Happy People: Happy Bees

Last night, as we were deciding which trees were ready to fend for themselves at the farm, hubby spotted another swarm of bees in our yard.  Once again, they were behind the trealis and a fence post. The poor honeysuckle is still recovering from the last swarm extraction, and this time the two grapevines got to share the pain!   (I should know in a couple of weeks whether or not grapevines can be rooted from "cuttings"!)

Swarm - April 7

These bees were quite cooperative.  Hubby scooped a couple of handfuls into a NUC, I squirted some Honey B Healthy onto the inner cover, we gave them a stick to use as a bridge and they pagenented right on in.  By the time we'd checked the other hives, only two lost bees were still wandering around on the fence.

One of our other splits now has the fattest queen I have ever seen, so that NUC made the trip to the farm and the bees are already bringing in loads of white pollen.  We moved them up to an 8-frame so that they could get over all of their confusion about the new location at once and they seem to be as happy as clams.    The queen cells in the sister NUC have hatched, but we didn't see a queen.  Hopefully she will find her way home in a couple of days.

The other hives at the farm are all active, but we didn't check them today.   Hubby is digging more tenches for water lines and I planted some tomatoes and thyme.   We are really curious to see whether the diatomaceous-earth we sprinkled on the ground two weeks ago has had any impact on the small hive beetles.  It's supposed to kill them when they go back onto the ground to pupate.   Now that the hives are stronger, we aren't seeing as much of a problem as when we came out of that really cold snap, but we'd love to see no beetles at all.   It still seems like having the hive in a sunny spot works wonders, but that is going to make hive checks challenging in July.  

The dog is chewing on a pine-cone, hubby is working hard, and I'm enjoying sitting out in the 72 degree sunshine.  It's amazing to sit here at this time of day and see just how many insects are flying around at any given time and at how many spider webs are catching the sunlight.   Even with the sound of the Ditch Witch, the farm is so peaceful and just a good place to be.   We are just so very lucky and happy to be here.

What I've learned while making fondant for bees

Let me preface this post by saying that I know some of these things should be painfully obvious, but I hope that some of my readers are, at times, as distracted as I while trying to do many things at once -- like playing SimCity while cooking. 

Lesson 1:  Respect the capabilities of your equipment.  Five pounds of sugar cooks quite nicely in my largest pot and cools quite nicely in my mixing bowl.  A few weeks ago, I tried to make a 7 1/2 pound batch.  The time I spent trying to get the sugar up to temperature while not letting it boil over ended up making the process take longer than it took me to make two, 5-pound batches today.  I was able to start cooling the first batch in the mixer while bringing the second batch to a boil.  Five pounds of sugar yields around 9 each 6" small paper plates full of fondant, and each hive eats 4 plate fulls in 3 - 4 days. 

Lesson 2:  Paper plates work well, especially the small, 6" size ones.  We can fit four plates to a hive.  We have a spacer between the brood chamber and the super so that the plates fit without letting in cold, winter air.   Only two dinner-size plates fit in the same space.  I've tried making fondant on baking trays, but it ended up a soupy, sticky mess that wouldn't hold its form, which is why we switched to plates.   However, today we poured a batch onto a wax-paper covered cookie tray, which leads to lesson 3.

Lesson 3:  If the sugar mixture goes above "soft ball" on the candy thermometer, it is likely to set up very quickly and very hard.  If you notice the fondant getting hard when it is still hot, get it out of the mixer (or, worse, saucepan) quickly.   My first or second batch of fondant turned into a giant sugar-cube in the bottom of my pot in about 30 seconds while I was searching for my pan.   However, you can add water and slowly bring up to a temperature at which the sugar will dissolve again to get it out of there.

Lesson 4:  Drape your counter tops with beach towels!   The YouTube videos we've watched all seem to feature organized people not making a mess in their kitchens,  but hot fondant drips.   It's so much easier to throw towels in the washing machine than to dispose of newspaper.  We like to recycle, and I don't think anyone wants us to recycle sugar-coated newspapers.  Plus, you can drape the towels over the edge of the counter for added protection.  I guess you see why I blog instead of making YouTube videos.  Plus, no one (except maybe my husband) wants to watch an old lady dance to "I Love Rock and Roll" while stirring boiling fondant.

Lesson 5:  Hot fondant burns about the same as hot wax.  If you get some on your hand, remember which faucet is the cold water and which is hot.  It doesn't help to run hot, hot water over hot fondant.   This is why many people recommend using oven mitts, but I don't like wearing gloves unless I have to -- like when I pick up the hot mixing bowl.  There's a time and a place for everything, but stirring the sugar water while wearing gloves doesn't work for me.

Lesson 6:  If you take the plates out to fill the hives, the bees will find them (and you) in about ten seconds, especially if you've added Honey B Healthy or essential oils.   If the fondant is soft, it's easier for the bees to digest, but not good for hugging to your chest to keep the bees off.    If you do end up with a t-shirt covered in fondant, head indoors quickly and make sure none of the bee-knee babies is following you!

Lesson 7:  Don't be surprised if the bees eat your paper plates.   We weren't, because my brother-in-law had the great idea (and I don't mean that sarcastically) of leaving notes about how many frames had what on them in the hives, but when he went to show my husband his system, there were no notes in the first three hives.  The half-eaten index card was proof of his sanity -- a big relief to us all. 

Lesson 8:  Softer fondant is easier for the bees to digest, and as we're giving this to them when nature is making life difficult for them, my goal is to get the right consistency.  However,  if it turns out "wrong,"  the bees will eat it anyway.   Too soft, and it will absorb water from the air and turn to syrup.  "Too hard", and it's easy to stack, store, and transport.  Don't stress about it.   If the fondant ends up just right, we can't stack the plates, but we're fine with our dining table looking like we're expecting the Edgar-eating roach from Men in Black to come for a tea party and the plates of sugar never stay there long.

Lesson 9:  It's worth the time and effort.   Bees are stupid and will go ice-skating on a bucket of sugar water when they are hungry.  Our bees are out and about when temperatures rise above 45 degrees, but the buckets take a long time to warm up and often have ice on them until mid-afternoon.   I've been experimenting with ways to let them wet feed without becoming hypothermic, and may have one successful method.   I'll blog about that once we're convinced it actually reduces bee loss. 

Bee stings and toothpaste

When we were visiting family in Texas this summer, my husband was stung on the forehead by some red wasps that he was attempting to evict from his aunt's house soffit.  We were both surprised when his aunt exclaimed that she was going to get the toothpaste and disappeared into the house.  We were even more surprised when smearing toothpaste on the sting relieved his pain.

Then, a few weeks ago, my brother-in-law kindly loaned me a bee-hat so that I could get a little closer to the action when he and my husband were working his hives.  The day before, the bees had already shown their dislike of dark colors by dive bombing my husband's black baseball cap the moment he plonked it on my head.  So, the following day, with my head safely ensconced in a white cover and face-protection, they decided to go after a different dark item -- my navy-blue thermal shirt!  That was my first bee sting since childhood and considerably less painful than I anticipated.  (But still something to avoid, when possible.)  We were too far from the house to make fetching toothpaste seem worth while, but the bees had fired a warning shot.

You would think that would be a lesson that would stick with me, but apparently I'm a little slow today.  Now that I have my own bee suit and gloves, I headed out with my husband to put new fondant in our hives and to see if there was any left from the batch we placed in a week ago.  My husband lifted the lid on the least populated hive, and I got to see a wonderfully healthy cluster of bees through the hole in the top cover. Then I got to see that they had eaten almost all of the fondant, and then they let me know very clearly that a bee suit may protect my face and hands, but wearing thermal weave, dark pants is inviting them to find the weakness in my defense.  Of course, they went after the largest and most obvious target area and I was subsequently able to gain first-hand experience about the effectiveness of toothpaste on bee stings.  

While cooking a new batch of fondant for the ungrateful little critters, I researched reasons why toothpaste would actually help soothe stings.  According to Rapid Home Remedies,  the alkalinity of toothpaste neutralizes the acidity of the venom in the bee sting.  Apparently fire ants have an alkaline venom, so toothpaste probably will not work on those.  I'll let you know next summer....

The new batch of fondant is cooling, and the kitchen smells are invigorating.  First of all, the smell of the boiling sugar water reminded me suddenly and very strongly of memories of my mother making red-currant jelly.  I guess the lemon juice in the mixture is what transported me back to my childhood home.   Now the smell of the lemon grass in the Honey B Healthy I mixed into the fondant pervades the kitchen and makes the stress in my life just float away.  It smells so good that my husband recently felt compelled to tell me that the label clearly warns against human consumption!   The bees love the smell even more than I do, so it's a good way to attract them to supplemental food supplies when there's a dearth of plants to provide pollen and nectar.  Toothpaste and bee vitamins -- what a weird mix of components to make a day on which I got stung still simply perfect!