Brenda - The One that Got Away

The camellias are still blooming, and they are quite gorgeous.  The color looks like something that is fake, but it's real, I promise you.  The honeybees are working the camellias quite hard as there's not much else blooming.  I think they are using them as a pollen source.  Bees gather it to make bee bread.  Bee bread is a mixture of pollen, nectar, honey, and bee saliva.  The workers feed this to the honeybee larva.  I took some photos of the bees collecting pollen from the camellias.  I'll share those photos and also share a funny story from the Bayou Bee Keeper's Meeting tonight.

A worker bee doing her thing...

Our bee club meeting meets the second Thursday night of each month in a small cafe in town.  There are usually about 25 to 30 people in attendance.  We eat from 6 until 7pm while visiting with one another, and then we rise for the Pledge of Allegiance and Prayer and then the meeting is called to order.  The president of the club mentions things we need to be doing in our hives, sometimes there is a special speaker, there is a 'show and tell' time where people bring things they've made or helpful hints for beekeepers.  Sometimes they bring samples of honey, creamed honey, candles made from beeswax, and even mead.  The floor is opened for questions, and this is where it gets interesting because beekeepers are a strange breed, an eclectic bunch of somewhat eccentric people!

She's on the anther (part of the stamen that has the pollen)

Tonight a newcomer to our club raised his hand and had a story to share.  He last told us that he has violent reactions to bee stings and his throat closes up.  He got stung, called 911 and was driving to the hospital and had to pull over for the ambulance to rescue him as he couldn't breathe.  We told him that beekeeping might be a dangerous hobby for him!

Tonight's story was better.  He told us that he was catching a swarm of bees and caught the queen in the air mid-flight with his hands.  She got away and then he caught her again.  He gently placed her in a nuc and about 100 or so of her workers joined her in the nuc.  But it is cold outside, and he didn't want his new queen and her swarm to freeze.

Can you see the pollen she's collecting in her 'pollen basket' on her hind legs?

So he brought the nuc inside his house.  He thought that it was sealed.  Alas, it was not.  He came home and found that the queen and her little colony had escaped.  They were all over his house.  He caught the queen again.  He told us that this queen was so special to him, so he named her.  He used honey on a spatula to catch (again) all of her worker bees and put them back in the nuc and this time, he put them in a trailer out of his house that had a heater in it, but was ventilated.  He did not want his precious queen to die.

I raised my hand and interrupted his story.  I had to know something.  What did he name his queen?  He told us he named her Brenda.  He once knew a girl named Brenda and she had gotten away from him - twice.  The club erupted in laughter!!  So once he got Brenda and her workers in the nuc, they got really cold.  He checked in on them and saw Brenda laying on the bottom of the nuc and thought she had died.

She's using her mandibles and forelegs to place pollen in the pollen basket

He told us that he spent 6 hours constructing an elaborate bee coffin to bury her in.  He passed around photos on his phone.  People's eyes were as big around as silver dollars!  Well, he said he was about to place her in the coffin for interment, when she rose from the dead.  This story had achieved more than we had bargained for.  People were making sure he didn't put them back in his house.  Others were wondering if he sleeps in his bee suit just to be safe.  The president of the club tried to refocus the members on agenda items before adjournment.

Door prizes were announced a distributed.  I won a pretty neat item, but it wasn't nearly as nice as Brenda's hand-crafted queen coffin, that will go unused - at least for the moment.  He vowed not to let Brenda get away again!

A Nice Cold Snap!

For the last three days and continuing into tonight, overnight lows dipped near 30 degrees.  It wasn't nearly a hard freeze.  I didn't worry about winterizing the pipes.  In fact under the trees, I saw no ice in the water troughs.  I knew that the freeze would end the green beans, though.  They had a nice run.  Not only did we get fresh snap beans for Thanksgiving, but we were still picking green beans for New Year's Day.  We've never done that before.  After I picked the last of the beans, I used clippers to clip the plants off at ground level and tossed the foliage over to the cows.

The fall garden always produces some wonderful meals.  I get excited about vegetables.  What kind of a weirdo does that?  I showed you a nice cauliflower we harvested last week:

I neglected to tell you our favorite way to eat cauliflower (or broccoli).  Chop up the cauliflower into florets.  Place on a stoneware baking pan and add kosher salt and a bunch of minced garlic.  Drizzle olive oil and stir it all up.  Place in an oven and roast until they turn golden brown.  I would assume people just call this Roasted cauliflower.  We call it cauliflower candy.  It is so delicious that there are no leftovers.

The freeze wrecked the peppers and eggplant.  We picked all the remaining fruit off of them and cut down the freeze-damaged plants.  Everything is brown now in the garden, except for bright green leafy things like kale, swiss chard, mustard greens, turnips, and things like radishes shown below.  The red radishes contrasted against the radish greens in the morning sun are pretty.  I don't get that fired up about cut up radishes in a salad.  I'll enjoy them like that, but Tricia makes a radish dip that's quite addictive.  She'll take a few nice sized radishes and put them in a food processer and mince.  To that shell mix in a softened block of cream cheese and a little salt, pepper and chili powder.  

The purple kohlrabi is a relatively new addition to our garden repertoire.  Growing up, I don't imagine I ever even heard the word kohlrabi, but I got some as Free Seed from Baker Creek and it looked like a vegetable grown on an alien planet.  We cooked it up and really enjoyed it.  I'll wait until this one's a little bigger and we'll feast on it.

We're also getting ready for planting.  My onion sets came in from Dixondale Farms, so some time this week or next, I'll be planting about 200 onions.  We harvested some Irish potatoes that came up volunteer from some that I guess we didn't find when we harvested back in early summer.  To that bed I'll be adding about four inches of mulch.  We'll be planting Irish Potatoes around Valentine's Day.

It's Never Too Late (Or Early) To Save Seeds

It's in the low 30's now and cool weather always means, "It's Gumbo Season!"  We had a delicious seafood gumbo at Mom & Dad's house the other day that was loaded with shrimp and crab meat.  Tricia made a shrimp and okra gumbo just a few days later.  You can't get tired of gumbo.  While I was eating it, I remembered!  I hadn't saved any okra seed yet!

Well, it's not too late.  The okra in the garden generally lasts up until the first frost.  We usually plant Clemson Spineless as those are the perfect size for pickled okra.  I can finish off a whole jar in one sitting.  We also plant Beck's Big Okra and Burgundy Okra.  However, you get the biggest bang for your buck planting Louisiana Long Pod Okra.  The okra stays edible up until it reaches about 10 inches long.  Clemson spineless would be "woody" and inedible long before that.  I had a long pod of okra that was drying on the plant so that I could save the seeds.  Before it shattered and I lost the seed, I went out and got it.

This is a non-hybrid old heirloom variety that has been passed down for a long, long time.   You can save the seeds and store them and keep passing them down.

From just one pod, would you look at all the seeds I was able to save.  They are plump and dry and in good condition.  I'm sure this spring, I'll soak these, plant them and get good germination.

Just for grins I decided I would count the seeds as I put them in the supplement container that I store seeds in.  I re-labeled the container and put the number of seeds.  119 seeds from that one pod!  That's a lot of okra plants.  I think I'll only plant 25 or so this spring.  The rest I'll save for future planting.

We generally freeze quart bags of cut up, cooked okra for making gumbos in the winter, AKA "Gumbo Season."  I hope we have enough to get us through...

Planting In January

"To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow."  - Audrey Hepburn

I agree with Audrey.  January is usually pretty cold.  I'm writing this as I hear winds roaring outside and temperatures are set to drop to 30 degrees Fahrenheit by 6 am tomorrow morning.  This is NOT the time to be planting seeds outside.  But it is the perfect time to be planting tomatoes, peppers and eggplant for your spring garden.

That's exactly what I did Friday afternoon.  I readied two trays chock full of seed pots and pulled all of my seeds out of cold storage (freezer).  I got a five gallon bucket of fully composted wood chips that were approximately 4 years old.  The mulch had composted into a moist decomposed planting medium that I mixed (cautiously) with composted chicken litter.

I filled each seed pot with the planting soil I made and carefully labeled each seed pot.  Here you can see that laid the seed packets of peppers I planted over the seed pots.  (Datil, Shishito, Craig's Grande Jalapeno, Anaheim, Banana, Lilac Bell, Emerald Giant, and Black Egg Eggplant.)

 I did the same with tomatoes: (Tomatillos, Spoon, Big Rainbow, Creole, Cherokee Purple, Pink Brandywine, Chadwick Cherry, Black Krim)  This is when tomatoes look their prettiest.  When you are looking at the photos on the seed packets of perfect tomatoes, you kind of forget the heat in which you pick them and the stink bugs that attack them.  But right now, your tomato garden is perfect in your imagination.

I plant two seeds to a seed pot and cover with about 1/8 inch of topsoil.  Then I use a water sprayer to liberally mist the soil with water so that the water soaks in and down to the seed.  Finally, I cover the soil with a cut plastic bag.  This ensures that the soil stays moistened so that germination is encouraged.

I brought both inside to ensure the soil stays warm and moist to encourage great germination.  We'll give progress reports several times a month until its time to transplant directly in the garden.

Getting Ready to Make Splits

In a month or two it will be time to make splits.  I'm talking beekeeping now.  Making splits involves taking one box of bees and making two.  It sounds like voodoo, but it's not.  I'm just a novice beekeeper, but I'll try to explain.  We're going to make what's called "walkaway splits."  You can do this if you have two deep boxes.  If you do, you simply take one of your deeps and put it on top of a bottom board.  

You don't even have to find the queen.  You just may want to check and make sure you have eggs, brood, and nectar/honey/pollen in each deep.  In whatever deep box that does NOT have the queen, the worker bees become aware that there is not a queen in only 5 hours.  The workers will begin feeding royal jelly to a couple of the larvae and they will become the new queen.  The walkaway split that has the queen will go on as normal.

This 'bee math' allows you to turn 1 hive of bees into 2.  If you are successful, you will realize a number of benefits.  Ideally you'll make more honey.  You'll also have more boxes of bees that you can sell, if you wish.  You'll realize increased pollination and thus, increased yields in your garden and crops.

I have enough boxes to make splits, I think, but I need more bottom boards.  You Tube is great for learning to do new things, even for an unskilled carpenter like myself.  It didn't even cost a penny.  I had some 1 x 12 lumber up in the hay loft that was leftover from another project, and I cut it up and was able to make 2 bottom boards.  The bee boxes fit right on top, hence the name bottom board.

From this angle you can see the little landing strip on the left hand side that they will fly into.

I found an old rusty can of primer that I primed the project with.  I want to do this right so that the bottom boards last as they'll be out in the weather and closest to the ground.  I put two coats of primer, just to be safe.

Finally, I put two coats of exterior paint on the bottom boards.  I'll let it dry for a couple of days and then I'll store them out of the weather for the day this spring where we'll make splits.

Now, I think I'll search for some plans to make telescoping bee hive cover.  They are $30 a piece if you purchase them, but I think I can make them for nothing other than my time.  Then we'll be ready for making splits.

First Round Bale of the Year

Normally, we start feeding hay around Thanksgiving, but not this year.  Somehow, the pasture has held up and allowed the cows and goats to continue feeding on the grass.  I think the rains coupled with moderate temperatures (no freezes as of yet) helped the pasture grass provide some forage for the livestock.  Perhaps the hay lasting longer was The Good Lord allowing things to last longer than it ordinarily does.  It wouldn't be the first time:

Your clothing did not wear out on you, nor did your foot swell these forty years. So you are to know in your heart that the Lord your God was disciplining you just as a man disciplines his son. Therefore, you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God, to walk in His ways and to fear Him. For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of streams of water, of fountains and springs, flowing out in valleys and hills; a land of wheat and barley, of vines, fig trees, and pomegranates, a land of olive oil and honey; a land where you will eat food without shortage, in which you will not lack anything; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you can dig copper. When you have eaten and are satisfied, you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land which He has given you. Be careful that you do not forget the Lord your God by failing to keep His commandments, His ordinances, and His statutes which I am commanding you today; Deuteronomy 8:4-11

The Providential grass ended toward the latter part of last week.  All the animals' heads were down, and they were finding things to eat, but they were looking for more.  Sort of like I do when I eat a meal, but am looking around for a little something sweet like pie or ice cream once the main course is gone.

January 1st seemed as good a day as any to roll out the first round bale for them to eat.  These are bales that I purchased back on March 29, 2024.  It is good quality hay, but cost me $40 per bale delivered.  I think that is a very fair price.  We kept it covered by tarpaulins, so it is still in very good shape.

A couple of things to notice in the photo above.  LuLu is in the barn being milked so she hasn't seen the bale yet.  Rosie and Elsie are eating a little sweet feed.  You can see their rear ends at the barn.  They didn't hear me as I stealthily pushed the bale out.  The goats are in the corral and the bull is in a separate pasture.  It would be only a few short minutes after this photo was taken that all the livestock discovered their New Year's bounty.  

Cows and especially goats waste a lot of hay.  I'm going to experiment with something this year to mitigate that.  If you look to the right of the barn in the background, you'll see a cattle panel.  I'm going to allow the animals to eat the hay in the morning, but in the evenings, I'll run the animals out of the hay area and close the cattle panel behind them.  If you leave them all day, they begin "playing with their food," stepping on, and pooping on the good hay.  We'll see if that works.

Last year it took the animals 6 days to eat one round bale.  I have 9 round bales in inventory.  Those 9 should get me through the coldest of the weather.  I still have about 70 square bales of hay up in the hay loft to feed them and I have lots of turnips planted.  I feed them the roots as I'm not a big fan of turnip roots.  I do like turnip greens, however.  The cows will have to fight me for those!