Beekeeping Talk

I've just got back from a talk by a bee farmer, our association's first event of the year. It was fantastic to see everyone again after such a long, hard winter, and the talk raised a few really interesting points. The bee farmer who spoke to us runs about 300 hives and this year has had less than 10% losses, with just over 10% losses last year. He revealed some hints and tips and snippets of interesting information to us.

• Main identified reasons behind colony losses - starvation was top, with poor management, weather, failed queens, mites etc. behind. CCD and pesticides were last.
• The temperature of feed and its placement in relationship to the cluster is very important, which may explain why some of our hives starved to death even with a hive heavy with sugar and honey.
• Treat for varroa early in the autumn, even as early as August. If you treat later, you may reduce the numbers of mites but any viruses will have had time to build up, and won't be affected by any chemicals you stick in.
• Thymol is a naturally occurring chemical (i.e. in thyme) that is used in treatments such as Apiguard. Ian recommended treating with it, saying that he knew one successful farmer who uses it as his only treatment against varroa and nosema. Ian suggested putting it in the feed, and I wonder weather treating hives with it, e.g. sealing them with linseed oil with thymol mixed in, would help also? And would lots of thyme forage be beneficial too?
• Mesh floors should ideally be able to close (something I had no idea about), to prevent treatments and feed etc. just leaking away. Ian also mentioned how bees survive in old oil drums at 100 degree temperatures in Africa and are able to ventilate for themselves. I was interested to note that the hives he brought along had solid floors with small cirlces of mesh put in, much like a crown board - perhaps to get the best of both worlds.
• I was glad to know that it's not just me that finds Eglu's Beehaus laughable! The Beehaus is based on the Dartington long hive, and interestingly these are said to swarm more often. It's interesting to note that in the wild bees tend to prefer to go vertically, so perhaps horizontal hives aren't necessarily the answer. However this could also explain why they are perfect for beekeeping in Africa, where the bees are migratory anyway.
• The bee farmer requeens around every 2 years. Apparently a New Zealand lecturer says that he finds one of the effects of varroa is that it shortens a queen's lifespan, in the sense that when she's a year old she behaves/is in the condition more like a 2 year old queen, when she's 2 years old she seems more like a 3 year old queen, etc.
• The importance of changing brood combs was stressed. I am determined to finally build a solar wax extractor now! I didn't know that apparently in some EU countries it is now a legal requirement to change brood combs every year. This sounds like a lot of cuffuffle but a simple rotation of frames (made even more straightforward by adding new boxes to the bottom of the hive - as in Warre beekeeping - rather than the top) makes this easier than it sounds.
• The amunt of interesting research to be found on the internet was also stressed. I'll be investigating this from now and will let you know about any interesting finds!
• Bees should be fed little and often. Keep checking your hives, even in winter - around Christmas maybe and as the spring starts to arrive. You can always check my hefting, without opening the hives up. Runny syrup can be fed even in early spring.
• Poly hives - I assume he meant the double-skinned plastic hives - seem to be growing in popularity. Apparently Denmark has the lowest incidence of brood diseases in Europe and they keep bees almost exclusively in poly hives. Ian recommended household bleach, caustic soda or even the stuff they used to disinfect wellies etc. during the foot and mouth outbreaks for cleaning the hives, as unfortunately they can't be scorched. They build up quicker in the spring, but Ian finds that the queen start laying a little later for some reason.
• Records can be kept by screwing a jam jar to each hive and keeping records in there. The hive can become a wooden record by colour-coding frames, being meticulous in marking queens, etc. Mark the queens when you first see them, don't (as we usually do) forget your pen and have to come back and do it later!
• The convenience of using a nail gun for constructing hives and frames!

All in all a really interesting lecture with plenty of food for thought...I'm planning to try out lots of new ideas this year and certainly I'll be looking into some of the suggestions here. We're planning our spring inspection for March 20th or the first weekend of April, weather permitting. Until then I think we'll go and heft the hives and see if we need to boil up any syrup already!

Spring Has Sprung!

The first snowdrops appeared about a month ago. In the last week or so the primroses have come up, and just this week the crocuses, which have been pushing up little buds for a while now, came into full bloom. Recently the weather has been almost summery. In the evenings when I walk back from college now the wildlife is still out and about, people are walking their dogs, there are bulbs everywhere in the parks, with great swathes of yellow and purple everywhere you look, and the kids are even playing outside well into the evenings now. Apart from the wind, which is still a little nippy, it feels like August. Everything is coming alive! Here's a look at what we've been up to recently.



^ I don't know what this evergreeen shrub is called, but the bees love it and when it's in flower it smells wonderful.



^ Hellebores



^ The garden today.

^ First Celandines

^ Cardoons sprouting up from the ground.

^ A forgotten Brussels sprout plant left over from 2 years ago!

^ Snowdrops

^ Some plants are already in full flower

^ Snowdrops again!

^ Crocuses emerging through a jungle of strawberry plants

^ First primroses!

^ Yellow crocuses amongst the wall flowers

^ Purple crocus buds

Below: Birds' nests from last year: in the climbing hydrangea (blackbird); behind the satelite dish (collared dove); an a nest from an unknown bird that fell out of the hazel tree, beautifully constructed.

Dad's Velvety Aubergines

Not exactly seasonal or eco-friendly but a great vegetarian option and perfect for evenings that are still a little chilly.

1 aubergine, cut into medium sized chunks

3 fresh tomatoes

fenugreek and coriander seeds

1 clove garlic

a little vegetable oil

salt and pepper

Fry all the ingredients together until the tomatoes have cooked down to a delicious pulp. The aubergines will still be raw and spongey, but turn of the heat and place a lid over the pan. Allow to sit for as long as possible, allowing the aubergines to steam. Reheat when you're ready to eat. The aubergines will be really velvety and melt-in-the-mouth, absolutely delicious!

NB: You can make the recipe spicier by adding chilli or cayenne. Allspice is also a nice addition.

I have been continuing with my ever-growing reading list. I recently finished Regeneration by Pat Barker, a really good read. I loved the style of the writing - simple and subtle but absolutely sublime - and the depiction of the suffering endured by both officers, infantry troops and the people who had to care for them during WW1 was incredibly moving, especially as I recently went on a college trip to the Battlefields and saw the enormous cemeteries left over from the war for myself. I'm not enjoying First Casualty by Ben Elton as much however. Although still an interesting storyline, the writing style feels clunky and crude when I compare it to Pat Barker's work. I also have a new, eco-related addition to my reading list: Whole Earth Discipline by eco-pioneer Stewart Brand. I haven't started it yet but I'm excited about reading this book as it looks like it's going to make me rethink some of my ideas about green-ness. I like the fact that it is centred on treating the Earth as a whole though, rather than just sorting out a few problems here or there. Should be interesting...I'll let you know how I get on!

Dad has visited the bees to see how they have been getting on. We are now down to 3 hives, which is fairly disappointing. Some of the hives seem to have emptied before the weather got too cold, others have clearly diwed out over the winter, and oddly didn't eat any of the vast quantities of honey and sugar we fed back to them. This is interesting though as it presents us with a number of opportunities. The first one is to learn more - I want to become a better beekeeper so that I know how to take better care of these fascinating animals who so kindly allow me to try and nurture them. The second is that we're planning to try out a number of different methods this year. We'll be giving some hives the Warre treatment - i.e. letting them make the choices for themselves - and treating others as we would normally. And thirdly, it's interesting to note that all the hives that survived are our grumpiest bees which we have captured from the wild...I wonder if this says anything about the genetically-engineered artificially produced blood lines that one buys from queen breeders or has imported from Hawaii? Dad has ordered a few more queens to arrive this year, and we're already on the swarm list. But I wonder whether angry, swarming, wild bees are better able to survive than cushy calm bees that are made by humans for humans...

And finally, I have been planning a project for when I leave college (and that will probably end up taking over my whole life for the next 50 years...hope so!). My plan is to research and experience permaculture and sustainable practice from across the world - the Americas, Africa, Europe, Asia, Australasia... in order for me to learn more about the ecosystems of the Earth and how to work with them. The idea is to make my way around the world (or as much of it as I can afford) using the most efficient transport possible, working on aid projects and learning from people who really care about working with the planet rather than against it. I intend to record my travels on the blog and maybe when I've learned from the world's best I'll be able to pass my knowledge on in other ways too. I'm beginning to look up possible places to visit but if anyone has any suggestions of places I can go or people I could contact, please leave a comment! I'll be writing more about this as the year goes on, and I hope you''ll find it as exciting as I am finding it already!

Thanks for all your comments and support through the blog - now that things are happening out there in the garden hopefully i'll have more to blog about! ^^

Morning Sunshine Throught Ceonothus and Rose Leaves, 30.01.10

Looks like spring could be on its way ^^

Long Time No See!

Well, this weekend I have finally found some time to catch up on the blog! I've missed it a lot but things have been extremely busy, and now that I'm at college I'm afraid homework and coursework have to come first! I haven't had much time to do much gardening etc. and the bees are all in bed for the winter...just as well, as we have had a really cold snap and almost a month of snow! Our village was on the news with some of the heaviest snowfall in the south, and oddly enough my Mum visited Toronto recently and for once we had more snow than they did! It has been absolute chaos, roads blocked, lorries jack-knifing...we've had nearly a foot of snow and everything has come to a standstill. Schools have been closed, and even when they're open some entrances have to be blocked off because of huge, dangerous icicles...it does have some benefits though: everywhere looks so beautiful in the snow, and when you can't get your car out of the drive it means you have to walk everywhere...good for our health (provided you don't slip and break something, of course) and the environment. Although I have to say I'm slightly relieved now it's thawed! We spent 8 1/2 hours in a traffic jam when we went to get our Christmas tree, and although there was a great spirit of comradeship among all the stranded travelers, I'd rather not repeat the experience. And there's even a luscious hint of spring in the air today.

^ The village early one morning, in the snow

^ Our Christmas this year. Peeling sprouts, our tree, and chocolate pudding and syllabub with Christmas dinner!

^ Up until last February when we had snow, I had never seen icicles. The past few weeks they've been everywhere!

Anyway, as I have mentioned, things are rather quiet here in terms of gardening at the moment, although recently Dad and I did harvest and blanche our celery crop, by washing it, plunging into boiling water, cooling in ice cold water, and then freezing. I grew enough celery to last us 6 months this year (21 plants) so I'm looking forawrd to using it all in soups, chilli, stews...all the warming food you need when it's cold outside.

The animals are all doing really well. The ducks and chickens had been moulting in the autumn, which made them look rather scrawny, but they're now resplendant in their plumage. None of them have really enjoyed the wather recently, although the ducks are enjoying the mud now that it's thawing. Willow however loved the snow and took a lot of persuading to get back in the hutch every evening. And we now have a cat called Lucas, a stray that sheltered in the greenhouse at work after the storm and who has become part of the family. He'll probably go back and live in the greenhouse but we have been taking care of him at home recently. I'm not really a cat person at all - there are way too many of them in the UK, they kill the wildlife and think of all the energy that goes into producing cat food, not to mention the fact that what goes in and out of them absolutely honks - but I have to admit that it's great fun having a cuddly, fluffy animal running around the house. We keep him well away from the other animals however.... Alfie the tortoise is still hibernating in the fridge but we will wake him up sometime in the coming fortnight.

Anyway, something that I have been doing lots of at the moment is reading. It's one of the most enjoyable things you can do on a cold winter night, I find, and it's definitely useful for my Literature AS level too. A new string to the blog that I am adding for winter is a reading list - books I have read, am reading or want to read. Sorry to keep adding more and more things! But I need something to do apart from building new frames when the bees are in bed (and my English teachers are shouting at me).

Anyway, the subject of my course is First World War literature, and I am getting more and more interested in history, so this year so far I have read:

• The Accrington Pals - a play by Peter Whelan.
• Birdsong - a novel by Sebastian Faulks.
• Up The Line To Death - selected war poetry
• The Runes - non-fiction by Horil Svensson. I got a set of runestones for Christmas. I'm not sure if I believe in all the "mumbo jumbo" around things like this but the history of it all is so interesting and the runes provide a different viewpoint on life, so I am finding out more.
• All Quiet On The Western Front - a novel by Erich Maria Remarque.

My favourite of these have to be All Quiet On The Western Front and Up The Line To Death. Up The Line was written during WW1, by people who could actually hear shell fire etc. while they were scribbling down the poems. The anthology features work by the greats such as Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, and my personal favourite Isaac Rosenberg. It's so interesting because it takes you from the beginning of the war, when the poets all believed the jingoistic propaganda going around and that they'd all be home by Christmas, through to the work that describes horrific individual episodes in unflinching detail. I love Sassoon's work becuase it just drips sarcasm, but Isaac Rosenberg is my favourite. I love his poetry but even more I just can't believe how unfair it was that a talented, pacifist but poor, wheezy and short lad from the East End had his life cut short on April Fool's Day 1918. And he wasn't tall enough to be a medic, only for cannon fodder. Poor bloke.

All Quiet is fantastic because it was written in the 20's by someone on the other side - a German veteran. It's an amazing book about the power of the human spirit, and reminds me that there was suffering on both sides - when you study the English literature, that is always going on about the Hun and the Bosch, it's easy to forget that the opposing troops didn't have it any better. I also love it because it was banned and burned by the Nazi's in the 30's - a sure sign of a good philosophy. It's written from the first person too so you really feel like you're there, and the detail...the reported stories of men continuing to attack when both their feet had been blown off, or crawling back to safety holding their intestines in with one hand, and the inimitable Katchinsky...it's a really short book, it only took me a day to read, but it's one of the best books I've ever read.

Birdsong is one of my set texts, and I didn't enjoy it quite as much for several reasons, but it's still an amazing book that I would really recommend.

At the moment I'm reading:

• A Small Sound of the Trumpet - non-fiction by Margaret Wade Labarge - all about women's roles in the middle ages. Really interesting and shows that there were powerful and influential women even in a society dominated by men and religion. And my village's castle is mentioned twice - I had never realised that the old pile of flint down the road was so important!
• The Rune Primer - non-fiction by Sweyn Plowright
• Mslexia issue 44 - women's writing magazine, absolutely inspirational. I have already had work rejected by them, which made me feel like a proper writer, haha! Poetry, short stories, flash fiction, articles...if you love literature, you'll love this, no matter what your gender or background.

And I'm planning to read (for the time being. The list gets longer every day):

• Goodbye to All That - memoir by Robert Graves
• Regeneration - novel by Pat Barker
• Life Class - novel by Pat Barker
• The Middle Parts of Fortune - novel by Frederic Manning
• Memoirs of a Fox Hunting Man - memoir by Siegfried Sassoon

Nice to be back blogging and hopefully the next post will be along much quicker!

Putting the Bees to Bed

Today Dad and I went and visited all 11 of our hives. At the height of the summer we had 15. A couple were very weak splits and didn't make it or were united back. But luckily our current 11 all seem to be doing really well! I was so surprised by how big the populations still are and how much stores they have. Luckily October has been very mild so far. But today we went and put the girls to bed - I will miss them so much this winter! We fed them some sugar syrup and have just about closed them up. I'm sure we'll go and visit again soon but our summer jobs are over now and soon it will be too cold for them to even venture out. So onto the winter and building endless frames etc!

Last weekend we spent forever making up our own sugar syrup. It was meant to come out as fondant, and this required a very long and tiring process. When I went into the kitchen it smelled like Dad was making chutney, but it turns out he had added vinegar to the sugar mixture to "invert" the sugars. I haven't researched this yet but it's something to do with unlocking fructose from the sucrose or something. After that came a lot of heating it to an exact temperature, cooling it down to an exact temperature, and then whisking it until the electric mixer died! After that we put it in bottles ready to feed the bees. It isn't quite thick enough to be called fondant but it's so much thicker than simply boiling up sugar and some water!

After tasting my Grandpa's delicious tomatoes I harvested all ours, even the green ones. I put them in the airing cupboard to ripen - this must have been ages ago now - and forgot about them. Then when we were doing more de-cluttering yesterday we found all these ripe tomatoes in the cupboard! Unfortunately the Brandywines were a bit mushy but the Roma were divine...but even the mushy ones wills be great in my Mum's tomato sauce!

Mum's tomato sauce

Mum used to live in Italy. She's always telling us stories about her old landlady who hid Italian Jews in her attic during the war, strange past Italian boyfriends who had nose jobs, ridiculous superstitions about odd numbers of nuns...English people just don't seem to know how to cook Italian food, putting cream in their carbonara and god knows what in their tomato sauce. Don't do it! This sauce is only 5 ingredients and it really doesn't need anything else! Use it on pizza, with meatballs, on pasta, with chickpea croquettes...anything. Makes 1 quantity.

Ingredients:

1 x tin plum tomatoes (whole, not chopped)

glug of olive oil

pinch of salt

good grind of pepper

a clove of garlic, crushed

and you can add a couple of basil leaves or a pinch of dried oregano or marjoram if you like ^^

Heat the oil in a pan. Fry the garlic for a minute or two. Add the tomatoes. Break them up a bit with a spatula. Cook until it starts to thicken slightly, perhaps for about 20 minutes. It will smell wonderful. Add the seasonings if you want them. Savour.

Thanks everyone for all your comments recently! I'm really interested to hear what you all think about the plastics - maybe one of us will come up with a cunning plan and save the world! See you soon ^^

Clear-Out

Recently we've started having a huge clear-out. We've been living knee-deep in pointless clutter for ages and it was starting to get us all down, so we are taking steps!

We've tidied up and rearranged the garden a bit, and have got rid of lots of the pots we don't use. Inside the house I'm in the process of going through all my textiles and crafts items and chucking out the stuff that I don't use any more. We're getting rid of a few books here and there and I'm slowly redoing my bedroom too (hopefully going to be using reclaimed timber furniture!). But until now I have never really realised just how dependent we are on plastics.

Everything we use is plastic. I always thought I was quite careful about avoiding over-packaged goods but everything we eat and buy comes in plastic, from crisps and oven chips to health foods and fruit and veg. Even the stuff packaged in metal, glass or plastic is still printed in a plastic-dependent process or stuck together with plastic tape. I've been rifling through plastic beads, acrylic yarns, nylon pipecleaners and even the bags I use to store them or throw them away in are plastic.

We have always reused our plastic shopping bags and use "bags for life" but even then there is always the odd occasion when you've forgotten a bag and so have to use a new one from the shop. We buy a lot of stuff from the co-op in the High Street, and they use only potato-starch biodegradable bags, but is it really better to use food crops for plastics? I worked at the nursery on Thursday when I had a day off from college and Jim showed me some new very expensive pots he was trialing. He says he wants to give up plastic pots, and these ones were made from rice. He insisted they were made from by-products such as husks etc. but I'm still sceptical: one of these days, we will have a food crisis, and if there's no rice, he won't be able to buy any rice by-product pots either.

The fact is that we are utterly dependent on plastics. The things we use that are not made of plastic are more than likely produced in industrial conditions, and guess what - those industrial conditions rely on plastics. Everything from our cosy jumpers to kagouls and wellies, windows, furniture, and our food packaging is made from plastic. It's pretty scary to wonder what if we woke up tomorrow and all the plastics had gone or had never been invented. We wouldn't have anything.

But I'm also sceptical about the alternatives. If we justs topped using plastics, what would happen to all those plastic goods that are already in existence? They'd either be incinerated (can we really capture all those harmful gases?) or put to landfill. I like using natural fibres in my textiles work, but would it really be better to rely on wool for our clothing, house insultaion, etc? And could we really put precious land down to fibre plants without struggling to produce enough food, and would many of them grow without petrochemical fertilisers? Would, for example, rice by-products really be a realistic option in a world without plastic parts for aeroplanes, ships, and machines?

I'm still not sure what I think about all this but I think the best thing we can do is continue to use plastics, just not make so much of them. I think we're in too deep to stop using plastics, and look at all the good things they do for us - medical supplies, for example. I think we just have to reuse and recycle all the plastic we can. So I'll be trying to throw away as little as possible during this big clear out. Someone out there on ebay or Freecycle will have a use for all my junk, and hopefully that will keep it out of landfill.

Catch-up

Hello everyone! Sorry I haven't blogged for a long time yet again, and I can't believe how much I've missed on my favourite blogs!!! Things seem so buys round here that I haven't had much time for gardening, and we haven't seen our bees for a month! But this week is our catch-up week and thankfully the October weather has been kind to us so far...long may it continue!

Today we went up to see my Grandpa and Grandma and Grandpa gave me a tremendous gift - the first ripe Brandywine tomato from the plant I gave him earlier in the year! It was a whopper and I've cut it up for our supper's first course, along with a couple of Grandpa's other tomatoes (I expect Ailsa Crag - he's always recommending them to me, and Alicante too) and some of ours too: our Alicante, Gardener's Delight and Sungolds. I've had a little nibble and wow...so many big flavours on one plate! I love tomatoes! I literally just cut them up and put them on a plate - no salt, no oil or vinegar or herbs - they really don't need it.

^ My Brandywine tomatoes still ripening up

Yesterday we went to the Farnham Food Festival. We didn't stay long because Pabi Bach didn't feel well but I managed to buy some proper baklawa! Baklawa is a Middle Eastern sweet full of delicious things such as pastry, nuts, sugar/honey, spices...it's absolutely delicious and one of my favourite indulgences. I have two other treats that I look forward to and those are greengages (a cousin of the plum) and chestnuts. I literally get a tingly feeling when it's the season for these! I didn't get any greengages to eat this year but I still remember the ones we ate on a beach in Brittany on the only sunny day of summer 2008...and the chestnuts are just beginning to fall now! I went for a weaving lesson with Carol on Wednesday and she has a chestnut tree opposite her drive and they all looked very small and weedy...but hopefully when we go to France around Halloween the French trees will be faring better.

My Style Challenge didn't fare so well in September so to make up for it I'll be making TWO style-related projects this month. I think I'll try making a cosmetic of some description and maybe get going on the cheong-sam dress I've been meaning to make myself for a while...first of all I've just got to persuade my sewing machine to relearn the art of winding bobbins correctly!

We have something like 15 gallons of booze fermenting away now and soon I'll be collecting rosehips to make soothing rosehip syrup with! I've also found that our homemade green tomato chutney has quite a good effect on a sore throat.

Anyway. Supper tonight is our lovely tomatoes followed by my Moroccan chickpea soup with rosemary focaccia and some crispy sauteed potatoes. I leave you with some pictures of how the garden's looking and hope to talk to you all again shortly!