To cool off!
The thermometer on the front of the house hit 98 F today, and the max/min in the hoop house is pegged at 128 and 37. Two of my hives are new this spring and still filling up but the big hive needed an army of tiny wings out front, funneling a breeze through the comb. I imagine it also helps evaporate water from the honey in open cells.
The perfect time to disturb a colony of bees is when most of them are away from home. A perfectly still, hot day when the sun is at the meridian and the air is full of pollen means that every field bee will be out foraging, stopping home only to unload and taking off again like B17s in the African theater. Yesterday was not that day. The Maine spring can be cool – it was 60 degrees with a brisk wind blowing the apple blossoms apart on the Russian crab and making my full English bee suit comfortable, instead of stifling. However, a beekeeper with a day job will work with whatever weather happens on her day off (short of drenching rain), and be thankful. *
This hive was new from a package three weeks ago. When I dumped them in they persisted in a forming a bulge above the frames. Since they had obliged me by exiting their box at all, I gave them a spacer when I put the hivetop feeder above them. I had hoped to deconstruct the whole arrangement before they built comb to connect the frames to the feeder, but no such luck. They have been busy, busy bees. I finally had to cut away quite a bit of comb (full of fruit blossom honey, poor beekeeper!) and carefully settle the new super on top. I wore the full suit because this colony is new to me and I was going to be elbows deep in their territory, but I didn’t need it. They traveled calmly over my hands, and went about their business with only a very casual fly-over from the guard bees.
There were plenty of eggs in the newly filled frames, and a wealth of pollen stored up in rainbow colors. Now I hope they continue the good work in their new second story – May is halfway done and winter’s coming!
* I feel I should mention that I’ve heard British beekeepers work on their hives at night, while the bees are asleep. Do bees sleep? Does this technique work? I can’t find much about this on line and it has the feel of fable, somehow. . .
Larry the Postmaster called at 7:30 this morning that “my package” had arrived – thanks, Larry! Drove down to Mount Desert center (the gas station/one stop, the post office and a bank) and picked up three pounds of Buckfast bees and a queen from Bee Weaver Apiary – thanks Laura! They were in fine shape, clustered around their can of sugar and the queen cage on this 50 degree morning.
I removed the can, brushed everybody off the queen cage so that I could confirm her health and remove the wax plug from the bottom of the cage and placed her between two frames. Her exit is also plugged by a little bit of candy, and the workers will eat through that and release her sometime in the next few days. Then I dumped the workers out of the box and over the frames, closed the hive, filled the feeder with sugar syrup and propped the box in front of the hive entrance so that the bees that didn’t fall into the hive will find their way inside on their own.
Today I worked with a bee suit but no gloves, and no smoker. The bees were social, very curious and very active, but I was not stung – or even menaced – even as I was rather literally up to my elbows in them. I like these bees. The peach trees in the front yard are moments away from full bloom, so I think they will like it here, too.
The Tri-County Beekeepers Association meetings are chock full of information. I have scribbled notes in my Moleskin that I’ll probably decode some day, but one of the tidbits I picked up was that my hives should all be slightly different so that the bees have visual cues for which one is home. I’ve painted all of my woodenware light cream but it hasn’t really been an issue because this is the first year I’ve had more than one viable hive.Today I wanted to make a “split” – to remove a few frames of brood and eggs (or perhaps even a capped queen cell to make a new queen) and let the bees go on to make a second colony in the new boxes.
I like the Behr “Premium Plus” paint and primer combination for finishing woodenware. It is acrylic, very durable, dries quickly and is less expensive than buying primer and a finish coat. The Paint Lady at Home Depot was having an extended hoe-down with someone on the phone who wanted to take a class in lead paint removal, and she was being extremely polite to this idiot as she helped me make my paint selection. We had a kind of sign language conversation about how she didn’t stock the dark base paint in quarts, did I want a gallon of dark green, or a quart of something lighter? And that’s how I ended up with a new hive in “Pistachio”. I had a dream last night that Martha Stewart was visiting, and she liked it, as do the bees.
I don’t have any pictures of the interior of the hives as I did the split. I was wearing my full suit and it was 50 degrees and breezy today. Bad enough that when I separated the boxes I exposed brood – I didn’t want to let them sit out long enough to grab the camera. They had been busy. Every frame I pulled was studded with capped queen cells along the bottom – swarming was imminent! I eliminated a few and transported one frame with a capped queen all ready to go to the new (pistachio) hive, with a few frames of food and nurse bees. I blocked most of the entrance with straw and put the feeder on full of syrup. Now I just have to wait, and not disturb them, and see if they “take”. I hope they do. This hive is so sturdy, and so social – I was elbow deep in them today and they never took offense. It would be lovely to have more of them.
The name of this cake comes from one of those pre-Snopes stories about a woman who had a slice of cake in a famous New York (or Chicago, or New Orleans) restaurant and it was so delicious she paid the chef $100 for the secret recipe. I always felt the story was an unnecessary foil for what is, actually, a very tasty chocolate cake that holds up well to bake sales and buffets (pieces don’t crumble) and can be made with one bowl and a mixing cup of unassuming ingredients. It is also entirely dependable – this is the first cake my son learned to make.
I made this particular cake for the monthly Tri-County Beekeeper’s Association meeting at the Prospect Community Hall last night. The decoration is a set of painted HO gauge figures from Woodland Scenics and, if you ever have to decorate a cake for a roofer, or you’d like a wide selection of tiny tombstones for Halloween, here you go. I recommend gluing the figures to a (clean and unused) popsicle stick with nontoxic glue and sinking it into the frosting, so that no one breaks a tooth on a miniature wheelbarrow.
$100 Cake
Stir (or sift) together in a large bowl: 2 C cake flour (regular unbleached will work, but cake flour makes a lovely texture), 1 C sugar, 4 heaping Tbs cocoa, 1/4 tsp salt. In a measuring cup whisk together 1 C cold water and 1 C mayonnaise, 1 tsp vanilla.
Use real mayonnaise – this ingredient represents both the fat and the eggs in this recipe. Soynaise doesn’t work (trust me on this). Homemade mayonnaise is wonderful, should you have any leftover.
Combine the two mixtures until smooth (I use a whisk, gently). Pour into a 9 x 12 or 10 x 13 pan and bake 1/2 hour at 350, until the top springs back when lightly touched.
Allow to cool completely and frost with: 1/2 C softened butter, 2 C confectioners sugar, 1/2 tsp vanilla. Decorate!
My mental picture of Ireland includes green rolling hills, green pastures, greenstone houses and the occasional peaceful lake. I don’t immediately think of the ocean, but Eire is an island, after all, and most of the Irish recipes handed down through my family involve fish. I learned this recipe “by hand”, that is, I watched someone make it and then joined in. I don’t have precise amounts for the ingredients, but it’s a peasant dish and the measurements aren’t critical to having a good meal out of it. The recipe is also a little more complicated than I would generally make for a weeknight dinner – lots of pans and dishes complicated. On the other hand it’s cheap and absolutely wonderful. You have been warned.
You’ll need a potato ricer and: 1/2 pound white fish (I use haddock); 4 medium or 5 small boiling potatoes (I like Yukon or Caribe); 4 C chopped spinach (about 1/2 pound fresh); 3 green onions, chopped; scant 1/2 C matzoh meal; 2 large eggs, beaten; salt and pepper, oil and butter for frying. This amount serves 2, generously.
Peel and cut the potatoes into chunks and cook until done – you’ll want them uniformly soft for ease of ricing. Drain them in a colander so that they cool a little and won’t cook the eggs when you add them later. In a 10″ skillet poach the fish in water with a little white wine and lemon juice until opaque and flaky. I like to drain and cool the fish on a cake rack so that it doesn’t add too much additional water to the mix. In another large skillet saute the green onions until soft and add the spinach and cook until quite done. You can add a 1/2 tsp sesame oil at this point if you like. I”m pretty sure my ancestors did not. Dump the spinach and green onions into a large bowl.
Clean up all the dishes and pans and let everything sit and cool off for a minute. Now rice the potatoes into a another large bowl and let them stand. Flake the fish off the cake rack into the bowl of spinach (nicely cooled so that it doesn’t overcook the fish. My ancestors were a patient people, at least when it came to fishcakes). Add the beaten eggs and mix gently and not too thoroughly, add the matzoh meal the same way. Season with a 1/2 tsp salt. Add this mixture to the riced potatoes and mix until you can pick up spoonfuls of more or less cohesive batter on a large spoon.
Heat the large skillet with oil and 1 Tbsp of butter. Drop large spoonfuls (about 1/4 C) of the mixture in the pan, fry until browned, flip over and squash with the flat of the spatula. Repeat until done. I remember meals of just fishcakes – vegetable, starch and protein all-in-one – but I like these with a green salad and a piece of soda bread full of whiskey-soaked currants and caraway seeds. And the new Betterbee catalog. Paradise!
Today was a March afternoon disguised as a June morning. Beautiful blue sky, 50 degree temperatures and just the slightest breeze to give the balmy calm air some variety every once in a while. I had to do errands all morning, but after 1:00 I changed shoes, found my safety googles and hauled the pump sprayer out of the cellar. I used All Season dormant oil today – it is petroleum based and not organic-rated, but it is a remarkably passive way to deal with all the various pests that over-winter on fruit trees. I add a few tablespoons of Crocker’s Golden Fish Oil (don’t open it in the house) every time – it adds “stickiness”, is a terrific foliar feed, and repels deer. Perfect. Both these substances are fairly innocuous as pesticides go, but you won’t like them in your eyes, hair, clothing – wear goggles and rubber gloves, please.
Then I went to check on the bees, and found them boiling over like an unwatched pot. I had to reach into the mass at the front of the hive and open the gate-stick a little farther. Fortunately they’re very accommodating even when just waking up, and all that happened was that I had to brush them off my hair, and the back of my neck, with a pine b0ugh.
Soon the fruit trees will wake up, too, and there will be honey in the comb!
Last weekend I noticed that the hive was active – under these recent mild temperatures and windless days – so I ordered 5 lbs of white sugar rock candy to feed them. During lean times in the spring and fall I can feed the bees sugar syrup, but since they won’t defecate in the hive box and can leave very rarely in this season, feeding them sugar with a minimum of liquid content is very important. Dysentery is a real threat to a colony in the winter.
This is a very social hive and I have never been stung working with them. Bees, like humans, get cranky after a long confinement in bad weather but still they were friendly and cooperative, if a little antic. There were no bees outside as I approached the hive. I took the large rock off and then removed the telescoping cover and at that point I could hear them – a good sign. The thick layer of newspaper (a combination of The Islander and The Bangor Daily News) under the cover was damp all the way through, which is another good sign. A healthy colony puts off a lot of heat and moisture. The newspaper absorbs the moisture so that it does not condense and drip back down on the bees. Wet bees are a bad thing.
As soon as I peeled the newspaper up I had bees in the air. I quickly put the paper aside (and took a picture), laid down a small piece of wax paper and poured out a pound of rock candy. They immediately began to crawl over the pile. They will probably eat the wax paper too, and even the newspaper had tunnels throughout.
I put everything back together and went back to the house. There was no one else home to check my back, so I did bring a few workers in on my jacket. Once they found the windows I could trap them safely in a glass dish and bring them back to the hive entrance.
Next week I’ll check them again, weather permitting, and dump another pound or two in if necessary. There are still three months to go until dandelion season.
Today the temperature rose to 48 F. Granted, the thermometer is on the south side of the house in full sun, but still the air outdoors was milder than it has been and the snow is shrinking around my footprints in the garden.
I put the kettle on and wandered out to the hive to check on the bees. In winter the only chore is to dig away snow and ice that fall down on the entrance, and check for signs of bears. The top of the box is packed with newspaper between the frames and the cover to absorb moisture put off by the warmth of the colony, so ventilation isn’t too much of an issue. Still, on warm days the guard bees like to clean house of their deceased sisters; an admirable endeavor and I like to be sure the bottom hive entrance is open a bit for them.
As I approached the hive this afternoon a foraging bee flew directly to me and landed on my red sweater. Several others flew around my head as I leaned in to check the entrance. They had tunneled through the newspaper to the top entrance and were boiling around the tiny hole in the insulating plastic, tumbling over each other and making a fair amount of noise. It was a happy sight. I tugged the bottom close-piece open just a bit, brushed everyone off my sweater and went in to make tea.
Tomorrow I’ll make sugar cakes and start, I hope, toward a productive apple-blossom season. This is the recipe:
Purpose: To prevent starvation during winter when stores run out.
How to make: Bring 1 quart of water to a boil. Remove from heat and stir in 5 pounds of sugar. When sugar is dissolved return to heat and bring to slow boil (stirring constantly) continue until the liquid reaches (Hard Ball) stage (260-270 Degrees. F) this will take a while. Be careful not to burn (scorch) the mixture as this will make the bees sick. Pour into a cookie sheet (the kind with sides), lined with wax paper, and allow to harden until cool. Break into pieces.
Note: Scorching the sugar is very bad for the bees, so I don’t cook this to the hard ball stage. I stir and wait until it’s a sludgey mass, then decant it into the protected cookie sheet. After it cools I scoop it out into 6″ x 6″ “servings” on larger pieces of wax paper and deposit it on top of the frames in the hive. The bees seem to enjoy chewing on the wax paper almost as much as the sugar.
How to apply: Feed to bees by placing on frames just above cluster. Do not put on honey supers for human consumption until after the candy has been removed.
We’ve had an extraordinary November here in the northeast US. While nighttime lows have been fairly normal, around 28 degrees F., daytime temperatures have hit record highs all month. By noon today it was overcast and 57. I have put off getting out to the bee yard to set things right for winter because the bees have been out and active, but one of these days winter will set in with a vengeance – that’s just the way it is.
I decided to take my smoker and wear my suit, and I’m glad I did. It was quite warm and still and the bees were active, poking their heads up over the comb as soon as I opened the inner cover. This is a very social, calm hive but I think the suit and smoker allow me to relax around them and avoid passing on my anxiety. They can tell if I’m nervous.
I put newspaper directly over the frames, leaving a small gap to accommodate the upper entrance, then replaced the shim and inner cover and piled more newsprint over that. You can see that I’m using The Islander and Barrons. Tony J. is partial to the WSJ. The first layer of hive-wrap is on, too.
The next step is to add the second tier of hive-wrap and tuck it under the telescoping cover. I punch a small hole in the top to correspond to the upper entrance. The bees neaten it up with a later of propolis after a while. Et voila! Ready for winter.
I also put away the hive that swarmed early and didn’t make it. I’ve allowed the remaining hive to rob the honey so all that’s left is drawn comb and cells of bright orange pollen around the edges. Beautiful! There are also a few supercedure cells on the vertical frames, if you look closely. I moved these boxes into the hoop house for the winter. This spring the new colony, arriving through the USPS, will have some drawn comb to make them feel at home.
