The Spring Buzz

We installed our first package of bees on May 10th, and they've been busy buzzing away since then! I worried, as I always do with new things, that something would go wrong, but our hive appears to be strong and healthy, and they're making solid progress.

These pictures were taken three weeks ago, and there's even more comb development now. The bees clustered around the queen (who is marked and has been seen recently), so I switched a few of the frames to spread them out. They started out all on one side of the hive.

Look at all the beautiful new comb they've built! For those of you who raise bees, yes, we're letting them go wild with the comb building, and I probably should have cut some of this off, but I simply couldn't bear to destroy something so gorgeous.

Up close and personal, each individual bee is doing her own thing. During inspection they hardly notice that you're watching them. They keep working, building, dancing, and buzzing along.

Clusters of adult bees protect young larvae from the chill of being exposed to the spring air. We try to observe our hive on warm, sunny days at about 2:00 PM when the workers are out gathering pollen and nectar.

Capped brood comb is a good sign! Bees only live for about 45 days, so they really need to start that next generation of youngsters quickly.

Sometimes the girls get a little creative with where they build comb. This bit was attached to the inside of the inner hive cover (I flipped it upside down when I removed it from the hive). I had to scrape this bit off with the hive tool, but it wasn't a tremendous loss to them. The real bonus was getting our first taste of honey from our own bees!! Sure, it tasted mostly like the sugar water we're feeding them, but it's the thought that counts.

Is anyone else starting off with bees this year?

Happy Anniversary to Us!

Where has the time gone? Really, folks. I mean it. I wake up and it's dark, my train ride to work is dark, the ride home is dark... It's no wonder the hens refuse to lay eggs when the days get shorter. But the specific time I'm referring to today is the year of blogging we've just completed! The first blog post here was on November 7th, 2009, and we've come a long way since those early days. Ready for a trip down memory lane?

Six tiny chicks showed up at the local post office in the late part of summer 2009. It was August, we had just gotten home from a great road trip vacation to Yellowstone NP, Grand Teton NP, and Glacier NP. (This was the vacation where Aimee really got to get in some serious "wheel time" driving the Subaru. I napped in the passenger seat and woke up to find her cruising along at 83 mph in Montana. Yikes!) The coop was nearly finished, and the brooder box was warm and waiting. Portia, Ellen, Raquel, Ursula, Ingrid, and Norma Jean all thrived in those late summer weeks. By December we had our first eggs.

Sadly, we lost one of our chicks in early 2010. Norma Jean, tragically named after Marylin Monroe, died young of an overdose. If only we could have sensed the foreboding in her name. It was a terribly sobering event after such initial success, and it forced us to come to terms with how attached we had become to our little ladies in the backyard.

Bartering eggs around the neighborhood opened up new lines of communication, friendship, and sharing, and we credit the chickens and the garden in the front yard for much of this. One neighbor was so caught up with the beauty of our hens than he asked us to raise a few for him. He built a great little coop and run, and his three chickens are now happy and healthy, and I think they're probably a bit spoiled.

That same batch of chicks brought three new lives into our own flock, though we could never have guessed how much they would teach us or force us to grow over the course of a summer. Winona, the luckiest (or unluckiest) little Wyandotte I have ever known, started out a little slower than her brooder box mates. I dropped a board on her and nearly killed her, but she simply refused to give up. After a few days in isolation under a heat lamp, she rejoined her sisters and has grown up to be pretty close to normal. As it turns out, her inability to prevent getting whacked by me is probably related to her scissor beak condition. To this day, her beak must be clipped regularly, her eyesight leaves a lot to be desired, and she's extremely shy about portait shots with the camera. Though she consistently peck an inch to the left of snacks on the ground, she's a fighter. In other words, she's really darned plump.

Dark Meat is the embodiment of pure joy. I have yet to capture a video of her antics, but believe me that it will be worth the wait when that movie shows up. Perhaps a dedicated post to our funniest chick is in order soon. Neither of the two youngers chickens have started to lay eggs, and this Friday they will be 33 weeks old. They seem to have the support of the toughest chicken union I have ever negotiated with.

Rusty, formerly known as Milla, was the most robust, beautiful, and biggest chick we had ever seen. We remained firmly in denial about his gender until the infamous "borkle" sound I heard one afternoon. We struggled with our decision to slaughter him, and we learned so much about respect and personal limits, none of which were anticipated. Though we have received some criticism about butchering our own animal, it was an important step for the future farm we will someday own. On a personal level, slaughtering an animal I genuinely loved has changed my internal compass for eating, and it has opened my eyes to behaviors and practices I feel I can no longer ignore.

We cut down the massive, very old, and incredibly frail douglas fir in our front yard during the peak of the summer heat. That seemingly simple act has opened up a world of possibility for our small raised bed garden, and we are now looking forward to more work, more harvesting, and more sunlight in our future.

What's to come in the future? If we have learned anything in the last year of urban farming it is that planning is fun, but the farm will make its own decisions with or without our input. Below is a list of hopes, and some of them feel a bit like New Year's resolutions, which is to say that fulfilling or ignoring them are both viable options.

• Honey bees are the next big goal. We'll be starting out with a single hive in the front yard in the spring, and we hope to learn much about the lives and organization of bees, pollination, listening to the weather, and collecting honey.
• Meat birds are the next logical step after Rusty. Though this particular item is under some heavy scrutiny at the moment, it will eventually happen in the coming years, even if next year is not good timing.
• The garden shed will be getting a concrete floor, and we hope to have this completed before the end of 2010. Both it and the garage could use a lot of love and work, but we'll handle that one project at a time. In the meantime, we need a safe place for storage, and we're looking forward to growing more of our garden starts under cover.
• The reclaimed "acreage" in the front yard needs to be converted into beds and a mini orchard. Building raised beds can be a lot of work, but we've had such great success with those that we already have, and Aimee really wants a place to grow raspberries. I'm hoping to rig one or more of them to accomodate a mini hoop house for tomatoes, cukes, and possibly some other fun veggies.
• The line of stumps in the backyard is gone, thanks to the fine efforts of the chickens. A second mini orchard may find its home there.
• Our parking strip is the last vestige of grass (by which I mostly mean weeds and clover) in front of the house. One bed of herbs is already planted, and at least four more are planned. In my mind (as idyllic and ridiculous as it is known to be), I imagine our neighbors casually wandering over to clip oregano and parsley for their dinners in the summer evenings. In reality, I am prepared for more than a little cat poop.
• Many of the bedding plants around the house are going to be removed and re-homed to make way for rhubarb, berries, and who-knows-what-else. We both agree that the calla lilies are waning, the single mum doesn't get enough light, and the dhalia always gets infested with aphids. It's time for edible permaculture.

Are we too ambitious? Probably, but it's always funny to watch us try. Stay tuned over the next year to see what really gets done. What are your plans for gardens, farms, animals, and such?

I Did It!

I am officially an Apprentice Beekeeper! I took my test this morning and carried it into Beez Neez, got it scored, and got congratulated by Jim, store owner and regular member and officer of the NWDBA (Northwest District Beekeepers Association). Let the hive plans begin!

Busy Bee Plans

Last Saturday I took a class on beginning beekeeping. I had a great time. Washington State University runs all of the agricultural programs in the state, and, together with the Washington State Beekeepers Association, provides opportunities for people to take classes in varying levels of beekeeping skill. Becoming an Apprentice Beekeeper requires one eight hour class or a series of five two hour classes in which you learn the basics of bee entomology, hive culture, honey and comb collection, pest and disease management, and the bee geek language. At the end you take a test. A score of 80% in each section is required to pass. Here in western Washington, there are a number of different club chapters that put these classes on throughout the year. Mine was sponsored by the Northwest District Beekeepers Association, which mainly serves Snohomish County. Our teacher was Jim, owner of the Beez Neez Apiary and Supply in downtown Snohomish.

Have any of you taken one of these classes? Do you raise honey bees? My class was pretty intense. There's a lot to cover in just eight hours, and it's tough to get all your questions answered in that span of time. Below are some of the things I learned that seemed most interesting or most important for our first venture into the world of honey.

Jim from Beez Neez placing a frame of bees, comb, and brood into his new display hive. This hive will sit in his store throughout the year so that people can come in and watch the bees through the glass. They're connected to the outside world by a clear plastic pipe on the left side of the hive box, which feeds into a second tube in the side of the building. When Jim finished, he rolled the hive back into the store.

• Bees regulate the temperature in their hive. How do they do this? A group of individual bees will sit at the bottom entrance of the hive and flap their little wings like mad. This pushes cool air up into the hive and gets the hot air moving out. In the winter they can keep the core of the hive at about 87 degrees. It may be chilly outside, but the bees inside huddle into a clump to keep warm. For this reason, it's really important not to open your hive unless it's over 50 degrees out. And you shouldn't try to inspect brood comb (where the little babies are growing) unless it's at least 60 degrees.
• Bees don't function as individuals. I can think of lots of Star Trek themes that fit this very well. Rather than consider their own needs, the bees will function as a unit, doing whatever will benefit the hive most. Therefore it makes sense that much of a bee's life is sacrificial. A sting to protect the colony ends their life. Mating ends a drone's life. It seems cruel to us, but it's natural for bees to operate this way.
• A varied diet is a balanced diet. Bees need to collect many colors of pollen to get the protein and vitamins they need to thrive. When commercial beekeepers use their colonies to pollinate crops like sunflowers, the bees end up with severe nutrient defficiencies. Most bees will find what they need on their own, and you can check what kind of pollen they're getting into with a pollen collector. Some people will even pay big bucks for bee pollen!
• When laying eggs, the queen bee can decide the gender of her offspring. If she lays a fertile egg, it will become a female. All unfertilized eggs become drone males. How about that.
• Propolis, or bee glue, is one of the key ingredients in the varnish on a Stradivarius violin. It will also stain your clothes if you're not careful.

You can't imagine just how much info got crammed into my little brain. I still need to take my test and mail it in for my Apprentice certificate, but there's time. Hive and bee orders don't need to happen until early in the year, so now is the time to plan. What kind of hive should we try? Traditional Langstroth or something more like a top bar hive? One hive or two? And, most importantly, where do we put our hive(s)? We still haven't firmly decided to start keeping bees in the spring, but taking this class really helped me understand the work, patience, and determination we'll need to be successful.

And I love honey.

Maybe that's motivation enough.

Are you curious about bees? Check out this link from WSU, or contact your local agricultural extension office for more help. Find an issue of Bee Culture Magazine at your local library. Even the New York Times likes to write about bees! Keeping bees in the city represents some unique challenges, so please comment or email us with your questions, suggestions, ideas, and experiences.