Weekend

Tonight we're having taco night at our house. We're making carne asada on the grill and all kinds of fixings. We're using the same marinade that the Hub's sister used when we went camping Memorial Day weekend, Tyler Florence's Mojo Marinade:
juice of 1 orange
juice of 2 limes, plus their zest
1/2 c olive oil
2 Tbsp vinegar
1 Tbsp cumin
1 Tbsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
1 jalapeno, seeded and diced
4 cloves garlic, diced
handful of cilantro, roughly chopped

I tweaked it a little by adding the zest.

For dessert, I made Oreo Pie, from a recipe given to me at my bachelorette party by a college friend.

This morning I went over to the farm to check on the bees. I was going to add another super, and had it all put together and ready to go. But then I checked on the bees and the super we added a couple weeks ago had barely been touched. So I rearranged the supers, to put the empty one below a full one. I think we might harvest honey this year (fingers crossed)!

While at the farm, I also played with Freddy. We played fetch with the tire. I brushed him. I asked him to sit and smile, and he rolled over on his side:

I asked a second time and got this:

He's probably thinking "Mom, just throw the damn tire already!"

He's such a smart dog. Handsome, too. And ornery.

And a kitchen update:

Please excuse the construction equipment beside the food...

We started putting our island together again last weekend. The wall on the backside for the bar was installed, as well as the bar top. We decided to go with butcher block countertops. I've been rubbing them down with a butcher block conditioner that I bought at Menards. Construction is on hold because we're still debating on putting an electric outlet in - which requires chiseling out the floor and connecting the new outlet to the existing outlet by the dishwasher.

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Chickens! (and bees)

I'm not gonna lie; this post may be graphic if you don't like to see raw chickens. There's a photo at the bottom of me plucking feathers from a chicken but otherwise nothing too crazy.

My personal belief is if you can't handle butchering an animal you have no business eating meat. Butchering gives you a whole level of respect and understanding for animals that is lost when you're standing at the meat counter at the grocery store. Butchering makes you really think about how many animals had to die to put 20 thighs in that big family package, and makes you realize just how pumped full of growth inducing hormones and food all those supermarket animals are.

Yesterday we butchered 4 roosters, 2 were from our farm and 2 were from my grandma. When you have multiple roosters in the same pen, they tend to fight each other and harass the chickens. Roosters aren't necessary for egg production, only for producing chick-filled eggs, so we decided to reduce the number of roosters. We still have one, a Buff Orpington. 

Curiosity did not kill this kitten!

Friday night, the roosters were pulled out separate from the flock and put in cages so they wouldn't eat anything. The less they eat, the less likely you are to get poop on yourself and the raw meat when you're butchering. 

My brother is responsible for the head-whacking, and I am responsible for holding the rooster in place during and after the head whacking. Surprisingly, chickens move A LOT after their head is gone and make some pretty strange noises as the wind is leaving their windpipes. I try to hold the headless body in place so blood doesn't go everywhere. 

 We hand-pluck the feathers after dipping the bird in hot water for a couple minutes. This helps the feathers to come out quickly. Then we remove the innards from the bird and break it down (cut the wings, legs, etc off the main body), and package each bird with my Foodsaver. Start to finish, it takes about 4 hours to process 4 birds.

You can see on my apron that a couple of the birds went a little crazy ...

Also yesterday, we added another super to the beehive because the one we added a couple weeks ago is completely full! We have one more super ready to add that needs to be painted, to protect it from the elements. I've been reading a lot about how much honey we need to leave for the bees over winter, and trying to figure out how we're going to harvest honey and honeycomb when it gets to be that time...

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Bee story

Stick with me to the end of this post, for a funny story.

Sunday, my brother and I set out to change the bee hive around a little. See here for how it used to look, with the honey super on top and the brood box on bottom. I went to a local bee meeting last week with lots of questions about my bees, the drought this summer, and the lack of honey. Turns out we were doing a couple things wrong:
1. The queen excluder should only be used if there are intentions of harvesting honey. Since it was so dry this year, this was our first year with bees, and the bees haven't stored anything in the super yet, we took the excluder off.
2. Because we had a drought this summer, I shouldn't have stopped feeding sugar water. Especially since we wouldn't be able to harvest honey for human consumption this year, we should have kept feeding the bees all summer so they would store up food for themselves to last through winter. If we were storing honey for humans to eat, we wouldn't want the bees to use sugar water, we'd want them to use nectar.

I added sugar water to their quart jar on Sunday, and have a gallon jug of it in my fridge ready for refilling.

The advice from the other beekeepers was to put the super on the bottom. This is because the bees were up exploring in the super, but not storing any pollen or nectar. If they have to go through the super to get to the brood box, they may be more likely to store in it.

So, time for the funny story. 

Sunday, I asked my brother to help with the bees. The brood box can be rather heavy when it is full of bees, brood, and honey and I thought an extra hand would be helpful. I grabbed the "hive tools" which for us consist of a bee brush, a metal putty knife and a flat screw driver. I also grabbed a spray bottle of sugar water and gave my brother the smoker and a lighter. Sunday was a little overcast, because we finally got rain, which was residual of the recent hurricane. I usually use sugar water spray to calm the bees when I am looking at them, but a lot of beekeepers use a smoker; I wasn't sure which we would need.

I removed the concrete block, outer and inner covers, and honey super and set them aside. Then I was working on removing the queen excluder, and removing the brood box (the deeper box) from the hive base. I was in my bee garb - long sleeves, long pants, solid toe shoes, elbow length gloves, and my hat with the head netting. My brother had on a baseball cap, jeans, cowboy boots and a long sleeve t-shirt, only because I convinced him that jersey shorts and cowboy boots were not proper attire...

I was leaning over and prying, and a bee got stuck in the folds of my netting. I couldn't tell if it was inside the netting or not, so I asked my brother to take a look at it. He turned to look and the bee flew out of the netting and into his baseball cap. My brother has long hair that is rather curly, that he wads up in a bun and puts in his baseball cap. He took off running toward the middle of the garden, yelling something incoherent like "there's a bee in my hair", threw the smoker and his hat, and started rolling around in the grass. Like "stop, drop and roll" rolling in the grass. I ended up rearranging everything without his help and putting the hive all back together, while trying not to laugh at my brother... I'm thankful neither of us were stung because the bees were not in a good mood after his yelling and flailing!

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Bees-ness

 Yesterday we harvested 6 zucchini, about half a pound of tomatillos, 5 little cucumbers and about a cup of blackberries. We need another cup of blackberries so Grandma can make a pie (she needs at least 4 cups).

 The cat, standing guard, and taking a break from playing with Freddy.

Mom, Daniel and I checked on the bees yesterday. It's been about two weeks since we last checked.

 The bees have filled up about 6 frames with comb.

 We didn't look for the queen yesterday. The bees were pretty hot. There were several dozen at the entrance to the hive, fanning it. Instead of using the smoker to tame the bees, we sprayed them with sugar water. This kept them busy because they were concentrated on eating the sugar water instead of trying to sting intruders.

You can see the different cells; The larger ones that stick up off the frame are drone larva. The ones that are flatter are worker bee cells.

We probably could have waited another couple weeks for this, but we went ahead and put the queen excluder on and a small super for honey. The queen excluder does exactly what it sounds like; it is a plastic piece that has holes in it that are large enough for the worker bees to fit through but not the queen. You put this between the brood box (the larger lower box where there are eggs) and the upper supers so that the queen doesn't lay eggs where you want to store honey. 

From this point forward, we won't be feeding anymore sugar water. Otherwise, the bees will store sugarwater in the super. 

 To make the wax foundation a little more enticing, we sprayed a little sugar water on the foundation.

Then the inner cover went back on, and our make-shift outercover, which is a piece of corrugated metal with a concrete block on top.

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Pesticides

Usually in my garden, I try not to use pesticides. There are certain instances when it seems impossible to not use a pesticide, such as when spider mites infest tomatoes, or squash bugs infest the squash. Now that I have honeybees, I'm more aware of how I'm treating garden pests.

My go-to pesticides are typically organic:
Dipel Dust - Bacillus thuringiensis
Diatomaceous Earth

I came across this document indicating which pesticides are harmful to honeybees:
http://www.ct.gov/dep/lib/dep/pesticide_certification/Supervisor/protecting_honeybees.pdf

Sevin, which is a pesticide that several people in my family swear by, kills honeybees as well as bad bugs. So when the honeybees come over to pollinate the flowers on your garden plants they are killed for doing their job. 

Sunday I noticed that the Diatomaceous Earth was not phasing the caterpillars on the cabbages. I squished all the caterpillars I could find and then dusted the cabbage with Dipel Dust.

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Hot Chicks

 It's been rather warm during the day, so my brother turns off the heat lamp on the chicks. They get to hang out in the dark for most of the day, which means they seem to forget where the food is located until the light comes back on. But I suppose it's better than the alternative: baked chicken.

Two discoveries yesterday about the chicks. One is that they are flying around the box.

See the dark spot on top of the waterer? I went to check on the chicks and one was standing on top of the waterer and had just pooped. I tried to get a picture but it flew off too fast.

 The other discovery is that we may be able to tell their gender earlier than expected.They will be two weeks old on Sunday and supposedly you can tell the gender in week 3.

See on the chick above, how there is a ridged area between the eyes? I think this Brown Leghorn may be a rooster. In fact, 5 of the 6 Brown Leghorn chicks have this already.

 The chick on the left above is not doing so hot. Yesterday I noticed that he was laying down at the edge of the box and the other chicks were walking on top of him like he wasn't even there. So I put him in a separate box with only one other chick, a bowl of water and a sprinkle of feed. He is limping a little bit and doesn't like putting weight on his left foot.
Finding another chick for the box was a difficult task. I tried several others and they all flew out the top of it.

As for the bees, I gave them another full quart of sugar water yesterday. They went through a quart in two days, even though there are so many flowers blooming!

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Chicky Chicky Bee Bee

Almost, not quite, sounds like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

  Yesterday evening when I checked on the chicks they had finished off an entire quart of chick starter in 24 hours! The quart jar and the feeder base it screws into were completely empty. The waterer was almost empty.

Every evening, I change out their newspaper, then fill up their feeder and waterer.

 They apparently appreciated the feed. So much so that some of them were body surfing to get to the feeder.

Their feathers are starting to come in!

Also checked on the bees' sugar water yesterday. I filled their quart jar on Saturday and it was completely empty yesterday.

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On Bee-ing Careful

Yesterday, I received my first bee sting ever. (To my knowledge I was never stung growing up.) A couple things were wrong yesterday:
1. It was overcast yesterday morning when Mom and I went to check on the bees. Ideally, we should have waited until it was sunny, but we anticipated rain yesterday (which never showed up) so we wanted to check on them first thing in the morning. When it is sunny, a majority of the bees will be out gathering pollen and nectar. If it is overcast, the bees will be couch potatoes and hang out in the hive.
2. We didn't take the bee brush or smoker with us to check on the hive. The bee brush would have helped move the bees out of the way, so the frames would be easier to grasp. The smoker would have calmed them down.
3. I should have worn my gloves. We've had the bees for about a month now and I've gotten to the point where I usually wear long pants, closed toed shoes and my hat/veil. Gloves and long sleeves have become optional. The gloves because they get in the way. I have small hands and it's pretty near impossible to find gloves that have short enough fingers. The long sleeves have been abandoned because it's been unseasonably warm outside. At least I wore the long sleeves yesterday or it might have been worse.

Here's what happened:
We were checking out the different frames, observing the amount of eggs and larva, and looking for the queen. The bees have about 5 frames that have honey on the top 1/3, then pollen, then eggs and larva. On frame 3 of 5, I picked up the frame and we were observing/investigating. Then a bee (which I didn't even see), was on my left thumb and stung me between the knuckle and the palm of my hand, on the palm side.
First thing you should know about getting stung by a honeybee: DO NOT SQUEEZE the stinger. If you squeeze it, more of the irritant will enter your body, causing a greater reaction. Instead, SCRAPE off the stinger. I used a putty knife to remove the stinger. See illustration below:

Source

Second, when a honeybee stings, it is a kamikaze kind of action. Once they sting, they die because the stinger stays behind in your skin and yanks out part of their innards.
Third, take Benadryl. I took one less than half an hour after being stung and I think this helped my thumb from swelling as bad. It still swelled (so much that it was difficult to don my leather work gloves and help with farm work) and was incredibly sore. This morning it isn't as sore, but itches a lot.

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Now you see it

 I had some requests for photos that have certain items identified.

Photo by me

Above are pollen cells circled. 

Photo from my brother Daniel

 Above, larve are circled. They look like white worms.

 

Photo from my brother

Above is the queen. See how her body is longer than the other bees' bodies?

Photo by me

Remember how we rearranged the frames so the bees wouldn't feel so crowded, so they would maybe stop building queen cells and not swarm? Well, instead of spreading out on all the frames, they abandoned some of them and are now clustered on the four frames farthest from the feeder. Last week they were clustered on the four frames at the feeder.

In the center of the above photo is one of the queen cells they had started. You can also see a lot of pollen stored in the comb.

The next three photos are from Mom.

My brother Daniel and I

Daniel and I again

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Beekeeper's Meeting

Tuesday night, I attended a meeting of the local Beekeeper's Association.

There were 20 people there, and I was one of 5 women. A little boy that attended with his grandpa, two other women, and myself, were the only people under 40.

It was educational, and that was the main reason I went. Before the bees arrived, I kept thinking "I'm going to be a beekeeper" and then they arrived and I thought "Oh shit, I'm a beekeeper. I'm responsible for 11,000 little lives now."

Last Saturday, Mom and I noticed there was a queen cell in the hive. The bees had been installed for less than a week. On Sunday, my brother helped me find the queen, and we noticed a second queen cell. I asked the group leader of the Beekeeper's Association what he would suggest.

Typically when bees build new queen cells it is for one of two reasons:
1. The queen is not performing as needed - she's not laying enough eggs, or she's not producing pheromones that please the bees.
2. The bees are crowded.

Since the bees were only building comb on 4 of the 10 frames, I didn't think there was a crowding issue. However, my brother and I alternated the frames so there was one with comb, then one empty one.

The other beekeepers thought we should leave the queen cells alone. If the queen isn't performing, then the bees will replace her. If the queen gets her butt in gear, she will kill the queen larva. There's a possibility that the old queen will swarm with some of the bees. But there's also a possibility that a new queen will hatch and the two queens will duke it out to the death of one of them.

One of the bee books I've been reading, Fruitless Fall, discusses the colony collapse issue. In the past ten years or so, many commercial beekeepers have experienced a 50-75% loss of their colonies. It is unknown what the exact cause is, but there are theories of it being viruses, mites, stress or all three. While reading the book, I guess I imagined it to not be an issue here, but it is. Local beekeepers are experiencing losses as well.

Why do they have all these hives? Big Agriculture needs pollinators. Everything from almonds to apples uses bees as pollinators. Orchards rent the hives of bees for a certain period of time to pollinate their fruit. In addition to the money they bring in from the rental, the beekeepers also harvest honey.

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Queen Sighting!

See the long bee that is vertically oriented in the middle of the photo? That is the queen!

After seeing the queen cells the workers were building, I got worried that maybe the queen had died or flown away. I asked my brother to help spot her and she was on the first frame we looked at! Still a little concerned because there are now two queen cells started.

I'm thinking about being a bee-nerd and going to the local beekeeper's association meeting tomorrow night. I just have this feeling I might be the only person under 40 there...

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Checking on Bees

 Yesterday Mom and I checked on the bees.

 They are working on about 4 frames of the hive so far.

 You can see they've started drawing out the comb. When the foundation went in the frames, it was relatively flat. Now they are storing nectar and sugar water!

We were looking for the queen, and may have found her, but aren't quite sure! We saw many drones though - the male bees that bum food and expect to be waited on hand and foot.

A disturbing find was that the bees started building a queen cell. This is something they shouldn't be doing unless they are crowded and wanting to swarm, or their queen isn't producing correctly. They can't be overcrowded; they've only been in the hive six days.

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The Queen Bee(s)

 When the queen is shipped with the rest of the honeybees, she is in a little cage, suspended at the top of the larger cage. She is not from the same hive as the worker bees, so they may kill her. There is candy at one end of the cage that the worker bees eat and when they finish it off and release the queen, she is accepted as part of the family.  It's hard to see, but my queen also came with about half a dozen attendant bees.

Me in my get-up.

Me in my get-up. You might recognize the hat; I bought it in Puerto Rico on vacation last year. Mom made a netting veil to keep the bees out of my face. I bought some long, thin gardening gloves from Target. And I'm sporting my Crocs galoshes.

As far as I know, I've never been stung by a bee, so I'm taking precautions against stings in case I'm allergic! I even bought a small box of Benadryl to keep on hand...

Last night, I was checking out the germination progress in the garden and noticed several honeybees on the clover next to the garden. I wonder if they were "my girls"?

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Day Two: Bee Story

 I went out to check on the bees yesterday. They ate an entire jar of sugar water. The first day I gave them an old Classico pasta sauce jar full of 1:1 sugar water, which held about 20 ounces. Yesterday I increased to a quart jar (32 ounces). I checked out several bee books from the local library, and they say to feed sugar water until the bees stop eating it, sometimes a month or more of feeding. I came to the realization that I probably need to buy sugar in bulk; 5 pound packages aren't going to last very long!

I'll probably take the grass out of the entrance today. I put it there during bee installation to keep them from flying out as much. But it also helps keep nosy neighbors (wasps) out of the hive.

I was glad to see the bees started housekeeping. There were some dead bees in the travel cage that fell into the hive when I dumped in the bees. The worker bees have pushed the dead bees out on the ground near the hive entrance. See the middle of the photo by the concrete blocks; the golden spots are dead bees.

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Bee Story

If these bees could speak, they would say:

Back in the Spring of 2012, we moved from Clarkson, Kentucky, to Whitewater, Missouri. "We" as in me, all my sisters (the worker bees), and a foster mom (the queen bee).

The three pound package arrived in the mail - I had to pick it up from the local post office.

a pound of bees is approximately 3,500 bees

Then we moved into this huge one room house, where I had to share a bed (wax foundation + frame) with my sisters.

The lower box of the hive, the brood box, holds 10 frames that are about 8" deep x 16" long.

We were treated like royalty for the first couple days, and were given a huge free bottle of intoxicant as a house-warming gift (quart jar of sugar water). Then, we started to explore and make our own intoxicant (honey).

The can on top of the hive is the sugar water that traveled with the bees. The jar on the lower right of the hive is the sugar water I made for them.

The little red wagon is getting a work out this year.

Honestly, though, installing the bees in the hive wasn't very hard. I watched several videos on youtube.com. but this one was the most helpful:



There were quite a few bees that didn't want to come out of their travel box, so I set the box up in front of the hive entrance. Hopefully the box is empty when I arrive home tonight and I can take it away!

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