I'm still in a bit of shock that we have any honey, let alone this degree of honey. I keep thinking about the strong pull for people to have local honey, and it hits me that this honey came from about ten feet from my front door.

Clean up has been the more interesting part. The bees are doing their part to pick up the spills, but a lot was spilled. They have claimed the hose and side of the lemon tree, making grabbing the hose and pulling a slightly more delicate task.

I keep thinking we've moved most of the woodchips from the garden into the house and on the deck. Sweeping and vacuuming have helped, along with washing my shoes and adding a bit of water to the deck before sweeping. Ants are a concern, as are racoons and skunks.

The bees are tending to the frames and cleaning them more today. They have abandoned the bottom board (just off to the right in the photo, on the table) which had a good amount of honey spilled on it. I thought this was curious, but took advantage of this to spray off some of the honey and ants on it.

The extractor was rinsed outside, then brought into the bathtub for a better hot water rinse. The things you share your tub with...

The Elderberry wine was inoculated with Pasteur Red yeast tonight. A celebration of the Sun Mercury conjunction tonight, the honey from the hive, and the plentiful trees along the creek.

Finally... some thoughts on the hive. It's traditional to name beehives female names in honor of the Queens and Workers that give forth the golden gift. When we were driving up to Woodland back in April, I saw the West Berkeley Gateway. It brought to mind the Muses. "Since we are unlikely to have more than nine hives," I mentioned to M as he drove. "What do you think of naming the hives after the Muses?" He was silent for a minute or two. I teased that I'd found a way to make him speechless. He was for it. We talked about what Muse, and the ultimate experiment - would people that ate the honey from a hive take on part of the inspiration from that Muse? Would this be an experiment we would be comfortable experiencing ourselves? We decided on Urania for the hive in San Mateo, and Juliette selected Terpsichore for the hive in Boulder Creek.

As our talk has moved from set up and diseases and supers to honey and bottling and labels, I've realized there's a few things I'd like on the bottle. I want one of the symbols of Urania, either the globe or the crown of seven stars. And my mischievious side would like a small yellow serious looking caution label on the bottle that states: WARNING. Consumption may cause star gazing.

Which leads me to this -- I am delighted to read the following quotes:

Aristotle: "Honey falls from the air. Principally at the rising of the stars and when the rainbow rests upon the earth."

Pliny the Elder saw bees as merely carriers of the food he called the "sweat of the heavens" and "the saliva of the stars."

Virgil said that the bees "partake of an Essence Divine and drink Heaven's well-springs."

(Thanks to Keeping Bees and Making Honey. For more info on the history of bees, Andy Gough has a wonderful collection of stories and images on his Arcadia site.)

A busy week.

2009-07-13T20:57:00.000-07:00

Where to begin!

Chronologically, I guess. :) Where we last left the hive - two brood supers with three honey supers on top. Oh, and plenty of active bees!

Sunday July 5 - put the mite board in to check. The Guild meeting got me thinking I'm not tracking the mite potential very carefully. Took it out on Wednesday evening (July 8) and after careful inspection we found wax caps, pollen, propylis, and no mites! hooray!

Wednesday M drove to Mann Lake in Woodland and picked up an extracting bundle, yay!

Thursday afternoon we headed to a creek not far from my work and picked a ten-gallon bucket worth of Elderberries. We've made Elderberry wine twice before, and each time it's been one of the favorites. We mix the berries with hot water to sterilize, add sugar, some rasins for body and a bit of grape concentrate to punch up the color, and viola - a total of about $15 in materials for 60 bottles of wine - not bad!

Friday morning we decided to work with the bees before berries and got to work around 10am. The weather was clear with a light breeze, so the bees were definitely out to forage. Our plan: to add a new honey super with foundation only frames to the hive, replace the newest of the honey supers (added July 5), add an escape board on top of that, and then replace the two full honey supers (added May 28) in preparation for extraction Sunday. On the advice of Tom from the Guild, we decided that we'd move and shift the frames about to get the girls to clean up any tears now, with the hopes that all frames would be repackaged, making for a neater extraction process on Sunday.

Overall, the work went well. The Urania ladies have suddenly discovered the wonders of propolis, and we had to work harder to separate equipment. Trouble happened when we found the May 28th honey supers were fused together by copious amounts of burr comb. The honey supers were already taller than ideal lifting height for either of us, so out came the rickety step ladder and kitchen step stool. Since breaking them off the hive caused honey to flow, they also became slick with honey and drew the interest of the bees. Not an ideal situation, but we managed. There were several "Ok, let's step away" breaks, much to the delight of my neighbors daughter, who stared at our funny outfits with an open mouth.

I realized two brood supers and two honey supers is about my height limit for working with the hive. (the picture speaks volumes - that fence is over six feet high!) To work with the top super at this height, I was standing on the hive stand and the step stool, having to step down and turn, and it is more than I am physically comfortable with. Hopefully we'll be able to maintain two supers through the honey flow, and with the extraction equipment and extra supers, we will be able to keep the supers and frames in rotation quickly.

The slippery and heavy nature of the two fused honey supers meant at one point we had to set it on the ground. (it was that or drop it - not much of an option when many many bees are involved.) This resulted in getting wood chips on the bottom of several frames and the supers as well. That created the gaps and bad spacing on the top of the hive body. Not ideal, but at the same time - we were planning to take them off Sunday. We were able to seperate the two fused honey supers by breaking the comb once it was on the table, but at this point - the bees were pretty done with us, so we opted not to pull and shift the frames. We left the hive (bottom to top) with two deep brood supers, the July 5 honey super (surprisingly full already!), the new empty super, an escape board, the May 28 honey supers, the inner cover, and the outer cover.

A mess of honey was left on the table from our work, and the bees happily got to work cleaning it up. We had moved over to the deck to sit and cool off for a bit, and I decided that the frame tool, also covered in honey, was just too tempting. I walked back to collect it, the bees not minding a bit. We then took our part in cleaning up spilled honey. It was delicious! Honey fresh and hot from the hive... there really is nothing like it.

My cat likes to use this table to move between fence and ground, so I did take care to set it on its side to prevent her from jumping onto a table of honey and bees. It also kept the ground a bit protected, as plenty of bees were working on the honey spilled on the wood chips below.

The bee work took us longer than expected, but we did start on destemming the Elderberries in preparation for wine making. A few more hours work on Friday evening and Saturday evening and the berries were ready for adding hot water, sugar, and the grape concentrate. We had enough berries that we decided to split the ten gallon container off into two, twice the wine for the same amount of work is fine with me!

Destemming elderberries is something I usually prefer to do outside - the berries bounce far and stain darkly. I did start to consider that they may make excellent natural dyes if beeswax projects take us that route.

(if you are tempted to make Elderberry wine - freezing the stems and berries makes for easier de-stemming.)

That leaves at the end of Saturday evening, and Sunday is a post in itself!

Holiday weekend.

2009-07-05T20:13:00.000-07:00

Last Tuesday afternoon we added a third honey super to the hive. The girls took to it immediately, they were hanging out in the top the next day. I've also noticed they have appeared calmer - they seem to be staying in a bit later in the morning and heading in earlier in the evening.

Thursday night I went to the local bee guild meeting and talked to some members about the hive and honey harvesting.

Today Abeille a Miel and I went to the city for general festivities, but mostly with the intent to visit the new beekeeping and honey store - Her Majesty's Secret Beekeeper. The store is gorgeous! (photos on her yelp review.) Cameo was great to talk to, we had a great time sampling different honey and purchased some fantastic soaps and candles. I'm really excited to see a bee and honey store in the city, and I wish her store great success.

Saturday was all about wine. The Blackberry 2009 was racked from primary to secondary. Sulpher dioxide was added to the Elderberry and Syrah to kill the remaining yeast in prep for bottling. All of the remaining wines were racked to help clear them.

We use Mardi Gras beads to identify the wines - believe me that 6 gallons of pink/purple liquid look very similar after awhile! I also think it makes the bottles incredibly festive and pretty. ;)

It's been a great weekend. A perfect mix of busy, productive, restful, and celebratory.

Hot weekend weather.

2009-06-29T23:40:00.000-07:00

Urania was washboarding again over the weekend, this time I was prepared with camera!

The bees are in their own space when they are doing this. The fact that I was sitting next to the hive did not faze them at all. They just kept with the behavior. This little bee got me giggling a bit - the rhythmical pattern made me think of vacuuming.

Overall, the bees were crowding around the entrance, and stacking on top of each other.

They are definitely amazing creatures. I keep asking them to be patient, that they are getting more space tomorrow afternoon, that they caught us off guard with their amazing abilities. Please don't swarm my dear Queen! Please be patient girls!

I'm unprepared for honey harvest. Before we got the bees I obsessively read books, websites, etc. I've learned all kinds about hives, pest management, disease, etc - but very very little on the honey end. I'll get to that later. I thought. Everyone agrees you don't get honey your first year. It's definitely a learning experience. The local guild meets this Thursday, I'm hoping to attend. Hopefully I'll be able to get some good advice on collecting the honey and possibly using the guild's equipment.

In garden news - trouble in utopia. I picked strawberries last week, and the next night saw a pile of dirt had appeared.

I don't know if it's the work of voles or moles or gophers - I've been lucky that I haven't had too many large garden pests in the garden and would prefer to keep it that way. So far it doesn't look like much else is being disturbed.

Was able to give away a couple of bags of plums this weekend. Hate seeing good food go to waste. The wind we've been having lately isn't a help - it keeps blowing the not-yet-ripe fruit off of the trees.

The blackberry wine continues to ferment away. It will be ready to rack into secondary containment this coming weekend. Elderberries are ready for picking as well, so all in all - the summer work has begun!

and if nothing else, Eddie Izzard explains beekeeping.

2009-06-28T16:05:00.000-07:00

it's hot this weekend! Not sure if garden work is going to happen today.

Wikibee!

2009-06-28T12:27:00.001-07:00

meep!

It's come to my attention that I have done my usual thing and gone straight to technical and specific jargon that is not easily understood.

My quick bee wiki guide!

Beek - a bee keeper. (used by a member of my guild, not sure how common this is, makes me laugh!)

Hive - the physical home for the bees. The ones seen on farms and my front yard is a Langstroth Hive. The old fashioned hive (still pictured on many honey bottles) is a Skep.

The hive is made up of Supers. These look like boxes and come in three basic sizes - deep or brood (where the queen lays eggs and the colony lives); medium; and shallow or honey (where the bees store excess honey that humans can partake in). These supers sit on a bottom board, which may or may not be screened. The screen is a passive way of fighiting Varroa mites. (the mites fall down and they can't get up.) The supers have an inner cover and a telescoping cover.

There's optional equipment as well - a queen excluder may be used between the brood and honey supers. It is placed on top of the brood supers to preven the queen from using the honey supers for egg laying. May be plastic, metal, or wood and metal.

Bees bring back a few things to the hive: water (hydration), pollen (protein), nectar (sugar), and propolis (bee glue). They make royal jelly (food for the larva and what makes a worker a queen), beeswax (foundation), and honey (yum!)! In the process of collecting they also pollinate a plenty.

When we go out to check on the hive, we use the smoker. The smoke doesn't calm the bees, per say. It makes them think their hive is on fire, and thus they'd better eat lots of honey in preparation for their long flight to find a new home. Too much smoke can alter the flavor of the honey, and I'm told no amount of smoke will calm an angry hive. The smoke also masks any danger! or alert! pheremones the guard bees may send through the hive. (Bees communicate with a variety of pheremones and the infamous waggle dance.)

We use hive tools to pry the hive open. The bees glue everything down with propylis, also called bee glue. Hive tools come in all shapes, sizes, and colors, but apparently all share the ability to get lost. They are also handy for scraping things off the hive (bees that may have been crushed in the past, burr comb, etc), scraping out stingers, and humanely killing a worker that is trying to sting. (This was the case when worker was stinging my glove on the seam recently. We used a hive tool to dispatch her quickly, it's bad enough she died defending her hive, she doesn't need to suffer.)

We wear our protective clothing anytime we are disturbing the hive. For us, this is a jacket with veil, gloves, and pants. Pants are strapped down and / or tucked into socks or shoes. This is to prevent any bees that may be on the ground from crawling up onto the legs. If I am just taking a peek at the hive or working near by, I usually don't wear anything different than what I'm wearing that day.

Ok, hope that helps! :)

Others:
Honeybee Encyclopedia
Bee Facts and Information

"don't expect honey your first year"

2009-06-27T10:09:00.001-07:00

If by "year" you mean "month", then yes! do not expect honey your first month.

We added two honey supers on May 28th. Kept meaning to check on them, but bike falls, sore elbows, and family time took priority. I got home early last Wednesday, so we decided to suit up and take a peak. The telescoping cover popped right off, we lightly smoked the top and the entrance. A bit of careful prying with the hive tool and the inner cover came up too.

O.O Could not believe it! This is the top honey super - so the bet is that the bottom one looks as full. We opted to not go any further. We did not use a queen excluder between the brood and honey supers, and I didn't seen any brood in this super, but we could be wrong. The bees were calmly tending to their comb and honey, and took no notice of us.

A quick video of the bees. I need to remember not to talk when the video is on. ;)

The good news - that's a happy productive hive! The bad news - the bees may be honey bound, and we are not at all prepared for this. The risk of swarming is there, and I'm choosing not to do anything drastic to prevent that. I've been standing by the hive saying "please stay girls! Just a few more days and you'll have more room!" The plan is to inspect Terpsichore and then determine the needs of both hives before driving up to Mann Lake. The bees have continued with their washing of the hive. In my heart I'm hoping this means they are saying "we like our home. it's a good home." but may be going too far in my anthropomorphizing.

I've been looking at the benefits and drawbacks of different systems of removing bees for the honey harvest. Mead is definitely a possibility at this point for a honey storage method!

hang in there girls! long live Queen Urania!

2009-06-25T11:18:00.000-07:00

The White House bees!

(I'm puzzled by the caption of collecting the first batch of honey - maybe this is the comb going back into the hive? where's the cappings?)

Last night I made my own ginger ale. Left the bottle in the shed next to where my bike gets hung up. In case of explosion, most of the shed can be hosed down with no problem. This is not really the case for the kitchen. The other advantage is I'll be sure to check it at least twice today. When I left this morning the bottle was already feeling more full. My guess is it will be ready tonight, yum!

Also got a whole wheat bread soaker and biga started to make bread tonight. Was going to make some granola bars as well, but the kitchen got commandeered for dinner instead. Hopefully can make those tonight if I get home early enough. :)

Bearding or Washboarding

2009-06-23T22:14:00.000-07:00

excellent!!!

Asking around paid off- what my bees were doing is either bearding or washboarding. I was directed to this blog first, and the blogger used the term bearding. I googled this, and found another blog site that talked about bearding. I noticed in the comments it had an update - that this was not bearding, but washboarding. The idea is that washboarding may be related to bees cleaning the hive. (!!!) More searching and a similar post, and found something about it on Beesource.

Because of the hives location, it's difficult for me to watch the front for very long without getting the bees a bit concerned about the big thing looming nearby. What I did see looked like all of these photos and videos. The photo isn't clear enough to see if their probosci are out. I did notice they were doing the same thing tonight when I got home, about 7:30pm.

Fantastic. :) Clean, happy bees!

carrots and I didn't read about this in the books!

2009-06-22T22:18:00.001-07:00

We picked our carrots! They went into a delicious chicken pot pie.

The interesting thing - since I was a kid, raw carrots have made my mouth itch terribly when I eat them. We planted both traditional carrots and rainbow carrots (the only one that sprouted from the rainbow is the white one). Cooked carrots don't create the same reaction, and I love the taste of raw carrots. I tried a piece of the white carrot, raw, to see if I got the reaction, thinking maybe the orange pigmentation could be the cause. No itch, yay! More curious now, I ate some of the orange carrot. No itch!!! So something in conventional farming / handling is causing the reaction. Oh yeah, carrots are going to be part of the garden from now on!

And yes, there was a rude carrot. We took it to Father's Day in the salad. Clearly, it is a powerful totem for fatherhood!

(also, I'm not the only one growing rude veggies.)

On a bee related note - I came home from yoga tonight a little before 10pm. I paused at the small table near the hive to reattach my tire pump to the bike for tomorrow, and realized the bees were middle of the day loud, not tucked in for the night loud. After hanging up my bike I brought the headlamp to the side of the hive and then around to the front. What I saw made me go in for the camera.

Not great photos, the entrance is turned into the corner of the fence, and the girls are pretty territorial.
!!! I've heard that the guard bees may be joined by a few others to fan the hive with their wings as a cooling mechanism. Tonight is one of the first warm nights of the season, but it is maybe 60F outside now. I heard one bee give the angry buzz, I was wearing a black sweatshirt and figured it was time to back off. I am hoping this is normal, cause I'm a bit shocked! I think this may be a drawback to having the hive so close to my front door. If it was far out in a yard, I wouldn't see it at 10pm. Crazy bees! Urania is celebrating the summer solstice and new moon!

Over the weekend, we went to Webb Ranch to pick blackberries. 27 pounds of blackberries have been juiced, sugar and raisins added, and is now sitting in a ten-gallon container in the other room awaiting the addition of yeast this evening to make wine. The first wine of the summer!

The yeast is expired, but on the hope it's still good I've got it in a mason jar with sugar, yeast energizer and yeast nutrient to make sure it's up and running before inoculation. If I don't see bubbles and pressure in the jar, then the blackberries will wait a couple of days.

Why Did My Plant Die

2009-06-18T13:40:00.000-07:00

Why Did My Plant Die
Geoffrey B. Charlesworth

You walked too close. You trod on it.
You dropped a piece of sod on it.
You hoed it down. You weeded it.
You planted it the wrong way up.
You grew it in a yogurt cup
But you forgot to make a hole;
The soggy compost took its toll.
September storm. November drought.
It heaved in March, the roots popped out.
You watered it with herbicide.
You scattered bonemeal far and wide.
Attracting local omnivores,
Who ate your plant and stayed for more.
You left it baking in the sun
While you departed at a run
To find a spade, perhaps a trowel,
Meanwhile the plant threw in the towel.
You planted it with crown too high;
The soil washed off, that explains why.
Too high pH. It hated lime.
Alas it needs a gentler clime.
You left the root ball wrapped in plastic.
You broke the roots. They’re not elastic.
You walked too close. You trod on it.
You dropped a piece of sod on it.
You splashed the plant with mower oil.
You should do something to your soil.
Too rich. Too poor. Such wretched tilth.
Your soil is clay. Your soil is filth.
Your plant was eaten by a slug.
The growing point contained a bug.
These aphids are controlled by ants,
Who milk the juice, it kills the plants.
In early spring your garden’s mud.
You walked around! That’s not much good.
With heat and light you hurried it.
You worried it. You buried it.
The poor plant missed the mountain air:
No heat, no summer muggs up there.Y
ou overfed it 10-10-10.
Forgot to water it again.
You hit it sharply with the hose.
You used a can without a rose.
Perhaps you sprinkled from above.
You should have talked to it with love.
The nursery mailed it without roots.
You killed it with those gardening boots.
You walked too close. You trod on it.
You dropped a piece of sod on it.

Sunday adventure(s)!

2009-06-17T20:25:00.000-07:00

On Sunday June 7, we took it light. I was still feeling tender from the bike fall, so we just went down to the Bay Trail and walked along the bay. We walked about two miles total, it was a simple walk down the mixed use path. It was windy! I didn't bring my camera, so no photos. The Bay trail is paved and goes for miles - I know a lot of bike commuters that use it to go between the city and the south bay. I enjoy how close and uncomplicated it is. It's great for walking to clear the mind, as it requires very little concentration.

Sunday June 14 I decided to hike at Mills Canyon Nature Area. My decision was based on needing it to be close to home and fairly quick, as I slept in a bit and had plans Sunday afternoon. The parking is free, it's on a residential street. It's a mix of shade and exposed. It's not a difficult hike physically, but some of the trail requires full concentration on the footwork. Some of the stairs are very narrow tread (too small for my foot to rest on) and are weathering out, making it a bit odd to walk down. The trail is quiet - I only encountered one other person during the thirty minutes I was out.

The hike: There are some really beautiful bits. I turned a corner and found these gorgeous rocks. I can see why the local community would be attracted to this park as a quick place to get to for a lunch or chat. But - as Bay Area Hiker noticed - they are leaving their trash behind. I came across sandwhich wrappers, plastic bags, cigarette packs, cigarette butts, water bottles, etc. Very disappointing. People! if you pack it in, pack it out! (the good news - it usually weighs less on the way out!)

Seriously, some of the walk is so scenic. This view with the gently curving trail, the stairs, and the view of the creek - I couldn't help but think I'd turn the corner to find a couple of massage therapists and tables there.

The creek is low, but I adore walking by water.

The path follows the creek, with delicate bridges and plenty of stairs. Most of the stairs are boards set into the dirt trail. There seems to be no consistency on their construction. Like I said - gotta keep your eyes open on this one.

Banana slug! I heard a few scrub jays, saw a rabbit, and a squirrel.

The view up part of the trail. Instead of stairs - the tree roots are the stairs.

I'm really glad I read through the Bay Area Hiker blog on this one - there is a lot of other trails on the loop that break off. Her advice was perfect: stay to the left! The trail markings are very clear at some junctions, and less clear in others.

Once the trail leaves the creek, it goes up up up quickly to a grassy hill.

It's a short trail, but it did get my heart rate up and get a little sweat going. The views from the hillside are great.

There's plenty of gorgeous homes up there.

There's a good amount of wildflowers, and I was interested to see blackberry flowers just beginning to bloom. Sunnier trails have berries on them, but the heavy shade and fog has slowed their pace.
Another charming part about the trail is the signs through the walk that have the plant identified on it. I appreciate that sign #1, at the start of the trail is identifying Poison Oak. ;) Well thought out!

Just before the end of the trail, there's a great place to sit.

It's a quick and easy way to feel a bit of connection with nature. The big minus for this park is the rubbish. The loop trail measures in at 1.07 miles, and with loads of photo stops, it's easily done in about a half hour.

Overall, two boots.