Spring Checkerboarding

Haven't visited my hives in almost a month!  The weather has been too cold and wet.  I was afraid that the massive rain storm yesterday would linger into today and keep me from visiting my girls, but Mother Nature cooperated.  It was a beautiful sunny, spring-like day with temps breaking into the 60s.  I timed my visit for around 1:30pm to peak with the highs.

My purpose today was to check that everyone was alive and kicking, and to checkerboard the two brood boxes (switch their positions) in an attempt to mitigate the chance of the hive absconding/swarming this spring.  By swapping the two brood boxes, the bees (which have moved high up into the hive over the winter leaving the lower brood box empty, will think they have plenty of expansion room for laying eggs - and won't be tempted to find a better home.)

Both hives were massively busy - lots of comings and goings - every returning bee loaded with pollen legwarmers - so puffy that they'd even make Jane Fonda envious.  Most were carrying the boldest red pollen that I've ever seen - I'm talking carmen red!  I wonder where they found that?  Inside the hive was a veritable rainbow of pollen ranging from bright yellow and orange, to muted green and blue.  It's nice to see lots of pollen - there's been so little since the drought started.

Both hives had eggs and larvae in various stages of development, so I'm pretty sure both queens are alive and active.  As a special treat, Maybelle made herself seen today.  I've haven't sighted her since August.  As you recall, Maybelle's hive has become quite aggressive.  And I've been unable to get a good look inside the deepest brood box since October due to their nasty pelting behavior - bad bees, bad bees!  I was convinced that they had re-queened the hive and it had become Africanized, but obviously I was wrong.  Oh well, off with her head anyway.  A few weeks ago I ordered a new queen that will be delivered later this spring.  Once the new queen shows up, I'm going to play the role of King Henry VIII and pinch Maybelle's little head off.  I just don't like dealing with an aggressive hive - regardless of how much more honey they produce.

Speaking of honey, I was expecting to find the hives depleted after our relatively dry winter - but was excited to see that the top-most supers were loaded with capped honey!  In both hives, 6 of the 8 frames were capped out.  Guess we're getting ready for a big flow - can't wait to pull in my first spring harvest (last year there was no flow because of the drought).  Perhaps this will coincide with our short-lived morel mushroom season, that is looking great from a weather perspective.

I'm struggling whether to order more honey jars or not - afraid I'll jinks things if I order before the flow.  Sorta like counting your honey before it's capped.

Saponification!

I'm not one for making New Year resolutions - instead, I make an effort to try something new early each year.  I don't obligate myself to sticking with whatever newness I expose myself too - I just put myself out there, and see what it brings me.

This year, I decided to tackle handmade soap.  Some of you out there will argue that I'm giving in to my post-apocalyptic fears about the end of life as we know it - and yes, there might be a bit of that in my choice of class, but dammit - I get to choose - and soap it is!

So yesterday morning, I dragged my sorry butt out of bed at 5am in order to get to my soapmaking class by 8:30am.  It was worth it - it was one of the best classes I've taken in a long time.

Before I start waxing (pun intended) on my new appreciation for homemade soap, let me put a plug in for a local jewel we have here - The Ploughshare: Institute for Sustainable Culture - located in lil 'ole Waco, Texas.

http://www.sustainlife.org/

They offer some of the best hands-on classes that I've ever taken.  If you have some time, take a class.  You'll meet some truly delightful people, and learn something about mother nature and sustainability at the same time.

One of the things I most love about the Ploughshare courses are the class limit.  They cap most classes at 10 people - small enough that everyone gets personal attention.  We were fortunate yesterday that they were training new instructors so that the 9 of us students had the benefit of 5 or 6 seasoned soapmaking teachers - what a treat!

Before we jumped into our first recipe, we learned how to render tallow from beef fat - much easier, and less messy than I imagined.  After that, we were taught two methods of making glycerin soap.  We first made an olive, coconut and tallow spearmint soap using the "Hot" method.  We followed this with a goat's milk, lavender, and oatmeal soap using the "Cold" processing method - this included the use of olive, palm, and coconut oil.  Both turned out great!

I've included a picture of two of the soaps I finished yesterday - a goat's milk pine/rosemary bar - and a peppermint glycerin bar.  Thought my gargoyle, Kobal, who stands watch at our front door, would provide an appropriate backdrop.

Time to Move

I've been struggling the last couple of months with the location of my hives.  As you recall, they currently overlook a beautiful duck, fish, and turtle-filled pond between the 15th and 16th hole of a Audubon-certified golf course here in the Texas Hill Country.  It is truly an idyllic setting, though it's a real pain the the pitutie to get too.  I spend 10 minutes driving to the course, then schlepp all my bee stuff onto a golf cart, only to drive the cart another 10 minutes to reach the site.  It's not too bad on a beautiful spring-like day, but in August - when the high temperature breaks the 100 mark, it's brutal.  Worse yet, when I forget something and need to run home to get it - I usually don't.  The one time I forgot my gloves, I came home with 6 stings - yowza!

It would be ever so much nicer to have in my yard.  So home is where they shall be.  Tom - gratefully - is supportive of this and spent a good deal of time with me mapping out the best location in our yard.  It's important to consider things like - where the hives will get first morning sun, is it close to a good water source, and are the hives far enough away from weed wackers and other equipment that makes a lot of noise.   Sweet Tom - even went with me to Home Depot today and picked up supplies to make the hive bases - AND he installed them this afternoon!

Now the next big decision - when to actually move them.  I think I'll move Roxi's hive over first since it's a lot more docile than Maybelle's hive.  Once I get Roxi and her girls settled, I'll deal with Maybelle - ugh - not looking forward to that!

Seed Time - Summer Garden Planting

Got a jump on my summer garden last weekend - planted 288 seeds including a number of varieties of Italian seeds that I've picked up during my last two trips to Europe.  Also a bunch of heirloom seeds that they don't offer locally - special order.

I know, I know - 288 plants are too many for my garden, but I'm not sure what my germination rates will be.  And, if I'm lucky, I'll have many to share with my green-thumbed friends, right?

My justification is that I'm in the process of building a distillation still so I can make my own essential oils - so I need a lot of plant material.

I even invested in a grow light and heated germination mat this year - the guys at Tom's monthly poker game got a laugh out of my setup.  It was interesting to note which friends thought that I was growing something illicit under those bright lights - and who didn't.  Somehow the distribution all made sense.

Check out what I've planted:
     Lavendar
     Lemon Balm
     Hibiscus - Red Thai Early
     Melone Supermarket
     Melone Cantalupo de  Charentais
     Pomodoro Pantano Romanesco
     Pomodoro Successo
     Pomodoro Ciliegio
     Zucchino Diamant
     Tomato Black Krim
     Tomato Tappy's Finest
     Genovesi Basil
     Detroit Dark Red Beet
     Touchstone Gold Beet
     Cal Wonder Red Peppers
     Black Beauty Egg Plant
     Lavender Vera
     Purple Cone Flower

She's Alive!

With fingers crossed, I opened the hive today - 3 hours before I had to leave for the airport.  Roxi's hive was crazy, busy and the bees were very focused.  It's strange that you can tell the temperament of a hive the minute you walk up to it - you don't even need to open it.  Just watching the activity at the door gives you a good indication of how well the hive is working as a whole.  The girls just glide in and out with no wasted motion, crawling over one another but in a very familiar and gentle way.  Better than watching the door traffic is listening to the hive.  You just press your ear against the hive boxes and listen - don't even know how to describe this, but you can tell by the frequency of the buzzing whether they are agitated or happy.

It was a happy contented buzzing today.  Great!  As I opened the hive and inspected each box, the girls were so preoccupied I didn't have to use my smoker.  The top most super (box) was fully drawn out with wax and full of honey.  That was a good sign.  But the litmus test was whether I would see any brood in the lower boxes.  Well GLORY BEE I saw eggs, larvae, and capped brood cells.  The queen, she is alive!

Bottom line, the hive is thriving - and best of all, I was able to put a fourth super on the top.  It's not going to be as bad a honey harvest as I originally thought - because of the drought.  But it is still extremely dry.  So dry that I get nervous lighting my smoker.  I've taken to carrying a large fire extinguisher and 4 or 5 bottles of water with me when I do an inspection.

As I left my hives, I snapped a picture of them.  Here you can see the sign that Barton Creek made in order to keep people away from the girls.  You can see how brown and shriveled the brush and grass is - WHEN, OH WHEN, WILL IT RAIN?

Where is Waldo?

I went out to visit Roxi's old hive yesterday - 6 days after installing the new queen.  I just couldn't wait an entire week to see if she was still there and, most importantly, laying eggs.  When I opened the lower brood box the cage the new queen was shipped in was empty ... that was good news, but I was a bit worried that not only was the hole with the candy fully open, but the cork plug on the opposite side was missing too.  Why would that come out?  What if the cork plug fell out and the queen was released before the hive was used to her pheromones?

The only way to know was to inspect the hive.  I was very careful to check for the queen on every frame I pulled.  I ordered a marked queen in order to make it easier to find her, but I reached the last frame and didn't see her.  Equally distressing was that I couldn't see any brood or larvae developing.  I tried to rationalize that nasty fact by arguing that the bees had probably only eaten through the candy plug a day or two before - hardly enough time for the new queen to start laying eggs.  But, it was equally likely that the new queen was not in residence.

Needless to say, I was devastated as I left the hive.  What was I going to do if the new queen didn't take?  I didn't have time to order a new queen before leaving on vacation, and I didn't want the hive to raise their own queen since I wouldn't have control over the line of progeny.  My only choice was to leave the hive for another 5 days and check it right going on vacation.  If the queen wasn't laying by then, I was just going to have to let Mother Nature take it's course.

The Queen is Dead! Long Live the Queen!

At the end of my last blog, I reported that my queen Roxi was no longer in her hive - a queenless hive - yikes.  So I hurried home to tap into my beek (what beekeepers call themselves) secret weapon - the Austin Urban Beekeeper Group - to find out where I could order a new one.

As expected, I received a very prompt response - no more than 3 minutes after I posted my question.  Jim Hogg - who goes by the moniker "Daddy's Bees" - is the biggest bee evangelist you will ever meet.  He is also the nicest guy you will ever meet.  His calling in life - and he will tell this to you every time you speak with him - is to save the bees - and he's one of Austin's most active bee salvagers.  He must do 3 or 4 "cutouts" a week.  Cutouts are what occur when you discover that a colony of bees has been living and growing in your roof, in your shed, in your composter, ... and you want them removed.  People that do cutouts, not only remove the bees and relocate them to a better spot, they usually cutout a lot of the infrastructure housing the bees - hence the term "cutout".  This has to be done because you have to remove all the comb as well as plug their method of entry in order to keep the bees (or other bees) from returning to the same site.  Jim also collects swarms and finds new homes for them.

Luckily Jim is plugged into just about every bee-related website in the universe, so he was able to tell me exactly who to contact (Koehnen's out of California) and what type of bee to order.

$48 and two days later a new Cordovan Italian queen bee arrived with 7 attendants.  Jim assured me that these Italian queens are the mellowest bees around.  If Jim says it's so, I'm sure it is so.

As luck would have it, when I was doing the queen installation my husband, Tom, and a couple of his friends drove by my hives in their golf cart.  My hives are located between the 15th & 16th holes on the Barton Creek Canyon's golf course over looking a beautiful pond - you can see the two white hives above the far side of the pond that look like two little towers:

Here's a closer look:

Stuart Sargent (one of said golfers) pulled out his iPhone and managed to take a picture of my new queen right before I installed her - what luck - here it is!  It's a bit blurry (wonder why?  he wasn't wearing a bee suit), but you can see the little wooden box that she arrives in with mesh on the side.  It should take 3 or 4 days for the bees to eat away at the candy plug in the end to free her - that should give all the bees enough time to get used to the new queen and accept her.  I'll be doing another inspection in a few days to make sure she's alive and laying.  Hope so!