Drones

You'll know this handsome drone by his big eyes. The kids love drones because they can't sting. Though they pretend to hate them because they are "honey hogs". They don't do any work for the hive, they just hang around eating honey. And they can live for a year unlike female bees who, except for the queen, work themselves to death in 40 days.

We've been lackadaisical beekeepers this spring. We hadn't worked one hive at all. It was bursting with honey. We intended to put in the queen excluder to keep the queen from laying eggs in our honey. Instead we just put the queen excluder on top and added a honey super.

The bees did not appreciate our intrusion. There were more than usual flying about and for the first time they went after the peaceful camerawoman (me). I got an angry one stuck in my hair, but managed to bat it out without getting stung.

Clem and Ev suited up to inspect the hives with their dad.

Even without the excluder frames like this one were all honey with no larvae. The honey now has a light, buttery taste. It changes with the different flowers in bloom.

A few weeks ago we worked the other hive. We discovered the bees doing this and were worried that they would swarm.

When we opened up the hive there was comb all over the tops of the frames. It was stuck to the cover and so we accidentally exposed some larvae. It was my first time working the hive and I was nervous, ok, not nervous, but really, really scared. At the sight of those poor exposed larvae I started to sniff.

Evelyn said, "Why are you sniffing? Are you crying?"
"I feel sorry for the bees."
Ever practical, she says, "It is like a skinned knee to the hive. Lots more bees than that die every day."
The comb with larvae was growing all over the top, preventing us from putting on the queen excluder. I had to scrape the comb off, sniffing all the while.
I gave the ruined comb to Clem.
"It's just drone larvae!" she says. "Look at the big eyes. They're just honey hogs. Some beekeepers kill them on purpose."

We put on the excluder and an empty honey super.
I take the larvae in to photograph them.
Greta thinks they're "Cute! So cuuuuute!"
She keeps making kissy lips at them while I am trying to photograph.

After I photographed them we fed them to the fish who seemed very happy. And I felt better that they hadn't gone to waste.

Bee Hero

I opened the slider to the patio to find Greta sitting at her sand and water table in a cloud of bees. She was completely calm, staring down into the water, unconcerned about the bee near her hand, or the bees buzzing all around.

I thought I'm going to have to do something about those bees.

Bees need a source of water but they don't like it to be too close to the hive. Our sand and water table must be the perfect distance because they have shunned the birdbath out front and other offerings and made the sand and water table their water bar of choice. (Experienced beekeepers, suggestions please!)

Here Greta's saying, "This bee crawled on my arm and it didn't even sting me!"

Then she gave a gasp. And picked up a stick. She reached down into the water and came up with a bedraggled bee on the stick.

She walked it over to the mini-trampoline and set the stick down.Look, Mama! she said, I'm a bee hero!
And there I saw four bees drying in the sun.

We try to leave a towel hanging into one of the buckets so the bees can land on the towel and drink. But many fall in anyway. Lucky for them the bee hero sits poised, ready to help.
This bee fell off the bee hero's stick onto the rim of the tubs. I loved watching her dry herself. In the right center photo she is wet and bedraggled. Look how she preens until she is fluffy all over. Then she bowed low to the bee hero (center top) and flew off to cool her hive with the water.

Click to enlarge.

Making Merry or Arsenic and Embroidery Floss

I was packing up some gifts to send when an email popped into my inbox. It was forwarded mail. Forbes Most Toxic Toys list. I clicked on the link and then looked at the slideshow of photos.

Wouldn't you know it, some presents I had just wrapped were pictured there. Friendship bracelet kits contaminated with arsenic. The U.S. is set to pass laws limiting the amount of arsenic in toys to 25 ppm. The amount in the friendship bracelets I was planning to give my own children and the children of friends: 630 ppm.

Here is one of the kits photographed on our tree, already adorned with its lead pvc light strings.



Let me say that this put a chill on my already weak enthusiasm for buying toys.

I am so glad that I am rotten at getting to the post office and was able to recall these toys myself and did not have to call my friends to say, hey, howzit going, I've been poisoning your kid.

The kids and I had a great time making presents this year. But you do have to wonder. If embroidery floss and a piece of foam are not safe, is anything? I am not generally paranoid about toxins. Everything is toxic in large enough quantities and everything is not toxic in small enough quantities.

But this made me think about everything we were making.

Evelyn made this snow globe and Clementine made the ducky out of Sculpey. Mmm. Baked plastic. That is sure to be good for you.



Greta picked out the beads for this spoon and I helped her wrap it. This is the only one of these gifts that truly worries me. Is that wire pure copper? What else might be in it and in the beads that I wouldn't like my father-in-law to be stirring into his coffee? A hot, acidic, liquid bath is just the ticket to get the toxins off the spoon and into him.


The aprons I made for my niece and nephew are probably not any more toxic...than, say, embroidery floss.



Freezer paper stencils are just as fun and satisfying as promised. But what about ironing that plastic-coated freezer paper? And what about the paint? And the glue for the rhinestones and jewels?

Clementine's fairy for her cousin Grace:

Evelyn's present for her cousin Amelia.

Evelyn's drawing about to be made into a stencil.
The stencil ready to be painted.
Painted and drying.
The finished shirt with two more stencils: a cave of jewels on the left shoulder and a bejeweled sword on the right arm.

Our honey. Well, we can't say it is organic because our neighbors might use pesticides. Still, I'm thinking this is a pretty safe gift. Except for the botulism spores.


The girls' gift to the squirrels and birds is among our safest gifts, I'm guessing. Peanut butter and bird seed on a pinecone.
The squirrels seemed to enjoy the gift.

And the girls enjoyed the squirrels.


Next year it will be peanut butter, birdseed and pinecones for everyone.

Tiger Nut Sweets

Today I made up a list for the girls: piano, math, history, historical recipe, raking leaves, pulling up the dead pumpkin plants that are making our neighbor crazy.

Our neighbor pulls our weeds and came up to inspect a weathergram Evelyn made. A weathergram is a thought about weather or seasons written on a strip of grocery bag and hung up to be finished by the weather. I got this idea from a book I love called If You're Trying to Teach Kids How to Write You've Gotta Have This Book.

I don't think our neighbor loved this idea. Scraps of grocery bag tied onto a tree with yarn do not look like art or poetry to him, especially when curled up by humidity.

Greta's weathergram

Ev and Clem watched the lecture on Spanish, French, Dutch and Swedish colonies in the New World. This time I gave them the review questions ahead of time and asked them to be looking out for the answers. Clementine came running to me whenever she heard an answer, and Evelyn came afterward to report.

Then it was time to choose a recipe. I was thinking we'd finally make the cranberry tartlets. But I failed to specify a time period so we made an Egyptian dessert, said to be among the oldest recorded recipes, found scratched on an ostracum or pottery shard.

Tiger Nut Sweets
20 pitted dates mashed with a little water
cinnamon
1 cup walnuts chopped
1 cup pecans ground
1/2 cup honey

Mix the mashed dates and walnuts and cinnamon to taste. Roll in honey. Roll in ground pecans.

This was our second time making them and they were extra delicious because made with our own honey.

This recipe is special to my beekeepers because Egyptians, they tell me, were the first beekeepers. People have always raided beehives, but Egyptians were the first to make hives to raise bees in.

They Egyptians even chose the bee as a symbol to represent lower Egypt. Thutmose III gave offerings of honey to the god Amun.

We never got around to the raking and pulling up the dead pumpkin plants. I guess it is time to make another offering of honey to our neighbor.

Honey Haul

This is most of the honey.

Clem ran one jar over to our neighbor across the street who has an orchard behind his house. He lets the kids pick his raspberries and apples and tomatoes. He attributes his big crops this year to our bees.

And there is still honey draining out of the tops we took off with the hot knife.

And the kitchen is still sticky. The floor, the chairs, the counters, the walls. Honey is Super Sticky. But Hot Water, Honey's nemesis, will save the day...a little later.

After my second cappuccino.

Sweet

Halloween is almost here.

If your kids don't have a costume yet I found a great way to get a free fireman hat.

All you have to do is get some beehives. Then make so much smoke when you are taking out your frames to harvest the honey that the neighbors call the fire department.

When the fire truck comes your child can try to explain about smoking the bees.

Fireman: Are you having a barbecue?
Child: We're smoking our bees.
Fireman: But are you having a barbecue?
Child: We have a smoker, we smoke the bees with it and it makes them calm.
Fireman: (After a pause) Are you having a barbecue?

You come out and help out with the explanation. Then if your firemen are as nice as ours they'll give out free hats.

Sweet!

But not as sweet as the honey.

The kids are over the moon. The whole house is sticky. When you harvest honey you can use some exciting tools. First, as previously mentioned, is the smoker. But then there is the hot knife. Who can resist a knife you plug in. It slices through the comb just exactly like a hot knife through wax.



Next is the extractor. Crank the handle and the honey spins out of the comb.











Finally there is the spigot on the extractor.

Evelyn said, "I really need something savory after all the sweet I've had today!" I made a zucchini, prosciutto and feta pizza. Ev refused to help: too busy with the honey.

I held my breath. And, after years of hating pizza, Ev liked it. Turns out she really doesn't like tomato sauce. If only I had known. The take out we could have savored.

Honey is sweet, but enlightenment is sweeter.

Oh, scratch that.

Honey is sweeter.

The Spice of Life

Columbus headed West in search of spices, so cooking and exploration seem to be well paired. Like the Etna Rosso and pesce crudo we had at Dopo yesterday.

A tidbit from my new cookbook. In 1584 Captain Arthur Barlow enjoyed tea with Native Americans on Roanoke Island. He said, "their drinke is commonly water...but it is sodden with Ginger in it, and blacke Sinamon, and sometimes Sassaphras, and divers other wholesome, and medicinable hearbes and trees."

It goes on to list several tea ingredients in common use: mints, pine, spruce, hemlock and juniper needles, the leaves of wild berries.

We've got some ailing raspberry stalks, so we used a few leaves, and thyme and mint and the neighbor's rosemary. Clementine sweetened hers anachronistically with that sweet stuff made by the stinging fly.

Wheresoe'er they move, before them
Swarms the stinging fly, the Ahmo,
Swarms the bee, the honey-maker;
Wheresoe'r they tread, beneath them
Springs a flower unknown among us,
Springs the White-man's Foot in blossom.

Speaking of honey, Mike's renting an extractor today. Saturday we'll be extracting honey from our frames. Sunday we plan to go to Santa Cruz to see the replica of Columbus's Nina.

And speaking of recreations and Roanoke Island, a couple years ago we met with friends once/week for 6 weeks to reenact the colonization of Roanoke Island. We captured turtles, ate inedible things and temporarily blinded ourselves with foul water on the journey. We tried to make something edible out of unfamiliar ingredients, gave birth to Virginia Dare, and then, on the last day, we vanished mysteriously.

After that we put on hold our plan to reenact Scott's Journey to the South Pole.

We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker of course, and the end cannot be far. It seems a pity but I do not think I can write more.