Bee legs & pollen
I’m now video powered. Enjoy a peak at our hive and our beautiful bees!
Listen to that nerd. “I love my bees.” What a loon.
Here’s a close up picture of a bee’s corbicula, the “saddlebags” I mention. The bees gather particles of pollen all over their bodies when they visit flowers, and then they groom themselves with their hind legs, brushing all the tiny grains of pollen into their corbicula, which are not unlike velcro.
As they groom the pollen into these velcro-like “saddlebags,” the tiny pollen bits get mushed into a single larger grain that we can see with our eyes. The color of the pollen can be different depending on the plant. It’s so neat to see bees fly in with red pollen and orange pollen and yellow pollen. Some people harvest the pollen from the bees and use it for naturopathic treatments. Others use it as a protein supplement.
But the bees really need the pollen the most. After it’s gathered, they then deposit the golden kernels in the hive near their brood. The high protein pollen is the first stuff that gets fed to baby bees when they emerge!
Turnip Greens Casserole
****
I think I may have mislabeled my kale seed as turnip seed… so instead of planting a slightly more diverse variety of spring crops, I planted turnips, turnips, and some more turnips.
That’s not exactly true– we have carrots combing up, lots of lettuce and beets and spinach and kohlrabi and peas and radishes and other goodies. But there are a lot of turnips. A plethora of turnips. Turnip tallies of titanic proportions.
And so, in the case that you are tumbling in turnips too, I present to you an excellent use of these terrific spring greens:
Turnip Greens Casserole
- ~4 lbs turnip greens
- 1/2 cup mayonnaise
- 2 eggs
- 1 1/2 cup bread crumbs
- 1/2 cup grated Parmesan (or similar) cheese
- Juice from 1/2 a lemon
- 2 tbspns horseradish sauce
- Salt and pepper to taste
- 1 tbspn sugar (probably not necessary, but most other similar recipes called for it…)
(note: I imagine bacon is probably very good with this dish because, well, what’s not good with bacon?)
HOW TO:
Rinse greens to get the grit off of ‘em. Drain, chop, and boil in fresh water until tender. You can chop them further in a blender if you wish but it’s not really necessary. And don’t you dare drain that pot liquor down the sink– save it for soup!
In a bowl add lemon juice, mayo, eggs, salt and pepper (as needed) and 1 c. bread crumbs. Add chopped greens and mix well. Dump the whole shebang into a casserole dish. Top with remaining breadcrumbs and a little more grated cheese for a phenomenal crust.
Bake uncovered in a 375* oven for about 40 minutes.
Fasten your seat belts and prepare for some awesomeness! You ain’t never had no greens like these! If you give it a whirl, I’d love to hear what you think!
****
Busy bees.
Hello! Beagle Tilly playing in the yard.
As I mentioned in my previous post, there are a lot of exciting things going on this spring. One of those things has been a transition into a new job! My new role involves managing historic properties and their their rehabilitation. I’m working all over the state with all kinds of people and all kinds of buildings, so there are some very long days and some work on weekends…. but I’m really enjoying it and I already have some great stories to share! But that’s for another time.
On the home front we’ve been gardening away winter blues and doing our best to get back into our remodeling. We’re officially two years into our “project”… which might seem like a long time to remodel a tiny house, but we’ve still remained true to our DIY goals and our budget, managed to work full time and squeeze in graduate school, as well as spend time with friends and family. One day (hopefully sooner rather than later) we’ll finish this house… and it will be grand. In the meantime, we’re still chugging along and trying to enjoy every minute. More on that later.
Another one of those exciting things that has come to realization this spring was the arrival of our honeybees. Last Saturday Jeff of DC Honeybees pulled up in front of our house with 200+ lbs of bees in the back of his car. A little more than 4 lbs were to be placed in our backyard!
4 lb units of honey bees are called “packages” and you order them along with a new queen. The idea is that you can shove them all into a box and with a little luck have a relatively instant hive once the bees settle into their new home. Here is our package sitting on the butcher block in our kitchen while we chatted. A few escapees flying around overhead plinking occasionally into light bulbs.
Here the package has been moved outside near the awaiting hive. Jeff had just sprayed the bees with sugar syrup to they would be occupied with grooming themselves instead of flying- this helps when pouring the bees from the travel box into the hive. Below he is using a hive tool to lift up a can of syrup that both feeds the bees during transport and keeps them in the cage. That little box to the right of his hand is the Queen Cage– our royal lady bee is in there!
The empty hive– all level and ready to receive its new tenants!
With the can of syrup removed, Jeff dumps the bees into the hive and places the queen cage between a set of frames. The queen is kept in her cage by a small candy plug that the other bees eat through over the course of a few days, releasing her into their new home. Watch!
What I was trying to say in the above video before I got distracted by all the bees flying around was how remarkable I thought it was that Jeff was working the hives (his own and ours) without veils or gloves. I had seen a video of him checking his hives with his daughter– he was calm and never got stung, yet his daughter got stung when she panicked and waved her arms around. Check it out here. As you can see in our own video, the bees are pretty docile. Jeff even scoops up a handful of the bees… and one even lands on Banjo Boy’s face without incident!
Studies have shown that when bees are allowed to build their own wax from scratch instead of on commercial foundation, they vary the size of the cells in the wax and are better able to resist disease and pests. Since this is a more natural approach to bee keeping (and cheaper!) we opted to give it a shot. We’ll see how it works and weigh the pros and cons at the end of our first season. Meanwhile, the bees had 8 days to get nice and settled, and it was time to see how much building the bees had accomplished…. so in we dove!
This is a before picture of a “foundationless” frame. The strips of wax are meant to act as guidelines for the bees.
Already there’s considerable comb being built– see?!
Here’s a close up of the comb and bees. Good job bees! Way to go! Keep it up!
Once they fill out most of the frames in the first box, we’ll stack another “deep” (hive box) on top and they’ll keep on building. So far they’ve been easy easy easy, totally pain free, and lots of fun to watch. We’ll keep you posted!
March Madness
Hello there! I didn’t mean to leave you hanging for so long! There are just so many exciting things on the horizon and we’ve been so very busy. I can’t go into great detail right now, but I wanted to check in and provide a broad update.
It looks like we’ ve made it through yet another winter! We didn’t get nearly as much snow as we did last year, but it was a cold winter for sure, and I am so ready for spring. Looks like everything else is ready for spring, too. The crocuses and day-lilies started popping up about 3 weeks ago and all the birds are chirp chirp chirping. Speaking of birds, the chickens are doing well and are back to laying regularly… although we had to put yet another rooster in the freezer a few weeks ago. I was very disappointed because it seems like all my favorite chickens are roosters (FYI- we live in a no-rooster-zone and can’t keep roosters)… but it’s a learning process. Our Rooster-Recognition is being honed, as are our culling skills.
This week's batch of eggs all cartoned up and ready to barter with my amiga for a haircut!
We’ve been hard at work finishing out our basement with the help of Banjo Boy’s Papa. We ran into some structural problems with our plan for putting in a separate entrance, so we instead installed a large egress window which allows more light into the basement and functions as a safe emergency exit, making the space a legal bedroom/basement area. Other than that… the original walls have been knocked down and reconfigured, wiring and plumbing run for the bathroom and a kitchenette, and dry wall is up and mudded! We also finished out a laundry/utility room area in the basement and roughed in plumbing for a powder room on the main floor!
Banjo Boy installing drywall in the new laundry room.
On the garden front— I germinated seedlings a few weeks ago in moist paper towels on my lovely heat mat. You can see some of the resulting baby plants in mouthwash cups below. We’ve got Hot Cherry Bell, Poblano, and Cayenne Peppers, as well as sage, chamomile, parsley, cilantro, 4 types of eggplant, and a million different tomatoes! We also have cabbage, kale, collards, and leeks.
Baby plants under grow lights!
Below you can see the secondary leaves of a Hazelfield Farm tomato. Isn’t that beautiful? 90% of my seed comes from Mamabear’s garden or from my own, which is great when it comes to sticking to a tight budget and controlling where your seeds come from and what they’re exposed to. However, sometimes there are still soil born diseases or blights that are carried in the seed, or other factors that you just can’t control. Most of my Hazelfield tomatoes germinated very, very well… but then died very suddenly. It could have been something I did to them, but I think it was probably some kind of blight. I was left with just a few… but the few Hazelfields that made it are looking really, really healthy and are the first of my tomatoes to pop out secondary leaves! If we follow Darwin’s crazy notion of selection of the fittest, these should have some good genes for my tomato breeding program!
Other varieties that we have include Mortgage Lifter, Moscow Early, Cherokee Purple, Brandywine and Beefsteak, and I’m sure I’m forgetting several others.
Hazelfield Farm Tomato
On one of the coldest days of the year Banjo Boy and I constructed three 4′x8′ raised beds in the front yard that will supplement the rest of our yarden. We then spent the next several weeks filling them with soil and compost and last weekend I built arched frames out of PVC pipe and covered the beds with 6 mil plastic. I managed to plant one bed with some early spring crops like broccoli, snow peas, onions, radishes, etc., before rain set in. I know it’s a bit early for some of the things I seeded, but I’m putting all my faith in Mr. Groundhog who called for an early spring! If things dry out enough by this weekend, I’ll plant the rest of the beds and till the rest of the yard.
So that’s it for my quick update. We’ve got other irons in the fire, too, but you get the idea. It’s going to be a busy, wonderful spring!
