Last weekend’s Wolf Moon marked the turning point in the season. No more dormant trees and frosted over lettuce leaves. The days are lengthening and the temperature increasing. I am seeing more bird species in my yard and I recently saw a swarm of ladybugs (above pic).

It therefore seems a perfect time to start germination. Each year I try to be in rhythm with nature when I cultivate. Seeds and starts seem stronger and nature does a load the work. With that, I have thrown myself into the outdoor work in an attempt to catch up with Spring in all her glory. The results:

Major “landscape remediation” project to the front yard. After a summer of significant home remodeling, the front lawn was destroyed. I never loved it anyway. So I decided to attempt a more natural landscape of “no mow” fine fescue seeds with spatterings of wildflower seeds. I may have gone nuts with the Crimson Clover on one section. I’ll find out in a month or so.

Virgil cooling his, uh..heels.

I began my rabbit breeding program. I was waiting for the colder months to pass before starting. In preparation I read about how to prepare and what to expect. There is a simple but helpful series online called the Better Farming Series. I was expecting the pair to be shy and reserved for a few minutes, at least. Apparently the timing was right, no introductions, no delays. A successful connection was made and I expect to have a litter in 28-31 days.

I am also raising two pullets (young hens) to swap out two older hens from my flock that seem to have slowed, or entirely stopped, laying.

I will place the shallow honey frames I removed from the hive for the winter back on. I’ve had the bagged frames sitting in my chest freezer to kill off any moths or other bugs that may have inhabited the honeycomb.

Now I am running off to work on the very unglamorous chore of pulling weeds, lots and lots of weeds. Sources of inspiration: 1) Oakland Public Library’s audiobooks on mp3. I am now listening to my first Ivan Turgenev novel. 2) El at Fast Grow the Weeds and Stefani at Sicilian Sisters Grow Some Food.

With the holidays passed and the new year, it is time for farm planning. January may be the only month where the garden and animals are slow and quiet. It is this one calm month that I have to sharpen my tools, separate and select seeds, prep fruit trees and clean beds emptied of their early winter crops. Now is the time to plan which crops will be my main crops for spring and summer, as well as what livestock I plan on keeping. This year livestock may be pretty exciting…time will tell.

I learned a few lessons this year with livestock- namely to acquire my turkey before it is too old so that it can “bond” with me. This makes it much easier to approach to feed and also to pick up. The last turkey I had was to fearful and aggressive because it was not a chick. I also learned that if I want roast goose for Christmas, I need to raise my own. Inspired by the goose preparations I assisted with before Christmas, I decided I wanted to cook a goose. I had seen young geese at Berkeley Bowl. However, it turned out they are $72 for one frozen bird. No thanks. With my level of commitment and degree of knowledge at this point, I can raise several geese for the price of $72.

To help me with some of my tasks I will be attending upcoming classes and meetings. Namely, Berkeley Horticulture offers free classes on pruning rose bushes and fruit trees each Saturday of January. Also, I am going to attempt to graft other fruits onto my trees again this year. Last year, I tried a Pippin Apple to my Fuji but they did not take (thanks for the scions Abby!). This year, I am going to the 2010 Golden Gate Chapter Scion Exchange to see what delicious fruits I might find.

I also have to freeze the shallows I removed from my hive in November in preparation for February. Freezng them should remove any Wax Moth larvae and other critters that have settled in the empty frames. I pray to be on top of my beekeeping this year and have removed any queen cells and expanded the hive before another devastating spring swarm.

Well I guess January is not so quiet after all.

I love that I live in a parallel universe to my friend Stefani. She just harvested her honey too!

We got twenty-eight pounds of honey this year! Twenty-one point five from only twelve shallow frames and the 6.5lbs from one shallow and one deep. I had great equipment from the Alameda Beekeepers. They rent extractors, buckets, strainers, hot knives and much more (Thank you Stefani for the tip!). I also had excellent assistants, Jimmy and Dipak. Jimmy and I both got a light sting. I was surprised to get one through my fancy bee suit. Like I said, the girls were pretty upset.

There is more but it is deeper in the main hive body and my bees were pretty upset by the time I got down there. I’ve decided to harvest the other deeps with a more experienced beekeeper who might be better able to tell me what the bees are up to. In the mean time, I have been putting my honey to work. Next time you are in SF. go check out Her Majesty’s Secret Beekeeper at 3520 -20th Street in SF.

Cameo Wood, the proprietor is quirky and fun to talk to and she carries all manner of beekeeping supplies. Yay! I no longer have to wait for UPS or schlep to Sebastopol for my last minute supplies.

The Obamas are not only using organic gardening methods to the dismay of the chemical industry but they are using honey bees to pollinate the garden. I don’t know enough about honeybee species to make comment on the “USDA-developed” bees but their use of honeybees is commendable (beekeepers, I’d love your comments).

Hope for Honey Bees

By Miryam Ehrlich Williamson

Photo: EncinoMan / flickr

We fret here about the scarcity of honey bees. We’ve had hives disappear by the thousands around here. Last summer we had pollinators — bumble bees, wasps, hummingbirds, and some kind of bee new to me — but I’m particularly fond of honey bees because when the weather is fair I can work in the garden while they’re working, too, and they won’t bother me. They’re too busy going about their business. (Don’t try this when the weather is cloudy or rainy; that’s another story.)

This portion of a news release from USDA gives me new hope. I don’t know if these varieties are as focused and industrious as the honey bees I know and love, but I hope I’ll have a chance to find out.

White House Garden to Receive USDA-Developed Honey Bees

This July, USDA will be providing two types of parasite-resistant honey bees developed by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists to pollinate the plants in the new White House garden this summer. Both of these bees are rapidly gaining in popularity with bee keepers.

Honey bees enhance any garden, because they increase the yields of plants that require pollination, they produce honey, and they are one of Nature’s most fascinating creatures to observe. Unfortunately, parasitic mites cause serious health problems for most varieties of honey bees, and many beekeepers must use pesticides to combat the mites in the hives. But these USDA-developed bees are mite-resistant, offering a more natural, organic alternative for the White House garden.

Honey bees are crucial to American agriculture, adding some $15 billion in value in the nation’s crops, particularly specialty crops such as almonds and other nuts, berries, fruits, and vegetables. In California, the almond crop alone uses 1.3 million colonies of bees, approximately one half of all honey bees in the United States, and this need is projected to grow to 1.5 million colonies by 2010.

Scientists with the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), USDA’s principal intramural scientific research agency, developed the two types of mite-resistant honey bees. One type is highly resistant to the parasitic mite Varroa destructor, commonly known as the varroa mite. The bees have a trait called “varroa-sensitive hygiene” which prompts the worker bees to detect and remove infested bees from the nest, eliminating the need for chemical help to control the mites.

The second type of mite-resistant honey bees is based on a strain of honey bees from Russia which are naturally resistant not only to varroa mites, but also to tracheal mites, which infest the breathing tubes of the bees. These bees are also highly tolerant of cold weather and require less artificial feeding than typical honey bees.

The Russian bees were brought to the United States by Thomas Rinderer, research leader at ARS’ Honey Bee Breeding, Genetics and Physiology Research Unit at Baton Rouge, La., where studies have been under way on the bees since the mid-1990s. Rinderer and other ARS scientists will collaborate with White House staff on installation of the USDA bees in the White House garden.

For the past eight years, breeder queens of the Russian-derived and varroa-sensitive hygienic bees have been released to the beekeeping industry, and both types of bees are gaining rapidly in popularity. In 2008, a breeders’ group called the Russian Honeybee Breeders Association, Inc., was formed to supply the Russian-based queens throughout the U.S. beekeeping industry, and demand is outstripping supply.

Both types of mite-resistant USDA bees are good pollinators and easy to keep alive because of their hardiness, thus helping ensure the success of the new White House garden.

I received the above touching thank you card from my neighbors. The card came with a plate full of freshly made banana bread (delicious). Their 2.5 year old helped make both the card and bread. I just about broke into tears when I got this. These are the sweet neighbors whose roof I had just augmented to get the bees out. Not only did they remain very calm and receptive to my explanations of bee behavior and proposed plans, they are actually now thinking about starting their own hive. Dipak says we create our own luck. I don’t see it. I’m seeing luck as an extremely fortunate circumstance that just randomly occurs. Like having super cool neighbors. We did not interview anyone before hand. We just moved in.

The honeybees brought much to light for me. Many friends stepped in to give great advice, possible solutions and contact information for other helpful beekeepers. I plugged into a broad community of bee people that were willing to talk me through my inexperience. Afterwards, I received many calls to follow up. Even at the greatest moment of chaos when the bees where agitated and swirling around the roof and me, there were positive comments and support coming from people walking by. The bees gave me an opportunity to feel the character of my neighborhood. Honeybees and their social structure provide a beautiful metaphor for community. In this case they actually brought people together and revealed a way of relating that was peaceful and generous.

I know some people that go off the beaten track to develop the good story. One gentleman, Brian Chen, decided to complete his PhD in Epidemiology while living out of his car. A writer, Novella Carpenter, embarked on a journey to convert an asphalt lot into an urban farm, complete with sows and goats in the depths of West Oakland. My friend Stefani spun wool in a parking lot as a getaway.

When it does happen it can be hard to pinpoint exactly when it gets good. Sometimes it seems to get better and better until it is almost no longer believable, and yet remains true. It also appears there is an inverse relationship between the worsening of a situation and story getting better.

When my bees swarmed on Saturday, was the good story when thousands of them took refuge in my neighbors roof? No.

Was is when I quickly explained to my neighbor, who was peacefully in his backyard, that the bees are mine and he looked up to find that if he raised his arms up we would have rubbed the honey engorged bellies of these bees? He is not accustomed to bees and he ever so calmly said “I am alarmed.” I did my best to talk him through it- “the bees are at their least defensive state”; “they are full of honey and docile when they swarm.” “They just want to find their queen.” He said “there are hundreds and hundreds of them.” I did not bother to correct him to say “no, Byrne, there are actually thousands.”

Was it the moment my uncle began pulling apart my neighbors roof? Not really. Though it did seem to be pretty good when he pulled off a layer of roofing tiles to find another layer, which he pulled off and found then another layer…

Perhaps it was when, after even the extreme measure of destroying the roof and carrying shovels full of bees down to a waiting hive, only to have the queen retreat into an inaccessible area and my uncle, pressed for time, left. Before he dispatched he gave me with a hook razor, some roofing tiles and rapid instructions on how to re-roof the area for the rain. About 40 minutes after he left, all the bees we had shoveled out were right back in the roof. The story seemed good enough by then. Oh but wait- there is more.

After calling beekeeper friends to find a contact for a person with a bee vacuum. The only person I could locate wanted to charge $300. I had to give up and figure out my next step. It would be less money (always think of the farm equation) to buy my own shop vac and convert it. But I didn’t have time to convert it and a storm was approaching. It would be less money to buy the shop vac, vacuum the bees, deal with the aftermath and then convert the vacuum to a bee vac for later use. Yes, there it was- a solution.

6AM the day started. Shop vac in hand, ladder up and gear on by 8AM, vacuuming commenced. Now the thing of it is that my neighbors allowed their roofing to be torn off in order to preserve the colony. So vacuuming now with a 5 horse power shop vac was a bit contradictory to the initial process. In addition to this fact, I had not considered that the air vent was facing their front door and as a result was now splattered with an obvious massacre of bees. Even there, I had not reached my peak of goodness in the story. Nor when my gentle neighbor Byrne stepped out to check on the progress and said, again so calmly, “are those bee guts on my door?”

I decided then to seek out counsel on whether I had gotten the queen or not. If not, I would stop, and try measures to lure her out while calling again for a bee vac. Stefani joined me for the queen confirming and luring. She left me fortified with contacts, tea and good conversation.

More calling connected me with Tim King of “King Bee Removal.” Here is where the story began to reach its peak for me. Tim showed up with his “bee vacuum” which is a clever homemade contraption involving a few 5 gallon buckets, a shop vac hose, a vac motor and a hose accessory. Ok, sounded good. As long as it works I didn’t care if was made out of human remains.

We headed to the roof. We set up, He climbed the ladder. I held the vacuum and hit power, it ran for a moment and then the motor fell off the bucket. Watching it roll around on the ground was like watching your knight in shining armor fall off his horse by the weight of his own armor, very anticlimactic.

That was that. No more vacuuming. We would have to wait to determine if we had gotten the queen. Tim, who has far more experience with bees than me, felt 99% certain we had gotten her. After waiting 3 long hours to dusk for foraging bees to come back and settle in the bucket or the roof I capped the bucket, got my shop vac, suctioned the last remaining bees from the roof. Byrne cleared the abandoned wasp nest and Dipak nailed the roofing into place for the coming rain. After this 48 hour ordeal the colony was removed.

My confidence in beekeeping was faltering but then by chance I caught this episode on The World (thanks Suzie & Cat!) on Young Urban Beekeepers in Germany. While they capture the spirit of beekeeping, the education, excitement and reward, they don’t mention how the new wave of apiculturists handle the unpredictable settling of a swarm in eaves, walls, a roof…

Thanks for the seeds Stefani!

Today was a day of concentration, labor and love. The day started at 6AM making mole poblano with my last turkey, Nash. I viewed the many steps of roasting, grinding and simmering as a ceremonial tribute to his life and sacrifice. One large pot of mole, refried beans, rice, and homemade corn tortillas later, my first guests arrived. We ate, we enjoyed and we headed outside to build a duck house. Conan and I cleared thorny blackberry cane from out spot while Lori fed her infant in the warm sun. Dipak and Conan finished off a good frame for the house, Lori, Conan, and Rinji parted and the next wave of guests arrived. I was in the midst of an enjoyable conversation with my sister when I noticed a cloud of bees just outside my window. Doh! My hive was swarming! This was not so bad except they selected the eaves of my neighbor’s house, directly above the front door, to park for the night. They were less than pleased to witness a cloud of bees migrating to their house. I explained that this was common at this time of year. The bees were engorged with honey and the most docile when they swarm. Then I suited up, left my guests and spent the next hour or so in a futile attempt to coax them into a new hive box I had prepared. They retreated further into the house by dusk. I will have to go back in the morning to figure out what to do.

By night fall I was off to another gathering where I shared more mole (Nash was a big guy). On a tired night like this I ask myself why I do what I do? So many projects, so many details to keep up with. I sat quietly to feel the answer. The pleasant ringing in my body of a day well spent in the sun, working, learning and sharing great food with others was my answer.

I have been following the developments of my friend’s Kenyan top bar hive for nearly four years now. They have been kind enough to tolerate my endless questions. I have wanted a beehive for years. I want to monitor their impact on the edible garden. I want to observe honeybees. I want honey. Who doesn’t? This year, I have won the bee lottery. I was provided a swarm (thank you Claudio!) and my amazing bee friends Lawrence and Timur gave me a top bar hive choke full of honey! The hive has been thriving in a junkyard in San Francisco. They brought it over and helped me do some maintenance on it, harvest the honey, and figure out what was going on with my new Langstoth hive.

We gathered our equipment: hats, veils, latex dish gloves, jeans, white hoodie, covered ankles, smoker, hive tool, feather, wire thing to release comb from the sides and bottom, smoker, a spray bottle with sugar water, and two 5 gallon buckets. We then removed entrance reducer and outer cover of the hive and started to gently pry the bars away from the hive body.

We removed six bars from each side of the hive, placing honeycomb on one bucket and brood comb (where they keep the babies) in another. We had to remove some of the brood comb so they do not become outgrow the hive and swarm to find other housing.

Its a very good thing that we did this because they had actually started forming “swarm cells.” These is a special type of brood chamber where they raise queens. Once a queen is ready to hatch from the swarm cell, the hive splits in half and buzzes away. Once we replaced the removed bars with clean bars, we closed things up and hid the buckets in my basement. We didn’t want any bees to find where their stolen honey was being stored or they would come buzzing around none too happy. I cleaned off the used top bars and other equipment. I removed the brood comb from the white bucket and cleaned with warm water and some dish soap. Then I began the process of harvesting the honey. The first thing I did was mash the comb with a potato masher.

I lined the freshly clean white 5 gallon bucket with an unused paint strainer and placed a large expandable strainer on top. Next, I used a large stainless steel spoon to scoop globs of wax and honey into the expandable strainer.

The honey filtered through the metal strainer and the paint strainer making it good, clean and edible. It took three batches to empty the bucket of comb. Each batch filtered about an hour and a half. At the end the paint strainer needed to be removed and the honey drained to try to recover as much honey as possible.

Once this was done, I was able to ladle the honey into jars. A bucket with a spigot at the bottom would be better but I don’t have one yet so its ladling for me. I also used a wide mouth canning funnel to make it easier to pour into the jars.

I was able to harvest 18.75 lbs of honey! Yum!

Next I will process the wax…

The afternoon I went to transfer the bees to a proper hive was sunny and warm, very lucky. I had checked the sugar water to see if they had sipped any or if the pollen patty had been munched. It appeared a couple of bees had fallen in the sugar water. What was meant to be a loving gesture of nourishment turned out to be a death trap. Typical. It also appeared that ants have located the patty. I had not slept. I was worrying about how I was going to pull this off. The only sliver of comfort afforded to me were the reassuring words of the pregnant lady at Beekind. She pointed out the fact that my new bees are a wild swarm. They obviously know how to take care of themselves. They have survived this long. A very good point she made.

I was on high alert for the UPS truck. Every utility vehicle that rounded our busy corner made me look up to check. I never realized how many Brinks, FedEx and landscaping vehicles pass by us. I reread the parts of my bee book that explain how to properly handle bees; how to transfer bees; how to remain calm. The bee book says bees don’t like sweaty human smells and not overly clean synthetic scent smells. Oookay. I thought through how to time things so I could strike the balance of not sweaty but not too clean either. I also made a gallon of sugar water in advance so it could cool. I don’t know if I am allergic to bee stings and if it hasn’t been made clear, I was horribly unprepared for these bees. So naturally I had no Epipen. Between noon and three I expected UPS to deliver my veil and a smoker. I was hoping they’d included a spine in there as well.

I gathered the veil, smoker, dish gloves and white hoodie in a box feeling like a small but organized child with a plan. I used pine needles to light the smoker and watched thick smoke billow out immediately realizing neighbors will likely think there is a fire. I tried walking around to keep the smoke puffs dissipating or at least moving around so it would not look like a stationary thing on fire. I am not so sure it is better to think something that can run back and forth is leaving trails of smoke in its wake. In the moment it made sense. Not more than five minutes later I heard a helicopter and thought “No way! Do they circle our neighborhood looking for news?” Scared of attracting attention, I ran to the BBQ pit and held the cover in one hand and placed the smoker on the grill to make myself appear an amateur outdoor cook. This turned out to be safe spot to leave the smoker while I suited up.

It had not truly occurred to me how populated and visible of an area I live in until I put the white hoodie, gardener’s hat, gloves and beekeepers veil on. At a distance, I appear to be either handling toxic materials or pretending to be the Julianne Moore character “Carol” from the movie Safe. I was highly visible from three side of my yard.

Between getting things in place, freaking out about my visibility, the amount of smoke pouring out the smoker and anxiety about my first experience of handling bees, I started to sweat. Thinking of how sweat can provoke bees, I started to sweat some more. Nonetheless, I would not be stopped. Smoker in hand I embarked. I started to removed the top of the nuc box. It felt stuck in place so I had to jostle it a bit which made the bees started funneling around me. Then I realized the lid was screwed shut and I had no screwdriver. A few obscenities later, sweat now dripping and screwdriver in hand, I removed the lid. Claudio had said there were five frames. I am never sure if I know what he is talking about. Portuguese is his first language and his concepts sometimes seem like he is translating back and forth in his head losing pieces of his thoughts along the way. There were only three frames. Two of which were fused together so I lifted the one free frame and placed it in the hive. Then smoked the box some more and noticed my smoker was going out. I lifted the two heavily buzzing fused frames and placed these in the hive. With my smoker going out I wasn’t going to spend much time “getting to know” my bees. I did not examine the frames. I just lifted the nuc box and dumped the remaining bees into the hive along with some unidentifiable insect debris.

I placed the pollen patty on top of the frames, the feeder and cover on top of that, and lightly shoved the hive over to the exact place the nuc box had been. Apparently bees can easily get disoriented if you move their hive. My smoker was out and I was done for the day. No stings. This was a great start in my opinion.

Within my second year of growing food one of the common themes that kept coming up was of course, pollination. I tend my gardens without chemicals. That means no synthetic fertilizers and certainly no pesticides. I have been using many different techniques to ensure a well fed and abundant crop. I read that bees pollinate one third of the worlds crops. My mind reels at that fact. I also read about gardeners renting hives to boost their crop production. This piqued my interest in beekeeping, well that and the fresh harvest of honey. I suppose I could have entertained the notion of renting a beehive, but that’s not how I roll.

Since this initial interest with beekeeping, I have read books, spoken to beekeepers and attended bee club meetings about the different hive set ups for keeping bees. As my beekeeping friends Lawrence and Timur pointed out, there are as many ways to keep bees as there are people. Apparently, many people have their special way and they swear by it but one has to decide what works best for themselves.

While I wanted bees I wasn’t sure how ready I was and I’ve needed things to settle down after establishing the chicken coop, yeah, we have chickens too. Dipak adjusts well but he needs time to get used to each new element of my project. By now he likes, maybe even loves, the chickens.

So about three weeks ago a friend of mine, Claudio, whose business provides permaculture landscaping called me up to tell me he had just captured a swarm. He had them in what is called a nuc box (a wood box that can hold up to five Langstroth frames, a few screened holes for ventilation and a main hole for entering and exiting that can be blocked off for transport). My friend wanted to know if I wanted the bees. “Yes! Of course, I have wanted to try my hand at beekeeping for years. No way! I can’t. I don’t even have any equipment and Dipak has not been primed.”

Incidentally, I looked up the meaning of the word “prime.” Among the eight listed meanings was the transitive verb form of prime meaning “to provide somebody with large quantities of alcohol in order to prepare him or her for doing something.” I love it when there is a word to describe the exact idea I mean to convey.

So Claudio, dropped off a nuc box with bees a week ago. I had no proper hive, no tools, no veil. Just a good spot in the yard and a promise of pollen laden plants. Claudio and I opened the box to release the bees. Only a few larger bees came out, scouts, that started making large circles through my yard and my neighbors yard.

Dipak and I made a rush for Beekind in Sebastopol for a hive and veil at a minimum (they are a great place!). When we returned home several hours later, the bees were buzzing a lot outside of the box and I feared they were readying themselves to swarm. This was when I realized we had left our veil at the store. The bees had no food. I didn’t have a feeder and as mentioned, no veil, and no smoker. All I could do was paint the hive with a natural sealant called Soy Guard. I’ve bought this stuff before for sealing outdoor items at Urban Sprouts. Each time I’ve gone to get it at EcoHome the guys there tell me the owner of Soy Guard drinks it in front of customers to demonstrate how nontoxic it is. It may be “nontoxic” but the idea of drinking it makes me feel confused inside.

About prepping the hive, one is supposed to paint the outer parts of a hive with latex paint but I did not want to paint the wood. I was hoping this sealant would not only last a good long while but also be harmless enough to dry in 24 hours and not be bad for my new bees.

I placed a small tray of sugar water with lavender stems in it next to the hive as well as a small piece of pollen and waited to see what would happen. I’d heard about putting the lavender stems from another beekeeper. I think the stems were supposed to support the weight of the bees so they would not drown while sipping the sweet water, or maybe the scent attracts them to the water. Not sure on that but we shall see.