We're falling apart!

We've lost our first tooth at Honeybee Hollow! Luckily, the tooth fairy was able to find us. She brought $2, some toothpaste and bubble bath. Congratulations to our big girl!!!

Bee Update

The bees prove to be a continuous learning experience so far. In the first couple of weeks, they went nuts! They quickly built out their comb and were feverishly raising brood. Over Memorial Day weekend we checked the second super that we'd added a few weeks before. There are a different ways to add a super. You can add it to the top, add it to the bottom, mix the filled frames and new frames, etc. We just stuck the frames on top and decided to see what happened. Well, because of the rain, not much was happening so we mixed the frames, alternating a filled frame with an empty frame in each super.

As a side note, it seems that the MN Hygienic variety are a more active hive than the Carneolans.

We were back up to check on the hives over June 13-14. It seems that with all of the rain and cool weather, the bees were slowed. There were definitely some new filled frames, but not what we had expected. We decided not to add a third super yet.

A few days later, we had read that some new hives were needing additional syrup due to the weather. Paul follows Nature's Nectar, a beekeeper in Stillwater: http://naturesnectar.blogspot.com/
Thanks to my dad for adding the feeder pails for us!














We're headed up again over 4th of July weekend and will update you on their progress!

Rhubarb

I love rhubarb. Everything about it is so lovely. The plants have big, huge leaves that look awesome in your garden. The stalks are a beautiful mulberry hue. You can cook it slowly, softening it with some sugar into a tasty, sweet treat. You can chop it up and saute it in with your stir fry. Then it retains a bit of that celery-like crunch. Rhubarb is spring's perfect treat.

Rhubarb also has the magic of bringing me back to my grandmother's kitchen when I was about 8 years old. My grandmother made everything from rhubarb in the springtime. My sister and I were sent out to her small city lot patch to carefully pull up the delightful stalks. I watched her wash and chop them, getting ready for rhubarb pie, rhubarb crisp, strawberry rhubarb jam and tomato rhubarb jelly. I'm so thankful for rhubarb every spring. It's a chance for me to spend some time reminiscing about my beloved grandmother. It's also my turn to fill my kitchen with those wonderful smells so that my girls can share in a little bit of Grandma Grace love.

If you have a favorite rhubarb recipe, please send it to me!

The Bees' New Home

So, the bees have relocated. I'm sad, sad to say. We got our bees a bit early and were in the middle of permit negotiations with our neighbors when we realized that having them in the city was just not going to happen. There is a lot of fear around bees, mainly, I believe, because we just don't have naturally occurring honeybees around any more. We're surrounded by hornets, wasps, bumblebees ~ all of which are more aggressive than the honeybee. The other fact is that simply, a lot more people are allergic to stings than ever before. One of our neighbors, we found out, carries an epi-pen with her because she is literally deathly allergic to stings. I wondering if humans' growing allergy is at all related to the fact that honeybee populations are on the decline, both naturally and commercially. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/02/food-fear-mystery-beehives-collapse

Since last Friday night, the bees have been exploring their new digs at my parents' cabin in Amery, WI. There are plusses and minuses to this new location. Believe it or not, the city is the best place for bees as far as pollen goes. If you live in Minneapolis, look around. The number of flowering trees and plants in our city is immense. The farm fields surrounding the cabin don't have nearly the diversity of nectar that the city offers. On the plus side, there really are no regulations for beekeeping in their area, so we can expand our hives as much as we'd like in the future.

Following their move, we inspected the hives for the first time after their installation. We were a bit worried because we took the unconventional approach and gave them empty frames with no foundation. Sure enough, both hives are thriving. They have already built out a number of frames with beautiful, natural comb. Back to the comments about nectar abundance, the comb had many different colors of nectar backed into the tiny compartments. Much of the nectar they collected in their first week was from the gigantic crab apple tree across the alley, which was their source for red nectar. It was so cool looking! I took pictures on my mom's camera, so I hope to have those soon.

We're heading up again this weekend because all of our hive bodies and equipment should be arriving this week. We'll be able to give the MN Hygienics a proper hive box.

Bees!

Our bees came in early. Instead of needing to pick them up on Saturday, they were ready on Thursday. How appropriate that they come in on Earth Day. Wednesday night we were up very, very late trying to get everything ready for their arrival. We had to seal the outside of the hive body and prepare the frames. For frame preparation we, as is our style, had to try something non-conventional. As we learned in our classes and from all of the beekeeping books we've read, you typically start your frames with pre-made foundation made of either beeswax or plastic. Essentially, the combs are already in place and the bees simply draw them out to start their brood. Instead of doing it this way, we decided to let them build their own comb, in an attempt to fend off the varroa mite - one of the many bee befallments that has been on the increase in the past ten years.

The mite grows on the larvae and then continues life on the abdomen of the bee. Some beekeepers think that the mite has become an issue as of late because we have set the size of the combs by installing foundation. We'll see how our experiment works.

We set up the two hives for our two bee packages - one Carneolian and one MN Hygienic. Paul had to fashion some make-shift parts as our second hive and other accessories are on backorder for a few weeks.

Basically, we took out two frames, opened the bee packages, removed the queen cage and dumped 15,000 bees into each hive. Then we opened the queen cage and set that in so that the queen can come out safely on her own.

After installing the bees, Paul and I headed out to dinner to celebrate our 7 year anniversary.

When we got back, we decided to open the entrance to the second hive and put the last frame into the hive since the bees had settled in a bit. Being the brave Mama of the family, I opened the hive, reached in and grabbed the queen cage out, dropped the frame in, and slid the cover back in place, and walked away with only one sting. Mind you, I was wearing no protective gear whatsoever. So far, these seem to be extremely gentle bees.

Hooray! Now Honeybee Hollow has honeybees!

Potato Patch

I love saying "potato patch" almost as much as I love going out to grabble those beauties when potato salad time comes. This weekend was time to plant the potato patch. Last year we had four varieties. All were tasty, but not all were productive. We decided to go with the Yukon Golds this year as they are our favorite and most plentiful.
For those who don't know, potato plants are grown from "seed" potatoes. All that means is that the potatoes that come in the box from Johnny's have been in the dark long enough to know that once I plant them in the ground, it's time to grow. Potatoes that you get from the store won't necessarily grow because aren't on the right schedule.
We get a box of potatoes and cut them up. Each section of potato will grow as long as it has an eye on it. An eye is the little site where a sprout looks like it could come out. No eye, no plant.
Then I just dig holes 18" apart and throw in the piece of potato.
Now I just have to wait. Nothing is more worth it than fresh potatoes.

Back in Business

After a painful process of ordering, waiting for and installing a new hard drive for my computer, I'm back in business. Apparently I had completely filled all 80G of my previous harddrive, so now I have 320G to try and fill. Game on.

What's been happening in the Hollow? We've spread compost, planted some new trees and are frantically trying to get things ready for bee delivery on April 24th. So is everyone else, apparently, as many of our items from the supplier are on backorder. Argh.

Here are some pictures of the yard, including our new apple and pear trees!

It feels like...

we should be doing this soon:

but I have a feeling that, like every year, strawberry picking season will creep up on us. This year will be different. Instead of three girls that pick and immediately consume the berries, perhaps more of them will end up in the basket, right?
Well, either way, we'll be bringing home berries and hopefully, they will go into our new freezer, which was a requirement of the Mama this year.
The other thing that's been creeping up on us is bicycle maintenance (or lack thereof). It's been so nice so soon that we haven't had a chance to tune up the pile of bikes in the garage. Luckily, the Papa's bike, which he rides year round, is always ready to go.
Here's a pic from last year:

Our food source

We were reading a library book the other day called Farms Feed the World. It talked about where our food comes from and that we also get our clothing from cotton that grows on farms. The final page had some lines about our need to respect and support farms. We close the book and Amelie says, "Well, everyone else needs farms. We don't." To which I say, "We don't? Where do you think we get all of our food and clothing?" "Our backyard", she says. Huh. If we actually tried to feed ourselves from our backyard year round, I think she'd feel a little less smug about the situation.
I feel an "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" experiment is in order in a few years.

Homeopathy for Mavis

Mavis, one of our hens, is getting pecked. She's lost almost all of the feathers on her neck so, at the recommendation of a good friend and colleague, I gave her a dose of Belladonna 30c. I dissolved it in a bit of water and put the cup up to her beak.


She took about three good gulps, so we'll keep our eye on her and see what happens. Watch for more Mavis updates.

All those eggs....

I bet you're wondering what we do with all those eggs. First, I'd like to set something straight. Chickens lay one egg per day (mostly). The egg color depends upon their breed, not necessarily on the color of their feathers. They don't need a rooster to lay eggs but if there is a rooster they can lay fertilized eggs that will become chicks. Without a rooster, it's just a big ole pile of tasty eggs waiting to be eaten.
We have nine chickens. We get about 6-8 eggs per day. Wondering what we do with all of these delicious beauties? If we were a little bit nicer and a little less hungry, we'd give them away. Sadly, we eat them. All of them. With five egg loving bellies in the family (six if you count Sam), eight eggs equals scrambled eggs for five. Five more eggs? Some delicious fresh pasta. Need a snack at lunch? How about a hard boiled egg? Hungry for eggs and you're not sure what to do? We now have a solution for that!

A taste of freedom and grasshopper pie

I don't know where she found the grasshoppers at this time of year, but the girls and I enjoyed a delightful green lunch, complete with a delicious grasshopper pie. We dined on green apples, kiwi, green grapes, spinach wraps, salad and broccoli cheese soup. Delicious!
With our bellies full, we came home to tackle some outdoor projects (after a few short bike trips up and down the block to stretch our legs). While Mom was doing poop duty, the girls decided that the chickens needed to stretch their legs as well. They had their first taste of freedom today in many, many months.


Everyone got lots of fresh air and plenty of dirt:

Finally, I almost forgot to mention that the bees have been ordered! We will be receiving 3lbs each of Carneolian and MN Hygienic bees on April 24th. We placed our order with Nature's Nectar in Stillwater. They have a very cool and informative blog: http://naturesnectar.blogspot.com/

Onions and Compost

The onions will be plentiful this year at Honeybee Hollow. Our worker bees were busy again, blocking soil and planting seeds. 160 onions were started this week. While Amelie planted, Penelope imitated the ferocious fire ant that we all should watch out for in the garden. What can be more ferocious than that face? :-)


As the snow has melted, it's once again time to scoop the poop. Sam has continued to eat all winter long and the back yard definitely shows it. Instead of scooping and dumping this year, we've decided to be kinder to the garbage man and to the landfill. We put in a dog poop septic system. Basically, it's a plastic pail with holes and some rocks in it. We buried it in the ground, then fill it with poop, put in some septic starter and Tada! ~ no more poop. It's in the ground and I still have to work on the poop part, so I'll let you know how it goes.

And here's one shot of the poop creator:

An Overachiever

One of our ladies was quite the overachiever yesterday. Her egg looks more like a goose egg than a chicken egg. It didn't even fit into the carton!

Our big girl got a wonderful spring gift for her birthday yesterday: a seed starting kit complete with seeds, soil, pots and vase for the flowers that grow! She couldn't wait to get her wildflowers planted so that's what she did after lunch.

Last, but not least, I couldn't help but add a picture of all the delicious pasta noodles that Papa made for the party. The food was delicious thanks to our hobby chef!

Things are growing

Lots of things have happened at Honeybee Hollow this week. First of all, the onions were started by the diligent worker bees.


Then, we had a birthday. We celebrated at Wood Lake Nature Center. The kids went on a treasure hunt with a naturalist, ate pizza and had brownies. Instead of gifts, the birthday girl asked for donations to Oceana to help the penguins. She raised over $50!


With all of the beautiful weather and melting snow, the girls decided that it was time to get out their bikes, only there was one problem. Our littlest biker does not have a helmet yet. As she must be like her sisters at all times, we solved the problem with one of Mama's gardening knee pads.


Finally, the Mama and Papa had a day off thanks to the Grandparents, to take Beekeeping, Part 1. It was extremely informative, but the best part was snowshoeing out to see the beehives. As the instructor was talking, he was lifting the covers and feeding the hives...all while bees were flying into the air around him (and into his shoe for an ankle sting). Our bee order will be in very soon!
Last, but not least, there was a friendly and excited face to greet us when we all made it back home after a long day.

My One Success

Over the years I have had MANY house plants. Most died within the first month of arriving home. The plants that we have now are alive due to the diligence of my darling husband. My problem? I ignore them until they wilt and then I over-water them. It's just a cycle that I haven't been able to overcome. There is one plant, however, that I have had for about 15 years. Yep, you guessed it, it's a cactus. It started as a tiny plant, a couple of inches above the soil. Now, it's a monster. It's the only plant that's been able to survive my erratic watering style. Luckily, I don't seem to have this problem with outdoor plants. If it's in the ground, it's safe. (My darling husband also helps with the watering.)