A New Life

One thing I forgot to post about yesterday was our trip to the bees yesterday afternoon.

This year we've been converting to OSB hives and yesterday we finally made a huge leap forward. We had 2 colonies still in 14x12" nucs and at last they have made the move into OSBs. As they were both big, busy colonies it was about time that we pulled our finger out and moved them!

Becuase the frames the bees were on in the nucs were much bigger than OSB size we cut them down - that way they'd still have some existing brood in their new home (the rest of the frames used to fill up the hive were a mixture of drawn, partially drawn, feed and foundation combs). Cutting them down involves sawing through the wooden side bars and cutting through the comb with a breadknife. Of course this means that you get covered in honey and "larvae juice".

^ The bees clean up some of their comb for us.

The best thing was however, on one of the off-cut pieces of comb there was a worker bee trying to emerge from her cell. I needed to get the comb into the bin bucket but I hated to see her die just when she was about to start life as a full-grown bee! So I very gently pulled back the capping and one of the sides of her cell. She was still caught up in her chrysalis so I had to VERY carefully wiggle that off her too...however eventually she was out and it was amazing! I can't describe what a cool feeling it was! (Perhaps a bit like giving birth, I suppose). Anyway, I put her down on the roof of the hive and she was wonderful. She started walking around immediately but was unsteady on her feet, her legs kept slipping out too wide under her. And she was covered in soft grey velvet...amazing!

Because we have to keep our bees in out-apiaries (away from home) we never really sit and just watch what's going on with the hives - we're always lugging equipment to and from the car and by the time we've finished inspecting I'm hungry, Dad's tired and we want to go home. We never just sit down and watch how the bees behave and how their society works...and as I learn more about Permaculture the more I realise that observing nature at work is the best way to learn about it and how to help it (I've also noticed that forcing myself to really look at things has so helped my creativity - my art and writing are improving so much just because I look at things more. So I have been well and truly won over by this Permaculture principle...as well as the rest of them, but this one in particular). Seeing that baby bee take her first few steps was absolutely lovely...so perhaps I will start taking a folding chair with me so I can just sit and watch!


Amd finally, I have another couple of recipes for you (again, I'm afraid, without a single picture). We seem to have been doing a lot of cooking recently but Dad's Sweet Potato Bread is definitely one of our best inventions to date, and my Moroccan soup never seems to last long.


Dad's Sweet Potato Bread


Ingredients:
1 batch of basic bread dough - enough for a nice big loaf (Dad used Jamie Oliver's recipe from "The Naked Chef")
12 oz left over roasted sweet potato chunks (we used mixed sweet potato and squash, cut into chunks and roasted with cumin and black mustard seeds).


It's easy - mix the sweet potato into the basic bread dough. Put into the oven for 20 mins at 225 degrees C. This made a medium-sized loaf and a few rolls for us. The bread browns wonderfully on top and the crumb is the most beautiful sunny orange, with a lovely moist texture. We served it with my Moroccan Soup (see below) and is lovely to mop up the juices of the vegetarian Moroccan tagine with apricots Mum made last night.


My Moroccan Soup
This one started out as a recipe in Good Food magazine but I've adapted it to suit our taste. I usually make double. The lemon juice makes this soup really zingy and special.


Ingredients
1 onion, roughly chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
600ml hot vegetable stock
red pepper - perhaps 2 big shopbought ones, or lots of little ones from the garden ^^
1 tin tomatoes
1 tin chickpeas, drained and rinsed
2 sticks celery (with leaves if home grown!)
1 carrot (optional)
1 - 2 tsps chilli powder
1 - 2 tsps cumin seeds
1 - 2 tsps cayenne pepper / Ras-el-Hanout spice blend / cinnamon
olive oil
juice of 1 lemon


Heat the oil in a heavy casserole dish. Fry off the onion, garlic, celery and carrot if using until starting to soften. Throw in the cumin seeds and fry for another minute or two to toast. Add the peppers and cook for another couple of minutes. Fling in the stock and the tomatoes and cover, leaving to simmer for 20 minutes. Add the chickpeas and stir. Simmer for another 10 to 15 minutes. Break up the tomatoes a bit, and add the spices and a good grind of black pepper too. Taste and season with salt if you think it needs it - I never do. You can serve it up immediately or save for later - 5 minutes before serving, squeeze in the lemon juice and stir, and allow to simmer for a couple more minutes. Serve beautifully hot with a Sweet Potato Bread roll. You can also add the zest of the lemon with the cumin for extra zing.