Fascinating days with bees

Besides the hive in our back yard, I keep an eye on a hive for a friend in her yard. During a routine check yesterday (to ascertain if it was time for another honey box on top of the single super that was there) I made a different kind of discovery. The hive was lousy with bees:


It was also bursting with stores. Honey, pollen, uncured nectar, every frame displaying something. But had not a single egg, larvae or brood. The huge bunches of bees must have been from the capped brood I saw during my last hive inspection, the one that led me to put that honey box on in the first place! Either the queen is dead or ineffective. No queen cells, either. A couple of cups, but not finished ones. Fortunately, it's not all drones, as it was once before. So there's not a laying worker in there.

No probem, thinks I. Time to combine my two smallest hives (the swarm from Esperanza and the feral roof-dwellers) and take a queen from there and put her in the friend's hive. Well, as you can read -- and please do -- over on Lisa's blog, that wasn't such an option as we'd thought. Yesterday's planned hive combination turned into a very different kind of bee work -- less a cut-out than a take-apart. The small hives are okay, but not ready to combine right now.

Plan B. I'd take a single frame of eggs and young brood, along with the attendant nurse bees, from my best hive, and requeen the hive that way. It does push back the development of the hive, because they have to raise a queen (some 15 or so days from today), then she has to fly to mate (20-24 days from today) and then there would be evidence of their success in the week or so following that. This puts us well into the first week of August. My friend may yet get honey from her hive, which I have never successfully managed for her in a few years (!). Bad hive, or bad beekeeper? You decide.

Anyhow, I figured that the big hive was dynamic enough to kill any wax moth on old comb:


So I would exchange this frame for one with teeny eggs and tiny brood on it. Ellie helped smoke the hive before we opened it in search of eggs:


I'm trying out a queen excluder for the first time. I hope with well-drawn frames it won't discourage the bees from storing honey up top. The wires are too close together to allow a fat queen to pass through, but the workers can get up there to put nectar in storage, making it easier for me to gather only honey at the end of the season.


While I was out there, and with such willing help, I checked the small swarm hive. For obvious reasons, we didn't get into it yesterday. It's still quite small; only brood activity on a few frames, but with a laying pattern like this:



it won't be long before the population booms. I may end up combining it with the feral hive, but I'm going to give both of them a chance.

Camera forgotten, I drove off to the neighbor's house with my nurse frame. Leaving my smoker at home made it easy to decide to do a smokeless drop'n'run. One frame has to leave for another to fit, so I pulled a frame of stores from the outside of the top brood box and levered open a spot in the middle of the box, where brood tends to be in hives, for warmth. The new nurse bees should be accepted because they smell of baby bees, and the baby bees should help that hive remember what it needs -- a laying queen. I won't go in and check to make certain there are queen cells, because I'm afraid that I could hurt any one they start. When a new queen should be laying, I'll look for eggs, starting the whole cycle again.

I really really wish I'd had my good camera working (do check out Lisa's blog, because she has great photos). There's always so much good stuff to see, and even though beekeeping is hot, and sweaty, and demanding on my aging back, it's a great way to experience total presence. Even though I feel kind of like the impostor beekeeper (though I've finally found a smoker fuel in burlap that stays lit!), because I'm acutely aware of how little I know about beekeeping, I'm completely absorbed from the first peek to the last "buttoning up" of the hive afterwards.

Changing out of my sweaty bee clothes before going out with friends tonight, I realized how very focusing bee work was for me. The entire time I was "doing bee stuff" this bruise from a fall Friday


wasn't bothering me at all. Talk about apitherapy!

House o'Kale

Somewhere there lurk overview garden pictures, for another day, but last night there was a local gardener's meeting. I raced home afterwards to serve up the lentil soup my eldest had made (talk about wonderful; not only had she made it, but the parmesan rinds she added gave it depth and great savor). I worried a little that it wasn't enough food, but at the foot of the front stairs, guess what lurked:


Sauteed with garlic, this accidental kale made a lovely side dish.

Time for Camera Help

I spent 20 minutes outside today taking pictures for the blog. Peppers, beans, round zucchini, epazote, cucumbers, strawberries, our new dog (yes you read that right), tomatoes. . . and this is what I came up with.


One lousy picture of the Fagioli Pavoni (I think; maybe Stregoni). Pretty blossoms - they're a light apricot in color, but seriously?

I'm pretty annoyed. There's some disconnect between the big zoom lens and the autofocus, and I just need to replace the lens I used before. I miss my Lumix camera. Sigh.

Bee status

Quick hive check today. Four hives. One weak, one huge and booming (that one got a queen excluder and a honey super), one all-medium one acting as the wave of the future and not yet needing a super, and one surprise.

The hive I gathered at night last week? My friend had told me that bees had moved in, and I made some assumptions. Today, when I moved it, I noticed it was very light. Pried up the top -- and there were bees in there, yes sirree.

What there wasn't was manmade frames. The bees were making comb attached to the hive cover. Argh.

It's going to need cutting out, but for now I slapped a set of drawn frames under it and have pretty much decided to combine it with the weaker of the three others. That means finding and offing a queen, unfortunately. Too hot and not enough time to do it today, though.

Just needed to make notes to tell me what was what for the next round of hive inspections.

Hide-the-Kale

For those of you who might want to eat more kale, or somehow manage to make other people eat more kale, but aren't quite ready for a big ol' pan of kale and garlic while it's so warm?

I present -- Disappearing kale!

My kids like smoothies for breakfast and snacks when it's hot. I buy .50c going-brown organic bananas from the local place, peel and chunk them and stick them in the freezer. When it's smoothie time, I throw them in the garage-sale blender with some frozen berries, either home-picked or store bought, some milk, some water (depending on how thick I want it to be), and maybe some flax seeds or psyllium husk if I'm feeling extra-crunchy.

This morning, for speed and blogging purposes, it was a straightforward banana-milk-water-raspberry smoothie to begin with:

Nice and smooth. Then, I stemmed three Lacinato kale leaves. Not many, because this smoothie was a) small and b) blueberry-free. The reason that matters will become clear later on.

Using the power of whirring blades, the kale gets pulled under. Aaaaaiiiieeeee. . . .


And then shows up again as greenish specks. Had this smoothie contained blueberries, the kale wouldn't really show.

The kids tried it, but said they didn't particularly want it, even though it tasted fine. I think looks matter a lot to them. I'm actually enjoying it just fine, and the extra serving of "smug" along with it doesn't hurt a bit.

Double or Nothing

We're supposed to be coming out of a heat wave here. While I know that many areas of the country suffer from much more extreme weather, I reiterate -- we're not prepared for this. With neither thick walls nor artifically cooled air, these old Victorians (especially in rooms under eaves) are just hot.

How better to enjoy weather like this than to drive inland, away from any errant sea breezes, and walk around on asphalt all day long? Yes, it's county fair time, and I'll be baking myself out there tomorrow like a crazy person. Let's hope the folks tightening bolts on the roller coasters were sober enough.

Oh, and why not, while I'm at it, throw in a little Eco Wool knitting? I can't stop working on this baby because I have finally (!) figured out how to knit two sleeves on two needles. It took drawing, talking to my sister, and many many rounds of "nope, that's not it, take out the needle and turn it around" before I finally wrapped my head and subsequently my fingers around the technique:


That's not so easy to see. one needle is I believe 24" long, while the other is 60". That way, I can tell them apart. But the shorter one makes spreading the sleeves out for a picture a bit tricky. Folded is a little clearer.


I don't think I'm ready to write up a tutorial, but for me, I divided the sleeves into "fronts" and "backs" and each one has one needle. Two sleeves, one side, one needle. To knit, then, one needle gets knitted across one side of two sleeves, necessitating one yarn change. If I start with the fronts, then I knit both fronts. Then I drop that needle and knit two backs.

It's easier, much easier, than I had managed to make it for a bit. Maybe this will pump up my speed on lots of things, like mittens! Christmas is coming, make no mistake. But first, this and a couple of other sleeveless sweaters.

Crazy for Kale

It would be so great to always be ready for pictures, to always have my hair just so and maybe the dark circles that lurk under my eyes softened a bit. . . but then I couldn't complain that there were no pictures of me, and anyhow, when your most avid photographer is six, you get what you get.

Kale makes me pretty happy.


I pulled about a pound of Lacinato kale out of the garden today -- it's all threatening to bolt, and I'm trying to gobble it up before that happens. So I'm going to share a "recipe" with you. It's more of a suggested approach, because I'm not actually measuring things. When out at a local restaurant, I had their Kale-Seaweed Salad, and it was so tasty I've been trying to match it ever since. There's still something off about my dressing, but I'm close.


If you want to try it, and you have access to kale and either Arame or Hijiki (Arame is less expensive here, and Hijiki tastes better, in my opinion), you can make it right up.

I lightly steamed about 1/2 pound of stemmed kale leaves, then chiffonaded them. Meanwhile, the seaweed was soaking in some hot water. I drained the seaweed and mixed it with the kale. Into that went some finely minced fresh peeled ginger (you might want to try some ginger preserved in sherry, or some shaved fresh ginger instead). The dressing was rice vinegar, sesame oil, and soy sauce. Sesame seeds on top.

And that's it. I find it really yummy and am always amazed at how much kale cooks down to how little. It tastes best cold, but I have yet to make it far enough ahead to chill it. If anyone has suggestions about punching up the dressing, let me know.