Backyard Bee Hive Blog

Deep Top Bar Hive, designed by Marty Hardison

2024-10-15T09:51:00.001-06:00

The Deep Hardison Hive

Here is a new picture of the deep Hardison Hive. Marty has enjoyed 100% survival rates in them, and he's fine-tuned their construction. The plans to construct the original Hardison Hive are included in The Appropriate Beehive. On clicking through, you will need to request access to the document.

"There is nothing fancy about adding 4 inches to my standard hive. I just cut 4-inch wide boards of the same wood the hive body was built out of. Then drilled down the center of the boards deep enough to screw them into the existing hive body. But I also screw the end of the boards together. This enables my bees to have a larger enough cluster to survive Denver winters."

As you can see, he also adds protection over that wide seam. Nothing fancy. Once the bees propolize the inside, the seam will be wind- and water-tight. If you have any questions for Marty, just drop a comment. I'll make sure he gets it!

P.S.: Marty always says he's doing a good job as a teacher if his students want to do something contrary to his way. It means they're thinking. So if I were building a deep hive, I think I'd add holes as upper entrances (like Wyatt Mangum does) and some flashing just under that new face plate to create a little awning.

Beeswax Wraps & 3 DIY tips that work!

2024-10-13T22:00:00.004-06:00

Determined to make a substitute for plastic cling wrap and foil, today's post is to share lessons learned from making beeswax wraps. In case you've got the crazy idea to make your own beeswax wraps, I made all the mistakes so you don't have to. I hope I can save you some trouble.

DIY beeswax wraps that work! A 5" wrap covers a Oui jar perfectly. A 7" wrap is more than ample for an 8-ounce ramekin. If you really want to skip the mess, you can buy the ready-to-use wafers in my Etsy shop.

Tip #1: Don't make wraps with nothing but beeswax. Wraps made with pure beeswax alone are brittle and don't cling at all. If you're a beekeeper with a Warré Hive and tried this method, the 100% beeswax wrap "fails" are fantastic between the top bars and quilt!

Tip #2: A little oil provides flexibility, so your wraps bend without cracking. A wax/oil version is a great foil substitute. It's bendy and holds its shape but doesn't make an airtight seal. Stay away from cooking oils with short shelf lives. I like meadowfoam, which is a North American native wildflower. It has a longer shelf life than jojoba oil.

Tip #3: Resin is what puts the cling in DIY cling wrap. It gives it some stickiness. If you're wondering about using propolis—the resin-like substance made by bees—at the amount needed to create cling, it imparts a strong odor and bitter taste to wrapped items. And I mean really bitter. Invest in pine resin in powder form; chunk form takes too long to melt, which degrades your wax/oil. A 1-pound bag of pine resin will make about 12 dozen wraps. (If you find a smaller bag for less than $15, please let me know!)

If you're ready to embark on making your own, my formulation makes an extra sticky blend for beeswax wraps that actually work! I'm providing volume measurements for convenience but, especially if small-batch crafting, I highly recommend a quality digital scale like a MyWeigh, which is accurate to a tenth of a gram.

DIY Beeswax Wraps Recipe

Makes ~(5) 12"x12" wraps.

60 g. beeswax (about 1/2 c. pastilles)
20 g. pine resin (about 2 1/2 Tbsp.)
12 g. jojoba (1 Tbsp) oil

Melt everything together using a water bath, stirring until completely blended. I use a milk frothing pitcher set in a small sauce pot over medium heat, and it takes about 15-20 minutes to make sure the resin is completely dissolved. The resin sinks to the bottom, so you'll know it's fully dissolved when you don't feel your stirring tool dragging anymore. Double-check that there aren't globs stuck to your stirrer, though.

PRO TIPS: Resin needs a good amount of heat to melt. Maintain a high simmer. Wet your resin powder with the carrier oil first, to help prevent clumping.

Instead of brushing the liquid mixture onto fabric, I pour it thinly into molds. Once set, I pop out a few wafers and iron them into fabric that's in-between sheets of parchment paper. You want to barely saturate the fabric, but if you put on too much just use the iron to push the excess out past the fabric edges (but still inside the parchment sheets). Using another piece of fabric to absorb it, it's almost zero waste and cleanup is a breeze. This is especially why I love the wafer/iron method.

A "cake mold" like this one is about $9 on Amazon. Clean each well with a cotton swab and rubbing alcohol for a polished finished piece.

Beeswax Wraps Wafers

Quick to melt, three wafers will treat a large piece of tight-weave fabric. My first beeswax wraps were made out of an old but high-quality cotton percale pillowcase, upcycling at its best. An economical option is remnants at your local fabric store (mine is Joann), or buy quilting squares or fat quarters are cute and fun.

I prefer to wax my fabric first and cut it to size afterward, which minimizes fraying.

Use a rotary cutter or pinking shears if you have them. Either will reduce fraying but you'll always have loose threads… don't pull them! You can hem the edges if you're sewing the fabric into a baggie.

It's easy to pinch pieces off the wafers, to ensure even coverage. You move the pools of wax with your iron so you don't have to be perfect or precise. Be sure to place a piece of parchment paper underneath and on top.

Because my friends say things like, "You should sell these on Etsy," you can buy my Beeswax Wraps Waxing Wafers, four for $4.

etsy.com/shop/BackyardBeeHive – DIY beeswax wraps waxing wafers, premixed

If you'd rather not spend $15 for resin and make 144 wraps, then these ready-to-use waxing wafers are for you! If you have year-old wraps that have lost their stickiness and need a refresh, these waxing wafers are for you! Or if you have beeswax wraps that weren't sticky enough in the first place, these waxing wafers are for you!

My Beeswax Wraps Waxing Wafers are four for $4 (plus cost to mail). Four wafers will make up to nine (9) wraps with plenty leftover for touch-ups. Depending on how you cut it, from one quilting square you can make:

three 7x7" (small) and two 10x13" (medium) wraps
3 small, (1) 7x13" (rectangular medium), and (1) 13x13" (large) wrap
3 small and 1 extra-large 13x20" wrap (perfect for covering a lasagna pan with handles)

Remember, you're not limited to squares or rectangles. I find rounds to be the most versatile. The cast-offs make terrific fire starters, and I mean terrific. 🔥 Or don't cut the quilting square at all, and sew it into a plastic-free baggie. The possibilities are endless.

DIY Beeswax Wraps Waxing Wafers

BONUS TIP for making it to the end of this post: Making DIY, and indeed using, beeswax wraps is messy business. Rubbing alcohol will clean up drips and smudges, and hand sanitizer is your skin's best friend.

Quickly request EpiPens with 24/7 virtual care @ Amazon

2024-09-21T13:31:00.005-06:00

Did you know…? Even if you don't have a doctor or insurance, you can get Epinephrine auto-injectors (EpiPens)! A virtual visit (telehealth) with a doctor with Amazon One Medical is just $29.

While the cost to get your scrip is low, without insurance the cost to fill your prescription is still going to run you a couple hundred bucks, easily. But I thought I'd mention this option for people, especially those in the Medicaid gap, who need an epi auto-injector: OneMedical Epinephrine auto-injectors (EpiPens)

The complete list of conditions Amazon One Medical covers can be found here: https://health.amazon.com/onemedical/ppv/getstarted

Marty Hardison's Appropriate Beehive

2024-07-28T22:30:00.004-06:00

Here's a sneak peek at Marty Hardison's redesigned top bar hive.

A new hive design, adjusting for climate change. Building specs to come.

He's having better success getting colonies through winters with this revised appropriate beehive.

Appropriate Beehive?

ap·pro·pri·ate
🔈 /əˈprōprēət/
adjective: suitable or proper in the circumstances

The NOAA climate forecast for Colorado predicts more heat, more drought, and greater amounts of winter snow, changes which have implications for colony survival. Good beekeepers give the bees what they need, when they need it, so Marty's adjusting what constitutes appropriate.

Having observed colonies in bee trees that have been surviving for years, whose combs are long not wide, he's made his hive 4 inches deeper to allow the bees to build longer combs. The new design still uses 16 1/2" top bars, which allows for interchangeability between hives and makes this design appropriate for both the bees and the beekeeper.

Marty isn't actively teaching the craft anymore, so he and I have been working on updating his booklet, The Appropriate Beehive. An instrumental guide, it includes building plans for the original Hardison Hive. On clicking through, you will need to request access to the document but if you do, I will send you the updated PDF as soon as it's available. I'm not sure I can promise instructions on adding the additional four inches to the top, but the new edition offers more details on keeping bees in a top bar hive that beginning topbar beekeepers will appreciate.

It's Make It Monday! How to craft without buying a single supply.

2024-02-12T07:00:00.051-07:00

Did you know you can make customized products on Zazzle? I've toyed with it on and off, don't fully grasp how it works, but have made passive income every year since 2018. For 2023, the sent me a check for $50 which cost me $80 to report on my taxes. But, hey, it's fun and I get to make stuff without buying a single craft supply. So worth it.

What is "passive income" you ask? Bottom line, after your create a design and start selling it, you earn royalties and get paid without having to do anything else. No packaging, no printing packing lists or labels, no trips to the post office. Zazzle does all that for you.

My Bee Merry, Bee Golden, and customizable beekeeper photo holiday cards are my biggest sellers, but here are a few of my favorite items for the rest of the year. I especially love my pillow, which is a two-sided design that you can get in cotton, poly, or even outdoor material. There's probably a Zazzle-way to flip the pillow, but until I find it you'll have to click though to see the other side. Hope you like it as much as I do!

Queen Bee 2-Sided Throw Pillow

Crowned Queen Bee Cusomizable Mug

The thing I like most about Zazzle is being able to transfer a design to another product in mere seconds. Say you like the crowned queen bee design but you want it on a phone case instead. Easy peasy! Just click on "Transfer design to a product" and pick the product you need. Choosing from over 1,000 products is the hard part.

I put together a collection to give you ideas. Have fun!

Queen Bee on Honeycomb Customizable Gifts
Designed on Zazzle by BackyardBee

And here's what I'm getting for Valentine's Day and my Mom is getting for Mother's Day!

Hail to the Queen Bee, Customizable Lover's Mugs
Designed on Zazzle by BackyardBee

PastryMade Rolling Pins: 5 Tips to Roll with the Best!

2024-02-05T06:00:00.179-07:00

If you're wondering if PastryMade's rolling pins are worth the splurge, they are! The designs are laser-etched deeply to give you great results. There are dozens to choose from, and several are bee-themed. I bought Honeycomb, Morning Birds, and my third pin (not shown) is the Stand with Ukraine one, which literally supports families in the Ukraine.

Their butter cookie recipe (below) makes a really nice cookie that's not particularly sweet but not particularly rich either. Tender crisp, they are perfect with a cup of tea. The recipe is super easy, but here are some tips to help you get the best results from your specialty pins.

Tip #1: the Regular size is more than adequate, no need to spend another $10 for the Big rolling pin.

Tip #2: use spoon butter to prep your pins

Tip #3: a Silpat will give you the classic, blonde shortbread cookie look

Tip #4: rice flour gives you a nonstick work surface and tender reworked dough

Tip #5: clean the grooves with a toothbrush for perfect impressions time and time again.

These fall somewhere between a sugar cookie and a classic shortbread.

Butter cookies made with the Honeycomb Rolling Pin.

I've made these with Irish butter and supermarket butter, and it doesn't make a huge difference. You can even use salted butter if that's what you've got. With the exception of needing to use a scale, it's a very forgiving recipe. The volume measurements (in parentheses) are close approximations.

Morning Birds, bottoms dipped in chocolate. A little bottom browning helps balance the flavors.

The recipe makes about 60 cookies. I can fit two dozen on a half-sheet and bake two sheets at a time, so the time spent actually baking is short. It's a good idea to bake one tray to start, to determine if you need to adjust your oven temperature up or down.

With the oven at the right temperature, baked cookies won't look much different from unbaked ones.

I bake at 350°F when using Super Parchment (top tray above), which tends to bottom brown the cookies, whereas Silpat (bottom tray above) isn't prone to that. I prefer my shortbreads blonde, but color = flavor so go for it if that's what you like.

The recipe makes about 60 cookies.

PASTRYMADE BUTTER COOKIES

butter 200g / 7.05 oz. (14 Tbsp.)
1 egg
2 T. olive oil (I prefer something neutral, like avocado oil)
pinch of salt
flour 400g / 14.1 oz. (shy 3¼ cups)
icing (powdered) sugar 150g / 5.25 oz. (1⅓ c.)

It doesn't get any easier than this! Place all (room temperature) ingredients in the bowl of a mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix until thoroughly combined. Roll, cut, bake.

Ready for the TMI?

Rest the dough in the fridge while you prep your rolling pin(s). I don't like the idea of using oil, which will eventually go rancid. Instead, I recommend treating it with spoon butter, which is more durable and won't need to be repeated as often. Use a manual toothbrush to really work it into the engraved details. The warmth of your hands can help it penetrate the wood.

Working with half the dough, use a regular rolling pin and roll to a thickness somewhere between ⅛- and ¼-inch. Lightly dusting your work surface and the dough with rice flour will help you get the best impression from your engraved pin. Rice flour has no gluten so won't toughen up your cookies even after rerolling the scraps.

Though the pins spin nicely on their handles, I find that using them requires a slight forward push which stretches and tears the dough. Not using the handles, treating it like a French pin, works better for me. Use more downward pressure than forward pressure (though I suppose you could start from the far edge and roll toward yourself). For evenly thick cookies start to finish, make a mental note of how the downward pressure feels. The dough expands forward as it's manipulated by a small amount, but there is no stretching (so there's no rebound and your cookies keep their shape as they bake). If the impression isn't as intense as you'd hoped, you can flip the dough over and try again if it's thick enough. I probably do it 50% of the time.

My favorite cutters are a fluted 38mm/1½" and 48mm/1⅞". Since the cookies don't expand, I place them practically touching each other on a lined half-sheet. Silpat are ideal. Super Parchment is a less expensive sustainable option. Parchment paper, especially the thin cheap kind, can get wavy as the dough releases moisture, producing cookies that aren't flat. Gather the scraps, reroll and cut until you run out of dough. You'll roll out the other half of the dough while the first batch bakes.

Clean the pin with the toothbrush if the dough starts sticking (and when you're done for the day). To help the pattern be most visible, PastryMade recommends chilling the sheet of cookies for 20-30 minutes but I don't bother. While the oven preheats and by the time I've loaded up two cookie sheets, they've rested plenty.

The original recipe says to bake at 200°, which I didn't realize was Celsius until several minutes after they were supposed to be done baking, they just looked wet and raw. Converted that's 392°F but I find it too hot. It makes the cookies puff up so the design gets stretched and muted, plus the cookies don't bake through evenly. At lower temperatures, the cookies don't budge, so the design stays crisp and the bottom is evenly golden. As with all cookies, if you don't see them at least starting to turn gold on the edges, you run the risk of the cookies tasting flour-y and being a little chewy (underbaked). You can bake multiple trays at a time, rotating and swapping trays midway. Depending on how thick your cookies are, bake for 9-15" per batch. Transfer the cookies to a cooling rack and repeat with the other half of the dough.

These cookies taste like a lightly sweet, classic shortbread. A trio of them is a good accompaniment to a cup of tea any day.

BONUS TIPS for making it to the bottom of this post!

#1: No Pressure! the Buy 2 Get 1 promotion is perpetual, despite PastryMade's constant ads (and website) saying Only Today. Try THANKS10 for 10% off your order.

#2: Use milk chocolate if you're decorating the cookies; their delicately flavor is overwhelmed by dark chocolate.

#3: Scraping seeds from half a vanilla bean gives these simple cookies a greater depth of flavor.

Let me know if you make these cookies, and if you used a fancy rolling pin!

A beekeeper's winter reading list: 3 ultrashort book reviews

2023-12-02T09:54:00.012-07:00

The title is one of many honey bee factoids smattered throughout the book.

A Honeybee Heart Has Five Openings: A Year of Keeping Bees

Originally from London, Helen Jukes gets lucky in a multitude of ways, not the least of which is friends who gifted her bees… and Luke Dixon for a beekeeping mentor! She's a bit on the nerdy side, and there's lots of beekeeping facts and factoids in her memoir. Plus she has a top bar hive! ⭐⭐⭐⭐ I'd've given it 5-stars if the title were more than a factoid. Maybe it's a hint that this is a "I found love" story? If so, I don't know what the other four things she found were. Read it and let me know what I missed!

Another true story, Meredith May, weaves a surprising amount of beekeeping details into The Honey Bus.

The Honey Bus: A Memoir of Loss, Courage and a Girl Saved by Bees

A broken family at a young age, displaced and impoverished… This one resonated with me because my mom, like Meredith's, had a seriously messed up childhood which was not without ramifications for her children. But her grandfather is a beekeeper, and life lessons from him and the bees enable her to not just survive but to triumph. "He showed me how bees are loyal and brave, how they cooperate and strive, all the things I'd need to be when it was my time to navigate solo." This book made me really miss beekeeping! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

My husband is getting me a t-shirt that says, "I read banned books. 📚"
Trigger warnings: attempted suicide, bullying, child abuse, domestic violence, LGBTQIA+ violence

Mad Honey: A Novel by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan

Every time I get vaccinated, I tell the nurse that I completed VIT. Naturally, the beekeeping conversation ensues, and this time the nurse said, "You must read Mad Honey!" You would not expect a murder mystery to have the word "bees" 39 times in chapter one, but wow, what a great start. Of course there's a plot twist, and this one's was unexpected in not the usual unexpected way. If you're looking for more inclusiveness in your literature, this New York Times Bestseller covers the bases. At the end there are recipes. The one I'm wanting to make the most instructs, "Bake in oven for 40 minutes, or until an impossible thing comes true. Whichever comes first." ⭐⭐⭐⭐ (Download the PDF from the Google Colaboratory.)

Who else picks books by their covers?

Glory Be by Danielle Arceneaux. Set in Louisiana (relatively close by), another crime and social issues novel is my next pick. What's on your reading list?

Olympian Fig Tree, Air Layer vs. Cutting Prop

2023-10-29T13:47:00.024-06:00

On the topic of bees, figs can't be bee-pollinated! Their flowers are inverted and require a specialized pollinator. They're pollinated by wasps, aptly called fig wasps.

OFF-TOPIC: Here's an update on my fig tree propagations. As a reminder, to produce two new trees (from one that was dying from Root Knot Nematodes) in July 2023, I took one stem cutting and did an air-layer. The timing was ideal, but I didn't know if one method was better than the other. Have a look at how they compare.

(L) Cut branch propagation, 6-weeks from being taken off the donor plant (R) and being rooted in soil. Here it's getting its third pot-up. The donor plant is no worse for the wear of taking props but also no signs of improvement in re: RKN.

(L) Air-layered propagation, 6 weeks of root formation despite my negligence and letting the sphagnum dry out. It's getting its first pot-up. Click on the picture for a zoomable view.

Late-August 2023 (a month since taking the cuttings): The cutting prop lost all but one leaf but then grew so fast it had to be potted up three times. It put all its energy into a single trunk. The well-rooted air-layer prop's first potting was into a 1-gallon nursery pot, where it sent up a whole new branch. The difference in leaf size is remarkable. The cutting (in the grow bag in the photo below) is pushing out huge leaves and the trunk is thickening up nicely, too. Figs like full sun, so I wonder what difference leaf size will make in fruit production.

Another 6 weeks: The air-layer prop doubled its number of leaves and is working to push out a third branch. I wasn't planning on potting up again but the squirrels dumped it over, looking for a place to plant acorns.

It rains so much here, 20 inches in a 3-month period this summer, there's no such thing as a pot with too much drainage. Fabric grow bags work pretty well but you do have to watch out for mold and mushrooms growing on the bags. I haven't had ants move into my grow bags like they do my plastic pots. Every pot with a drainage hole has an ant problem, that is, until I scratch neem seed meal into the soil. It takes care of them like magic! Even though I have a solution, I'd rather not have the problem in the first place, so I'm switching to grow bags whenever possible.

The green fibrous stuff is Better Than Rocks, which I use in my outdoor pots with drainage holes. It is the only thing I've found that keeps the ants from using the holes as doorways to their new favorite home.

I repotted the dumped over fig into a grow bag like its sibling. It's not quite apples-to-apples, though, because it has superior drainage with a bottom layer of Better Than Rocks. I think container grown figs need that, and if they aren't getting it they let you know through brown spots on the leaves.

The Three Little Figs

October 2023: I finally found a use for nonrecyclable plastic onion bags! They're pretty effective at keeping the squirrels from planting acorns (until they break apart from exposure to the elements). The purple one is the cutting prop, red is the air-layered prop. See the difference in leaf size? The comparison is somewhat unfair, though. The air-layer was attached to a stressed donor plant (on the right). It's got lots of fresh RKN galls so the neem seed meal and straight vermicompost did not remedy that problem. I'm having a hard time with the thought of throwing it away but it's too late in the year to take more propagations. What would you do?

Winter's are pretty mild in coastal VA.

The trees stayed outside all winter, their pots simply snugged up against the brick wall of our condo. They even held their leaves throughout the dormancy period, Nov-March.

April 2024 Update: The cutting prop is single-stemmed and about 2-feet tall. The air-layer tree split into two branches so is half the height. I'll share with you if its the lateral structure is more fruitful than the vertical, tree form.

tree-form from cutting prop (L), multi-stem from air-layer prop (R)

June Update: double bumps! They're a fig tree thing. One bud is a lateral (branch) bud; the other is a figlet or fig "embryo." Fig trees generally bear fruit on new, growing shoots (green wood) but may also fruit on one-year-old stems.

Double Bump: which is a branch bud and which is a figlet is TBD. Gotta guess?

July 2024, one year since taking the cuttings: no update but here's a recipe! Roasted Figs with Mascarpone, from Mark Bittman's How to Bake Everything (highly recommend!)

July: the cutting-prop tree, right outside the kitchen door, is now 3-feet tall.

Late-August 2024 update: no fig fruit this year

purple = cutting propagated, single-stemmed fig tree; red = air-layer propagated, multi-branched fig tree

I'm seeing figs at the farmers markets, so I guess all my trees are giving me in 2024 is vegetative growth. One-year old trees are capable of fruiting but mine are waiting for year 2. As a matter of fact, I can see the formation of a breba! Brebas are a small Spring crop produced on last year's new growth. According to the Fig Boss, it comes 4-6 weeks ahead of the main Summer crop.

Double bumps on the vertical tree form (cutting prop). Pointy buds are branch buds.

The rounded bump is the breba. It's on the multi-branched shrub form.

Both trees are in 3-gallon plastic pots. In the spring, I will probably pot them up into 5- or 7-gallon ones as their permanent home. That's as big as I can go with my tine patio garden. That's it for now. Hope your summer's been brilliant!

More reading on fig pollination: Everything You Never Wanted To Know About Figs

HOW TO: Using Waxing Wafers to make DIY Beeswax Wraps

2023-10-26T12:18:00.003-06:00

Waxing wafers are beeswax, resin and jojoba oil in convenient Ready-to-Use premixed form. Use to make new food wrappers, or to refresh ones you already own. Available now in my Etsy shop.

Whether you're reducing plastic use or substituting foil, my formulation is extra sticky, so your DIY beeswax wrappers will actually work!

SUGGESTED USE

Small Wrap (7 x 7 inch): 1/2 wafer
Medium Wrap (13 x 13 inch): 2 wafers
Large Wrap (16 x 16 inch): 3 wafers
Jumbo Wrap (20 x 20 inch): 4 wafers
Infinitely Useful Gift Wrap (25 x 25): 4 wafers – using saved ribbons to tie up presents, you can make even larger wraps that become gifts themselves. Gifts that keep on giving!

DIY Beeswax Wraps Waxing Wafers, 4 for $3 plus cost to mail

What You’ll Need

DIY Beeswax Wraps Waxing Wafers from my Etsy shop
tight weave fabric, preferably 100% cotton or other lightweight natural fiber
a clothing iron
two pieces of baking parchment, heavy duty if available
heat-safe working surface like an ironing board; I use a 13x18" Epicurean cutting board
scissors (or pinking shears for less fraying)

Lay a sheet of parchment on your work surface.
Lay your fabric on the parchment.
Set your iron to cotton (medium-high).
Pinch off pieces of waxing wafer and distribute them over your fabric. Not too much! It's better to put on too little, getting the dry spots in a second pass.
Cover with another sheet of parchment.
Press the iron over the wax pieces, spreading the pools of melted wax outward. Try to stay within the confines of the parchment.
Peel off and let cool (about 30 seconds). Your beeswax wrap is ready to use!

Clean as you work. Use hand sanitizer to clean sticky fingers before handling your iron.

Watching the wax melt and move under the parchment is the fun part!

Don't forget to turn off and unplug your iron.

TIPS

If you do use too much, iron another piece of fabric over the extra-waxy spot and it'll absorb it.
Cutting to size after waxing the fabric results in less fraying than cutting beforehand. Hemming the edges is not recommended unless you're sewing a plastic-free baggie.
When finished, save the parchment. The wax that has cooled on it is ideal for refreshing work-weary wraps.
Use rubbing alcohol to clean the handle of your iron, and other waxy smudges.
Use hand sanitizer to clean tacky fingers.

USE & CARE

Store unused waxing wafers in a cool, dry place. Best if used within 2 years.
Unlike plastic wrap which clings readily to glass and ceramic, beeswax wrap functions a little differently. Beeswax wrap clings more to itself than whatever you're wrapping. Pleat and press it onto itself until you're happy with the seal.
If you were generous with the wax application, you'll find waxy residue on your unwrapped items. A little rubbing alcohol will clean that right up, but don't use it on anything painted or varnished.
To clean your wraps, wipe gently and rinse with cool-to-tepid water. Use a very small amount of dish soap if necessary. Do not scrub. Hang to dry.

I hope this helps you on your plastic-free journey. Leave any questions/comments you have below.

https://backyardbeehive.etsy.com/listing/1551131475/diy-beeswax-wraps-waxing-wafers-premixed

In complete transparency, sometimes a container has a funny shape so I use a rubber band to secure its wrap. It enables me to stay plastic-free, and that makes me happy.

The Elizabethan Gardens

2023-09-24T12:10:00.008-06:00

The URL 303beekeeper.com is for sale. Just comment on this post if interested.

Did you know the honey bee is the state insect of North Carolina?

If you're ever in coastal North Carolina, I highly recommend visiting the Elizabethan Gardens on Roanoke Island. Their website says the crepe myrtles bloom for 101 days out of the year, so we caught them on, oh, Day 90? The dark pink and red ones seem to be the ones that bloom this late in the year. Even though not in full bloom, the grounds are really unique, with pops of color and lots of interesting things to see.

Visitors enter the garden through the Gate House.

The Gate House is also a gift shop with a collection of "inspired by nature" pottery by a local artist, Amy Gentry. She must be a 'keeper because all her pieces were bee-themed.

Let it Bee tee, $32

There are also things not-for-sale, like the portrait of Queen Elizabeth I, oil on panel, circa 1592. Seems like a 431-year-old painting should be in a museum, but you'll find it along with other period antiquities in the gate house.

Small skep candles, $8

Tea lights, $5

Dedicated area for Plant Sales

Though they sell native and pollinator plants, I didn't find anything appropriate for my tiny home garden. Inside the greenhouses, I found some nice 'Tineke' rubber trees and String of Bananas succulents.

String of Bananas is a good-for-beginners and travelers houseplant.

Bumble bee inside a 'Starry Night' swamp rose mallow (Hibiscus moscheutos), a cold-hardy perennial wetland plant.

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail on Pentas, which guarantee visits by butterflies and hummingbirds, too.

a foolproof way of attracting hummingbirds and butterflies, too.

Read more at Gardening Know How: Growing Penta Plants: How To Care For Pentas https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/ornamental/flowers/pentas/growing-penta-plants.htm

Marble sculpture of Virginia Dare (carved in 1859) in an old-growth forest of oaks, underplanted with impatiens.

In case you don't know who Virginia Dare is, born in 1587 she was the first child born in what would become the United States. The colony vanished mysteriously, and the statue is the artist's conception of what she might have looked like if she had grown up. She's wearing a fishing net, and the laces of an Indian princess around her neck and arms.

The Grandiflora is a result of crossing a Floribunda with a hybrid tea rose, and is often considered to be the most popular variety of rose. One of the first roses to be classified as a Grandiflora was the 'Queen Elizabeth' in 1954.

Construction of the Elizabethan Gardens began in 1953, on the date Queen Elizabeth II was crowned Queen of England. The Queen’s Rose Garden was dedicated in honor of HRH in 1976. In 1984, she recognized the historical significance of Roanoke Island on the 400^th anniversary of the arrival of English explorers, and later gifted the Gardens a 'Queen Elizabeth' Grandiflora from the Royal Rose Gardens at Windsor Castle.

🤦🏼 What's wrong with this sign?

Fun Fact: The common eastern bumble bee is distinctive as the only bumble bee with a single yellow stripe at the top of its abdomen. The rest of the abdomen is completely black.

Statues center each of the four quadrants of parterres.

An ancient Italian fountain is the focal point of the Sunken Garden, which consists of 32 identical parterres. Clipped dwarf yaupon hollies surround an ever changing display of annual flowers, set low in the hedges to beg a closer look. There are cast and marble statues throughout the 10-acre garden.

An ancient oak, believed to have been living when the first Roanoke colonists arrived in 1585; butterfly house in the background.

April through September, the Gardens host butterfly releases, the $25 cost of which includes admission and a butterfly.

The wellhead has a water bubbler in it, but there are biting insects at the Gardens so it is good to bring insect repellent with you.

The Mount, centered with a carved Porphyry marble wellhead, serves as an axis from which four paths radiate out towards the Sunken Garden, Virginia Dare statue and main path of the Gardens.

Camellia oversees the plant sales.

Even with spending some time oceanside (hoping to spy a sea turtle like the one posted in a Google review), it took under two hours to explore the entire garden. I imagine it would take 3-4 if there were actually flowers to look at, and forget it if there were bees! Have you been? Where should we go next?

Olympian Fig Propagation & RKN Part 2

2023-07-13T11:43:00.017-06:00

My Olympian fig has been looking pretty good in spite of the RKN infestation. Here is how it looks in direct comparison to two months ago when I repotted it in vermicompost. Same shape but a little bigger and more leafy. There's a nice new branch coming straight up the middle that you can't see.

To my dismay, upon entering the hot and humid, plant stressors time of year, black spots are developing on the leaves. Maybe the RKN is not being controlled by the vermicompost as I'd hoped. It's too early to disrupt the soil to check the roots, so I'm hedging my bets with stem propagation. I chose one stem for air layering and one as a cutting.

The air-layered branch is foil-wrapped. The cutting is in a "deep" pot made from stacked bottomless seed-starting pots.

I bought a canister of rooting hormone, and my natural desire to propagate plants has now surged. I've got some cute Night Blooming Cereus cuttings, already rooted and with new growth, if you're interested.

Excess leaves trimmed, stem girdled and dipped in rooting hormone.

Figs are supposedly crazy easy to root, but I'm helping my cutting root faster by girdling the stem where it's a bit green (young wood is this year's growth) and using rooting hormone. Girdling disrupts the flow of water and nutrients, which somehow encourages root growth.

I believe that each nodule is capable of becoming a root but they're clustered on old wood. I girdled the stem where the wood isn't hardened yet.

The nematodes are soil-bound so rooting stems is the only way to have RKN-free roots. A well-rooted cutting, if large enough, is capable of producing fruit as a 1-year old plant. For me, 2-3 years is likely with these small pieces.

Envisioning the shape of the fig tree after taking the cutting and air-layered branch off, I think it'll look good, assuming the tee survives, that is.

If the original plant growing in vermicompost beats the RKN, the cutting roots, and the air-layered branch roots, I'll have three Olympian fig trees. I'll be happy with just one so maybe a couple of my friends will get lucky.

If you click on the photo for the enlarged view, you can see that black spots are developing. Luckily, they're on just the leaves considered "excess," which were getting trimmed off anyway.

I do not know what the black spots are. I'm assuming "not good." I suspect the 7.5+ inches of rain we had in June had something to do with it. Even with a healthy root system, that's a lot of water for a young tree to manage.

This is the branch I chose for air-layering. Instead of girdling the branch, which remains attached to the plant, I only scratched away bark on three sides. I wrapped the branch with a small plastic water bottle stuffed with moist sphagnum moss. It's covered in foil to create a dark environment. All this encourages root development, and if it goes well the plastic bottle will be full of roots in a month or two.

Here is a reference on fig propagation: Getting figgy with it

What's growing on in your garden? Are you growing figs?

P.S.: The beekeeper's guild is turning out to be a bust. I'm assuming the top-bar aspect of our beekeeping style is the problem. They've already done their honey harvest here so the 2023 season's over. But we chatted with some Master Gardeners at the Virginia Beach Honey Festival and have some ideas for next year. Stay tuned!

2 posts in 1: Beekeeping Mentorship & Figgy Problems

2023-05-03T13:14:00.013-06:00

News on the beekeeping front: I'm waiting for the Southeast Virginia Beekeepers Guild to set us up with a a beekeeping mentor! Being matched with one with topbar or Warré hive experience is, not surprisingly, the challenge. And on top, we've asked for a place to put our hive/s since our condo doesn't allow hives on our patio. While waiting patiently as swarm season passes us by, I'm dealing with a little figgy problem.

Last spring, I was gifted a small Olympian fig tree. Now I've got problems. Thousands of them.

It appeared as if it had been recently dug up and potted to be given away, i.e., it didn't have a great root system and was loose in its pot. Spring turned into summer, summer into fall. Lil Figgy pushed out some small leaves but never grew bigger. It just sort of was. I worried it wasn't strong enough to make it through winter, and breathed a sign of relief when it broke dormancy. I actually was just thinking 2023 might be the creep year (out of sleep, creep, leap) but then I saw a knobby root sticking out of the soil. Digging a bit down, I saw another, and another, and then strings of them. I googled "root knots on fig" and, unlike those on legumes, these are bad.

Root-knot galls on fig tree roots.

Root-knot galls are caused by harmful nematodes. Root Knot Nematodes (RKN) are microscopic worms that are common in sandy soils. RKN feed on roots with needle-like mouthparts, and parasitizing fig trees is a known problem. Particularly when container-grown, the root system can become damaged to the point where the plant cannot properly absorb water and nutrients.

Even though the galls harbor egg-laying adults, Lil Figgy has too many affected roots to just cut off the galls. Instead, I think the best I can do is give it clean potting mix and some nutrient-rich organic matter, something RKN do not like. Thousands of root-knot juveniles can be present in just a tablespoon of soil, so I removed as much soil as possible before repotting it. I watched a video on YouTube that gives me hope that my treatment plan will eliminate the galls.

Earthworm Castings and Neem Seed Meal

The video says worm castings are "The Cure for Nematodes" but, honestly, I have no idea how to get castings out of my Wow Worm Farm. Since I needed castings and rich organic matter, the easiest thing to do was just use finished vermicompost as is. I opened the worm bin, and as usual worms immediately retreated from the light. I fluffed up the top two inches and went to the grocery store. By the time I got back, most of the worms had burrowed down, allowing me to scoop up mostly worm-free vermicompost. I turned in some neem seed meal, another natural nematicide, and repotted the fig into a smaller pot. Now if it grows well, I'll know quickly. And when roots come out the bottom and it's ready to pot up, I'll find out if the treatment worked. My hope is to see the galls gone, and you can be sure I'll share if it does!

Olympian fig tree, freshly repotted in finished vermicompost and looking pretty good.

The PittMoss as worm bin bedding is working really nicely. The worms process it in to a fine dark compost. Contrary to other bloggers' experience, I find torn cardboard takes a long time for the worms to break down and it constantly molds.

Fresh PittMoss bedding vs Finished compost

My one issue with PittMoss is that it is sold in nonrecyclable plastic bags. I'm doing my best to go plastic-free so have started to collect egg cartons. If you've got a heavy-duty confetti shredder, the paper pulp bits make a great worm bedding that breaks down faster than shredded newspaper.

Gnats, Nadiring, and Neem

2023-01-08T12:17:00.005-07:00

If you're just finding my blog, this indoor worm bin was started around Halloween. The working tray at the top of the photo was filled with moistened PittMoss Prime, a peat-free newsprint-based medium. The worms are really happy in it. Torn up cardboard? Not so much. I've read many posts saying worms love corrugated cardboard, but I never see worms on it and it's gone moldy, which isn't bad per se but I don't like it.

What I like even less are the fungus gnats and composting mites in the bin. In an outdoor bin these cohabitants would not necessarily be pests. In an indoor scenario, they are. I've lost a couple of houseplants to gnats, and I'm tired of them landing on my dinner plate.

The Wow Worm Farm in parts. It's really a neat little system.

I decided to nadir today, hoping the worms will drop down into the clean bedding but the gnats will stay in the top tray. As before, I inoculated the fresh bedding with neem seed meal but I did not moisten it at all this time. Not that they can't survive it, but gnats don't like dry. Anyway, I buried about a pint of kitchen waste in the center. Vegetable scraps produce quite a bit of moisture so I figure it'll provide what the worms need. The worms are probably pretty hungry because I haven't fed them in about 3 weeks. Reducing the amount of decaying matter seems to have helped knock down the mite population, but obviously worm activity is down, too. I'm hoping the worms' egg cases can lay dormant longer than the fungus gnat eggs can, and that I waited long enough. Maybe I should've waited a month. Ugh, I'm simply at my wit's end with these gnats!

Reassembling the Wow Worm Farm. From left to right, the base with filter to keep the worms and compost out of the leach tray, the top level where all the action is currently, the just-filled-with-bedding tray, the lid.

I am a little worried because now that I'm using both levels, I won't be able to leave the lid off. Managing moisture is key to beating the gnats and mites. Both thrive in a moist environment. If it weren't winter, I'd leave the bin outside with the lid off so the gnats could fly away and the light would drive the worms down.

Since I can't leave it open in my kitchen, I am really hoping the neem seed meal kills the gnats. If it doesn't I'll have a two-tray gnat farm. I've read it works against a plethora of pests but I haven't seen anything specifically about composting mites. I treated both trays with a generous layer of the powder and will let you know what happens.

UPDATE: The gnats are gone! I harvested the tray of finished (?) vermicompost and am running a 1-tray system, gnat-free.

Mites!

2022-12-17T17:19:00.012-07:00

The similarities between a colony of worms to a colony of bees continues.

My worm bin has mites. They look very much like varroa mites, only smaller! About the size of the period at the end of this sentence. Most Internet sources say the mites are harmless, that they're a common co-habitant. My issue with them is I found a pile of them about 5 feet away from the worm bin which, I remind you, is in my kitchen. Had a bag of potting mix not been there for them to congregate under, who knows where I would've found them? I need to get them under control.

Enlarged video of a mite on a egg carton (ideal bedding BTW).

Even more enlarged photo of a mite on a paper towel, head to the left.

Where did they come from in the first place?

From Jim's Worm Farm. Despite negative reviews, and the website stating, "We strive to maintain insect/mite free orders! However,…" I was definitely wishfully thinking when I bought worms from them. So the lesson is, if you're establishing a worm bin, find a friend who has a mite-free vermicomposter who can give you a quart of worms in finished compost. A nuc as it were.

If you click on this photo of my Worm Farm's leach tray, the barely visible dark specks are composting mites.
How to control composting mites?

Mites are actually normal in a worm bin population, but they can become overpopulous. Apparently, too much moisture and mites proliferate. Indeed, I find them in the leach tray, which collects excess moisture (i.e., liquid in your leach tray means you're not managing moisture properly).

Besides adding additional Neem Bliss, here's everything I'm doing and why, in order of what I think will be most effective:

Manage moisture so nothing is in the leach tray.*
Don't feed anything in the cucurbit family, which seems to be the mites' fave. (Big oops on the double dose of butternut squash skin.)
Reduce pH. Acidity brings mites. Eggshells can provide all the calcium carbonate the soil needs, which helps to lower the soil's pH level and make it more alkaline as opposed to acidic.
Sprinkle diatomaceous earth over the bedding. DE supposedly is deadly to mites but not harmful to earthworms. However, it only works when it's dry so won't be effective unless I properly manage moisture.

Forget trapping. Sticky traps are minimally effective. Akin to using drones to collect varroa mites, supposedly mellons/squash can be used to collect the composting mites to then be tossed outside. I steamed a butternut and left a pile of guts on a yogurt lid in the upper tray overnight. Very little interest, so mellons/squash being highly attractive is Internet myth.

The bottom tray is where all the action is: worms, mites and gnats feeding on moist bedding and kitchen scraps. I'm using the top tray like a Warré hive quilt. It is filled with dry bedding that is wicking moisture from the colony below. I'm dismayed that there's quite a few mites running around up there.

UPDATE: the mites congregate on the lid, effectively acting as a trap so I could knock down the population by simply cleaning the lid periodically. Managing moisture by setting the working bin askew on the leach tray is a must. No leach, no mites.

What's Neem Bliss?

Besides earthworms and mites, fungus gnats just adore a moist medium of decaying plant matter. They definitely found my worm bin but a couple of doses of Neem Bliss (neem seed meal) appears to be resolving the problem. Neem Bliss successfully eradicated an outright infestation in a bag of Fort Vee compost stored in my garage. The gnats originated in another bag of potting mix on the other side of the garage. If anyone tells you that gnats are weak flyers, then you might also like to know that wolverines make great house pets. Anyway, I simply thoroughly mixed in about a half-cup of the neem seed meal and set the bag outside for three weeks.** Not one gnat to be seen now! I've been using the meal on some houseplants that have been quarantined for months and had way more success with Neem Bliss than anything else I've tried: sticky traps, DE, hydrogen peroxide, soapy water, Root Cleaner and Sacred Soil Tonic. It's been a real battle! Have you ever beaten a fungus gnat problem? How did you do it?

*"The notion that a worm bin should be producing leachate is one of the biggest misconceptions that I feel a need to correct. While all leachate isn’t stinky or hazardous (some may even be beneficial!), it is NOT a desirable by-product of a well-managed worm bin. It indicates too much watering, too much feeding, or not enough bedding added relative to food added." https://urbanwormcompany.com/vermicomposting-ultimate-guide-beginner-expert/

**The 3-week life cycle of fungus gnats is almost the same as varroa, and understanding it is critical to combatting the pests. See "A look under the cap.pdf".

You may also be interested in http://www.littlebigharvest.com/2014/07/controlling-mites-in-your-worm-bin.html

Also Good Reading: The Worm Farmer's Handbook by Rhonda Sherman - her explanation for high mite populations are a) too much moisture, b) overfeeding, and c) excessively wet or fleshy feed.

May your holidays be golden and sweet!

2022-12-02T08:38:00.024-07:00

I offer to you, these, my favorite cards & one-minute mug cake recipe to help.

Horizontal or vertical, 5x7", 7x5", 3.5x5"… it's your choice. The eggshell texture paper is easy to write on and doesn't smudge. Better yet, customizing the from our hive to yours message makes holiday card writing easy peasy. When you Personalize this template, you don't have to do any!

Order today and you'll have them in plenty of time to mail your holiday cards to states far and wide. (FYI Dec. 17 is the deadline to mail 1st class in the lower 48.) Printed with metallic foil ink & made in the USA. 🇺🇸

Currently half-price plus you can get up to 10.5% in cash back with a browser extension like BeFrugal, Coupon Cabin or Rakuten!

5x7 card and matching mini mug

I use my matching mini mug everyday. It's espresso sized – the absolute perfect size for mug cake (recipe below) – but you'll find jumbo size and bone china, too. Get yours when you order your 𝙱𝙴𝙴 Mҽɾɾყ cards.

This link will take you to my Zazzle storefront. I have a lot more bee-themed products designed but I'll be darned if I can get Zazzle to display them. 🥴 https://www.zazzle.com/store/backyardbee THANKS FOR LOOKING!

Instant Cocoa Mug Cake

For this recipe, you make "The Mix" and then whenever you're in the mood for warm, soft chocolate cake, you use it to make the batter, right in your mug. One minute later, you've got mug cakes! No eggs needed and if you use a milk substitute, it's completely vegan. Oat and almond milk are delicious partners of chocolate!

The Mix

1 1/8 cup of all-purpose flour (or a heaping cup)

3 packets of instant hot cocoa (the cheap kind from the supermarket)*
2 Tbsp sugar

1/2 t. baking powder

1/8 t. salt

optional: 1/4–1/2 c. chocolate chips

The Mug Cake
Blend in a small mug or ramekin:
1/3 c The Mix (a heaping 1/4 cup)
2 Tbsp milk (or milk substitute)
1 Tbsp oil
Top with 1 large marshmallow or a handful of mini marshmallows (optional).

Microwave for 60 seconds. You can make multiple mug cakes at a time and it doesn't affect the microwaving time.

Here's a printable recipe that you can wrap around your container or premade The Mix.

𝕄𝕒𝕪 𝕪𝕠𝕦𝕣 𝕙𝕠𝕝𝕚𝕕𝕒𝕪𝕤 𝕓𝕖 𝕘𝕠𝕝𝕕𝕖𝕟 𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝕤𝕨𝕖𝕖𝕥.💛

If you want a more from scratch recipe or vanilla mug cakes, here's a link: https://iamafoodblog.com/2-minute-chocolate-mug-cake-recipe/

To Super or Nadir

2022-11-30T09:23:00.006-07:00

The Worm Bin at 30 days

A quick update on the worm bin in my kitchen.

Neem Bliss is neem seed meal. Also known as "neem cake," it is reported to stimulate earthworm activity as well as kill fungus gnats. Preemptively, I inoculated the worm bin with it.

How much to feed?

I've been feeding the worms sparingly and it is disappearing, being processed by the worms. But the contents of the worm bin don't look any different – it doesn't look like compost. If anything, it looks the same but there's less of it. The bedding level has dropped, significantly, by a good 25% because the worms are processing the bedding as food. This is normal, bedding as food. Until I learn how much kitchen waste to give them, they'll keep eating the bedding. Not long from now, they'll be able to process as much as 1/2 lb per day!

How often to feed?

There are definitely more worms. They're thick where the food is. They're exploring where there's just bedding. They're moving through the holes in the bottom of the tray. I think they're searching for food so it's time to start feeding more than small handfuls of kitchen waste every few days. At a month old, there should be a decent microbiome established so I'm going to increase feeding to every other day. I'm even putting carrot peels (chopped up) back on the menu.

Where to feed?

I'm working clockwise. Food should be covered with bedding, so as I layer feed over the worms, I borrow bedding from an adjacent area. You can simply use the empty space for the next feeding and keep backfilling, but I've borrowed enough to leave an entire quadrant void. The population isn't quite ready for that much food so I filled it with crumbled leaves. Autumn is pretty amazing here, with an absolute abundance of oak trees.

Fallen autumn leaves are an excellent food for worms. When fully composted, it's called leaf mold. It is a terrific soil conditioner, but I don't want to wait a year for it. The worm bin will reduce the wait time to mere months.

Should I super or nadir?

When the tray is filled with finished compost, what then? Borrowing two beekeeping terms, the options are to super (new tray on top) or nadir (new tray underneath). If I super, I'll need to provide a ladder. (Laddering is a technique that beekeepers use to get bees to move into another hive body.) If I nadir, the worms will just drop down. Which way would they prefer to move, up or down? Occasionally, one or two worms will climb up the walls of the tray, but I consistently find them underneath it. So I am inclined to nadir. At the rate the worm bin is establishing itself, I should have an answer for you in another 30 days.

A New Colony

2022-11-11T13:14:00.060-07:00

…of worms!

This post if for the 86% of my IG followers who said, "I want worms to eat my garbage, too!"

Back in the 90s, we had a good landlord who let me put a composter in the corner of the property. It was shaded, though, and there were only two of us generating waste, so it never got "hot" enough to really work. I'd seen Mary Appelhof's "Worms Eat My Garbage" somewhere and gave worm composting in my apartment a go. I filled a Rubbermaid bin with shredded newspaper, added worms, and fed them kitchen scraps. The bin worked pretty well. Until I made two mistakes which sent me running out the door and dumping the entire contents into the outdoor composter. Afterwards, that thing kicked butt!

It worked so well, we ran two full size composters in Colorado. Now we live in a condo with no place for even one! I've had to peel carrots, potatoes, shuck corn over the garbage can. Painful! It was time to revisit the indoor worm bin. The memory of running out of the house with cold, gooey worms stuck to my hands still vivid, I wanted something I knew was designed well, compact, and portable for our next move. And having just invested in a new suite of stainless appliances, it also had to look stylish in my kitchen. So here it is, my Wow Worm Farm from Gardener's Supply Company with lots of pictures.

I hope you find my experience getting started with vermicomposting helpful.

The Accidental Lepidopterist: Monarch Butterfly Edition

2022-09-13T13:03:00.048-06:00

UPDATED in 2025 with MORE PICS!

Freshly laid Monarch butterfly eggs are greenish/white. This cream/yellow one is probably about 3 days old.

Mid-August and my garden is a sandy strip of nothing-going-on. We've had weeks of 90s and oppressive humidity, and the stubs of golden alexander and parsley left by the Swallowtails are struggling to grow back. Yet I keep finding fresh eggs and caterpillars on them! Off to the nursery we went to find host plants. The herbs were wiped out so I headed for the clearance tables hoping to get lucky. There was nothing for Swallowtails but I found a table full of Tropical Milkweed (Asclepias curassavica) for $2.09. It was Buy2 Get1 but A.curassavica isn't native. Virginia put the VA in inVAsive so I picked a small 2 1/2" pot that, once home, totally surprised me with two Monarch butterfly eggs. I scrambled online to learn as much as I could, as fast as I could. A monarch butterfly egg hatches in 3-5 days, the shorter time with warmer temperatures, so the clock was ticking.

When mature, the egg doesn't turn solid black like a swallowtail's. Only the tip, the head of the larva, does (unless it's been parasitized by Trichogramma wasps). I think the freckles are what will eventually become tentacles.

The first thing I learned was that eggs laid after mid-August comprise the 5th generation of the year, the "super generation." It's the one that makes the incredible journey southward, traveling hundreds or even thousands of miles to overwintering grounds. Recently listed as endangered, I felt doubly pressured to ensure their survival.*

I hope this helps you if you're in the same time crunch!

First meal: its eggshell (chorion).

Day 1 as caterpillars. I have to say, raising Monarchs is very different from raising Black Swallowtails. The method is the same: feed them their host plant, enable them to pupate, release a butterfly. But the experience is at a much faster pace and the details — the clues that tell you what to do next — are all different.

To begin, newly hatched Monarch caterpillars are impossibly small, and it's frustrating trying to see if anything is happening. Turns out it isn't much, and they are completely boring at first.

While black swallowtail caterpillars are almost as small, they offer a lot more opportunity to be found, probably because their survival strategy employs a little bird poop mimicry. You'll find them on leaf stems, topside of leaves, underside, on the flowers… and you can start each day with a little game of Where's Waldo. Monarch caterpillars, with no camouflaging strategy, have to be more discreet so spend almost all their time hiding on the bottom side of leaves.

Do you see both Monarch caterpillars? Click/tap the photo and scan the enlargement for a black head and pale green body.

Day 3 as caterpillars. First molt! They'll go through 5 just like swallowtails do. New black stripes make them a little easier to find, but I still needed a magnifying glass to find them. That's how I noticed little brown spots on the undersides of the leaves. Rust is a fungal plant disease that is host-specific (won't jump to other plants) and doesn't harm the caterpillars. It is less of a problem for plants when moisture is managed properly. Nurseries tend to both crowd and overwater plants, so hopefully this issue resolves itself especially now that it's in my kitchen.

I'm fairly certain the nursery mislabeled the plant I bought. The plant tag showed bi-color blossoms, but with fully orange blossoms and fine hairs on the small leaves and stems (visible in the macrophotos), this narrow-leafed milkweed is most likely Butterfly Milkweed (Ascelpias tuberosa), which is native to eastern and southwestern North America.

An example of their skeletonizing method of eating. Click/tap the photo for an enlarged version. You'll be able to see the black nubs that will become the front tentacles.

Swallowtails neatly eat entire leaves and stems but early instar Monarch caterpillars need to avoid releasing the sticky white sap milkweed is known for. At their size it can glue their mouth parts shut, so they don't touch the leaf veins. They eat only the soft sections in between, leaving the plant looking a mess. I'm the relentless deadheader and weeder kind of gardener, so I'm having to learn to accept imperfection as perfection.

Day 5 as caterpillars. All instars have multiple looks; the photo above and below are both 2nd instars! A Field Guide to Monarch Caterpillars (Danausplexippus) by Karen Oberhauser and Kristen Kuda is a terrific reference to determine which instar your caterpillar is.

A 2nd instar monarch caterpillar has two triangular spots behind the head. It's beginning to get yellow stripes.

Day 6 as caterpillars. Third instar! With bright yellow stripes and prominent front and rear tentacle nubs, they're finally starting to look like Monarch caterpillars. This is a rapid growth stage that's easy to see.

Half a centimeter in the morning.

Doubled in length in one day!

Day 7: Third instars are less wasteful but still won't eat the central leaf vein. One site I referenced said they will snip the central vein to stop the flow of sap. Then they can eat all of the leaf after the snip.

Rather than skeletonizing, week-old caterpillars eat more leaf but not the midrib.

Day 8: Through the 3rd instar, my little $2 plant seemed plentiful for both caterpillars. But now they're eating full leaves including the midrib, which channels Milkweed sap. Eating leaves down to a nub, I began to really regret not taking advantage of the Buy2 Get1 sale.

Just like Instagram, I'm experiencing upside down posting with Blogger. 🤷🏽

If you're desperate, older caterpillars, 4th or 5th instars, can eat slices of cucumber, zucchini, or butternut squash. You can also offer watermelon rind but feed them these alternatives only in a pinch. Pesticides will kill larvae so choose organic produce, and peel off anything that might be waxed.

A 4th instar caterpillar looks like a big juicy meal to predators, so now is a good time to load up on the sap. It's full of the toxins that make Monarchs mildly poisonous. Several sources said a single caterpillar eats an entire plant so I did the newbie panic thing of driving from nursery to nursery looking for milkweed plants, only to find none. Or a sad excuse for a plant, merely sticks and leaf remnants complete with more eggs or caterpillars. Already the accidental lepidopterist, I didn't need to buy more problems; I just needed food.

While late instar caterpillars can eat alternative foods, they'll render the caterpillars non-toxic to predators. In a process called aposematism, a predator learns to associate a warning signal, such as bright colors, with a bad experience and avoids all similarly-marked prey in the future. So it's important to feed your Monarchs milkweed only, for the protection of future generations.

Day 10:

A monarch caterpillar spends 3 to 5 days in its 5th instar, the shorter time with warmer temperature.

Day 13: As it turned out, I panicked for nothing. They abruptly stopped eating and kept walking off every leaf I offered. Monarch caterpillars do not do a purge, the telltale sign that a Swallowtail is ready to pupate. I had to take the refusal to eat & walkabout as signs and left them to do their thing, whatever it might be. After a few hours, they'd taken the j-formation side-by-side.

Hanging in J-formation, opposite to Swallowtails which suspend themselves head up, feet down.

Day 14:

Fifth instar Monarch caterpillar, preparing for its final molt.

Like the Swallowtail, they spend a full day in the pre-pupal position, not moving, and there are indicators that the final molt is imminent. When you see the caterpillar straightening out and tentacles go limp, it is ready to begin the final molt to chrysalis.

Dorsal view of the final molt to become a monarch chrysalis.

Day 15: A monarch can stay in its chrysalis for up to 15 days! Less time in warm temperatures. Here's a chart that illustrates the difference 10°F makes.

1-day-old chrysalis, wing veins already visible.

Day 22: The evening of their 7th day as chrysalides, they turned really dark. I am beginning to think all butterflies time it so they eclose early in the morning, to warm as the sun rises. A few hours in the sun's warmth helps their wings dry and harden.

Late night after 7 days as chrysalides, the famous orange and black wings clearly visible.

Day 23: As with our Swallowtails, we awoke to find an already eclosed butterfly clinging to it's empty chrysalis, its sibling ready to burst out of its own.

Good morning 8-day old monarch chrysalis and brand new butterfly!

I don't know if it is just the migratory generation that does this because they need extra-strong flight muscles for the journey to Mexico, but ours beat their wings pretty regularly and slowly, giving us ample opportunity to determine their sex. These are both males.

Monarch wings are translucent. The stripes visible when the wings are spread open (the dorsal side) are the same as those when their wings are folded (the ventral side). This is different from swallowtails, whose wing spots in open and closed positions are different, and you can only tell the sex when they're open.

The wings being translucent surprised me.

The outlook was for rain (as it often is here) so we held them overnight. In the morning, they could see the outdoors just on the other side of the window and were eager to get out. So eager that there was no placing them on a flower for a beauty shot, like I do with our Swallowtails. The instant we brought the hamper out, they flew out the opening, up into the forest canopy, and thus began their incredible journey to Mexico.Read more »

Butterfly Pool Results

2022-08-18T14:08:00.003-06:00

Early in the morning, the side by side chrysalides no longer looked like twins. After 9 days as a chrysalis, the first to pupate (left) will be the first to emerge as a butterfly.

Note the color change.

A side view of the mature chrysalis shows the butterfly inside is arching, putting pressure against the outer skin.

Translucent = will eclose very soon.

The changes happen quick. We went for a pre-breakfast walk and missed the butterfly coming out of the chrysalis. And while I was making an afternoon smoothie, I missed a second butterfly emerge!

The bottom butterfly's wings are still wet and floppy.

When they first emerge, their wings are crumpled from being crammed in the chrysalis. The butterfly stretches and strengthens its wing muscles by slowing moving its wings. They quickly expand, dry and harden.

A new butterfly likes something to climb up. I'd forgotten that they purge after eclosing. No solids like the last stage as a caterpillar, just a cloudy liquid.

I always try to set new butterflies on a flower. They don't need nectar yet, but I hope it helps them identify our yard as a good food source so they come back.

Still early enough that some morning glories are still available for offer.

Warmed by the sun, wings fully hardened, I think the butterfly must complete its purge before taking flight.

Finally, a dorsal view! This one's a male.

Another male. Compare their spots and you'll see that their patterns are unique.

Our third chrysalis turned out to be male as well. All three were in chrysalis form for nine days.

I wish one would've been a female so I could show you the difference in appearance. You have to look at their top side, which can take patience since they spend more time folded up than flat. When you finally glimpse of the dorsal view, look for the amount of blue. Males don't have a lot of blue. Females have more blue (which displaces the yellow). I found three more caterpillars on the parsley, so I'm still hoping for a female to show you soon.

Went looking for bees but found this instead.

2022-08-09T12:27:00.007-06:00

The little garden space I asked for your help designing includes dill, parsley and Golden Alexander, all host plants for Swallowtail butterflies. Our backyard is so small, the entire potager is literally three steps out my kitchen door – a giant glass slider – so that's how I happened to see a butterfly laying eggs.

Small carpenter bee (Ceratina) foraging on dill weed. 07/22/2022

Do you see the butterfly egg? I didn't see it until I was going through my bee photos. I know this is a Ceratina because it has a small yellow mark on its face, not visable in the photo.

3rd instar caterpillar on Italian parsley. 07/30/2022

After finding a caterpillar in the jaws of a spider, I brought every caterpillar I could find inside and set them up with Oui jars like I did in 2019. This time, though, we had to go out-of-town for three days so instead of a daily top up, I had to guess how much food they needed. Turns out not much, just a few sprigs each.

5th instar caterpillar on Golden Alexander, which is native to the eastern US. 08/05/2022

We left with four 3rd instar caterpillars and returned to find three 5th instar caterpillars. It seems the natural mortality rate is high. This time they're the green variation.

Prepupa showing signs of final molt, small cracks in the cuticle (the lining of the trachea tubes are being pulled out of the spiracle openings) and loss of color. 08/07/2022

Attached to the inside corner of popup hamper, I could only get a dorsal view video but I'm just elated that we got to see it happen!

The transformation from prepupa to chrysalis took about 6 minutes, the last 3 being a whole bunch of wiggling until the shed skin fell to the floor.

Swallowtail chrysalis color-matched to its environment. 08/07/2022

We've got three chrysalides in the hamper, and I'll post an update when they emerge. The Internet says anywhere from 7-20+ days. How about a Butterfly Pool? I think Monday the 15th and there will be 2 males and 1 female. What are your guesses?

I've got a blank space, baby…

2021-12-28T20:14:00.032-07:00

In Coastal Virginia, gardeners enjoy 247 frost-free days. Even in late November, it feels like Autumn is just beginning.

After 15 months without a kitchen or a garden, we followed our bliss and bought a little place with this lake view. In under a half hour, we can be at our pick of beaches.

My new garden space is right off the kitchen, so of course I need a potager. And it needs to be a pollinator garden that feeds hummingbirds, since I can't put honeybees in the backyard. (We're looking for an outyard or community apiary.) With a frost-free growing season of 247 days, I want to grow just about everything.

The only limit I have is that my space is restricted to a skinny mini border garden, so I have to be pretty selective. Already mentally exhausted from buying a condo and moving again during the pandemic; sleeping on an air mattress for two weeks before our hurry-the-promo-code-is-expiring selected bed arrived; hurriedly picking a washer and dryer before the Black Friday deal ended, I'm feeling a bit daunted. Now paralyzed just by the color choices we have for painting our new home, going native with a blank slate feels like an impossible task. So as much as I relished crafting my Colorado garden, I am seriously considering taking an easy no-brainer route here in Virginia.

What do you think about Native Wildflower Nursery's grab bags? Bare-root notwithstanding, the "Wildflower Garden" (100 wildflowers comprised of 4-5 perennial varieties, $140) looks pretty ideal to me—although I actually might not have enough room even using containers on the porch. The condo association says I can only have four pots, or just two if they're 20" pots. Crazy, huh!?

SPONSORED POST: In exchange for displaying the NWN logo and link to their website, Native Wildflowers Nursery will be giving me some ferns and spring ephemerals.

My Colorado Beekeeping Calendar

2021-11-09T22:00:00.000-07:00

A Phenological Calendar for Colorado Beekeepers

By undergoing VIT, I successfully reduced my sensitivity to honeybee venom to safe levels! After taking several years off, my interest in beekeeping has not waned, and I'm anxious to restock our hives. I will definitely let you know when that happens.

Meanwhile, what about you? What are your plans for this season? If you're in the Denver metro, maybe my Colorado bloom calendar will help you think them through. ☝️ Yellow bars = mason bee tasks, blue bars = honeybee tasks. The green bars in the calendar are what's blooming now. Keep in mind that the dates can shift a couple of weeks in either direction depending on weather conditions. For example, the excessively warm 2017/2018 winter had elm trees blooming well before Valentine's Day. The snow storm on President's Day, though, cut short its blooming period. You can click on any of the events for more details and additional reading. I hope you find it useful.

And don't forget, Marty Hardison's booklet, "The Appropriate Beehive" is available at right. If you like The List he wrote for when to do what for one's bees, please consider making a donation. It'll ensure "The Appropriate Beehive" remains available through this website.

I've been working with Marty on an update for what seems like forever and hope to post it here soon. Until then, may your hives be humming. — BB & HB

The Bears and the Bees

2021-10-20T17:29:00.005-06:00

Right in the middle of our nation's capitol, the Smithsonian Zoo gives quite a bit of attention to the honey bee! First, there's the Bending Hives sculpture that invites you to "Look closer – from different angles – at the world we share with bees." Maybe we needed this impetus in 2018, when these hives were created. Who could've predicted that just two years later, we'd all be looking at the entire world from a different angle, through a different lens?

No bees here. For those, you only need to visit a garbage can.

The bee swarm mural is a must-see, even if you don't go into the Great Ape House. Every kid entering the ape house asked their parent(s), "Why are there bees on an ape house?" Every parent said, "I don't know," and through the dark doors they went. I read the answer and it's so much of stretch for me, I could not summarize it here for you. Follow this link and leave a comment if you can boil it down to a couple of sentences. https://www.thegoodofthehive.com/zoo

Good of the Hive mural of 351 worker bees and more. What else do you see?

An eye-level worker bee enables you to appreciate the hand-painting up close.

The queen's entourage.

Then there's the playground surrounded by a pollinator garden. It's close to Lot D, just past the Bending Hives.

Me and the Bee playground

Possibly a Blue Orchard Bee

And, yes, there are real bees, too. Unfortunately, every single garbage can has rummaging honeybees, and they have learned to excitedly inspect you if you're nearby. Same goes for the benches and tables scattered throughout the park. Remember to bring your epis… and never swat.

If you bring a picnic lunch, expect company.

That's quite a bit of bonus fun, considering the real reason to go to the national zoo is to see the "Little Miracle" cub Xiao Qi Ji. If you want to see him before being separated from Mei Xiang, you'll need to go in the next few months. In February, he'll be at the age that pandas naturally go solo.

Giant panda cub Xiao Qi Ji and mother, Mei Xiang. Feeding time's around 2:00?

The Panda Trail offers great views if they're outside.

The zoo is free, $30/car to park. Not not crowded by any means but with the pandemic still gripping, opportunities to get people-less photos can be found with just a little patience. You'll need at least 4 hours to see the whole park, more if you want to linger at any exhibit or wait for the people-less moments to snap a selfie. 🐼

Cherry Cherry Boom Boom – it's the best time to see the National Cherry Blossoms!

2021-04-05T13:28:00.010-06:00

Last time I spoke to my sister, she asked if being "homeless" and without belongings made us feel ungrounded. Quite the opposite, I responded, as we feel free to explore and roam at will. Untethered, we can go anywhere we want. I'll say it again; the world is too big to spend all your time in one place. Now may be the last time we're in the DC area, so I was adamant that we witness the famous Cherry Blossoms, pandemic be damned. I'm so glad we did because road and parking lot closures designed to discourage the usual crowds made street parking a breeze!

Eleven varieties of cherry tree surround the Tidal Basin, where the most famous, oldest, and numerous are. Mostly white, they are Yoshino cherry blossoms. The cherry trees in NoVA neighborhoods are popular with all sort of bees, the canopies alive with activity. But the only bee we saw at the Tidal Basin was a lone Eastern Carpenter.

Road and parking lot closures are keeping crowds at bay.

The main cherry blossoms have already peaked, but if you have FOMO you might still be in luck with the Kwanzan cherry blossoms. If you're hoping for pink, the Kwanzans are what you're looking for anyway. Their blossoms are multi-layered like a little rose, which is not great for bees but very pretty if not prettier than the simple Yoshinos in my opinion. They should peak on April 12.

Panoramic experience of the Tidal Basin.

If uncomfortably crowded at the Tidal Basin, you can enjoy cherry trees and other spring bloomers just a few blocks away.

Grouping of daffodils, candytuft, squill and pansies looking lovely albeit barely established. The catmint behind is waking up nicely, and this garden will surely be abuzz this summer.

The Smithsonian Gardens are open, and with everyone at the Tidal Basin you'll find peaceful space, mostly to yourself. By now, the utterly magnificent saucer magnolias will have yielded the show to Redbuds, a fantastic source of both nectar and pollen for bees.

White camellias and Lilac daphne are peaking while the witchhazel behind is already done blooming.

Art in Bloom at the Enid A Haupt Gardens. The Downing Urn is in the foreground.

Chiyogami Compilation by Peijisan Art

Saucer Magnolia trees are all about the garden.

Daffodils and pansies with unknown yellow flowers in between.

"Men and nature must work hand in hand. The throwing out of balance of the resources of nature throws out of balance also the lives of men." ~ Franklin Delano Roosevelt, January 24, 1935

Forsythia provides a splash of yellow among the cherry trees.

Regardless of type, the cherry trees are peaking early (perhaps explaining the lack of bees) even in Japan where the gifted trees are from. In fact, peak bloom date for the cherry trees is trending earlier, exacerbating my concerns about climate change. If bees don't adapt to it, we will be in serious trouble. More than we already are. The impact of shifting bloom times on pollination – a different type of silent spring – and food security isn't talked about enough.

What worries you about climate change? More intense heat/cold? Catastrophic weather events? We fled Colorado because of its extreme heat and drought. And wildfires. And snow. But now I'm freaked out about coastal flooding. We're still at my in-laws', looking for a place of our own. I miss having a garden and a place to put our beehives. If you're not affected by climate change tell me! I want to move to where 𝙮𝙤𝙪 live. 💬

Hive Notes for Virginia: the chorus of peepers and wood frogs announce, "It's Spring!"

2021-03-15T12:55:00.028-06:00

What's Blooming (in order of appearance) : snowdrops, Maple trees, daffodils, crocus & common violets; boxwoods, Japanese andromeda and yew, hellebore, winter heath, forsythia, hyacinth, Callery pear trees, Cherry trees, Magnolias, eastern redbud, dogwood, azalea, rhododendron, afterwards "it's just green*"

Here's what's blooming in northern Virginia or, as the locals call it, NoVA.

March 11: I quite like how daffodils look interplanted with pachysandra.

March 12: Overhead, maples explode into bloom. A good source of both nectar and pollen, this is the wax flow for strong overwintered colonies.

The solstice is when the queen begins laying again, so I thought I's start planning for the year ahead. I always start my beekeeping calendar with December. 2020 Averages were: 53°F hi / 30°lo; Precip 6.3" (above ave) with 1" being snow. No arctic cold like we had in Colorado 😊 but 2020 was way wetter than normal and it snows here. Winter hardy pansies bloom unfazed but there are no flying days, for sure.

The coldest day of the year occurs in January. 2021 Avg Temperatures 42 hi / 27 lo ; Precip 1.6" (above ave). In Colorado, currently enjoying 2 feet of snow as I write, there'd invariably be a 60° day to sneak a peak and check on food stores. Here the weather isn't schizophrenic; it doesn't snow as much but once it gets cold it just stays cold. (And once it warms up, it just stays warm.) Another thing I've noticed is the wind. In Colorado, we'd have wind events. Big, blow-the-fences-over events every so often. Here, so close to the coast, the winter winds are mostly constant or gusty. Layered with the hum of air traffic from Dulles, I'm not a fan. Bottom line, there's no opening a hive to pop in emergency feed so you better have winterized properly back in the Fall.

February: 2021 Avg Temperatures 48 hi / 27 lo ; Precip 3.7" (above ave) with 1" being snow (booo). I haven't seen a honeybee since November and can't tell if I'm depressed from the lingering gloomy weather or the lingering global pandemic.

March. Quite abruptly, Spring begins to assert itself, announced by the chorus of peepers and wood frogs. The ground must finally be thawed! Flowering bulbs, Japanese andromeda, and maples of all sorts have burst into bloom. Great for the bees but my allergies are out of control! With each Puffs, I'm reminded why we left the east coast in the first place. 🤔 As with CO, I think this is when colonies die from starvation. Growing population and diminishing food stores aside, it's isolation starvation I'd worry about most. Unlike CO, there's no solar gain for the bees to break cluster and move about during cold spells. The stable weather is gray mixed with mostly cloudy, and it's still going below freezing overnight. Flying days do occur, though. There are beehives not far from us, 10 in the bottom photo, and there's definitely some orientation flying.


March 19: Snow crocuses parade across the lawns.

March 20: Anubis among hellebores at Lake Anne.

March 27: Forsythia and Andromeda. Yeah, they bloom together but personally I wouldn't plant them together. Frankly, the landscape design around here leaves much to be desired.

Even the road absolutely lined with Callery Pears can't compete with the showstopping 'Royal Star' magnolia. Its pristine white floppy petals flutter in the slightest breeze to catch and hold your attention.

Projecting Forward (because a large part of a beekeeper's job is anticipating their bees' needs):

April: 🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸 Oh, how I want to hop across the river into DC to see the Cherry blossoms, but the barricades from the capitol insurrection are still up. Based on this article by George Imirie, Retard Swarming By Making A Split, I'm guessing April will be the ideal time to acquire local bees from someone doing a preventive split. It'll have to be a shook swarm unless we can find a local top bar beekeeper. Doesn't matter what part of the country you're in, that's a hurdle. I'll post any VA TBH resource I find for you ASAP.

A full month ahead of Colorado, April into early May is SWARM SEASON, again based on Mr. Imirie's knowledgebase, so it could be a good time to re-stock the hives.

About a mile into the Pipeline Trail there is a house with 10 beehives and another with 7, including 2 nucs. We haven't met their beekeepers yet, but it's only mid-March and it looks like they're doing splits already!

Additional Resources: https://www.jmu.edu/arboretum/whats-in-bloom/whats-in-bloom.shtml

https://carroll.ext.vt.edu/content/dam/carroll_ext_vt_edu/beekeepers_year_va_apiary.pdf

https://buzzwordhoney.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Northern-Virginia-Honeybee-Annual-Cycle.pdf

Weather almanacs: www.wunderground.com/history/monthly/us/va/chantilly/KIAD/date/2020-12

* the Channel 5 weather guy said it, and it makes me sad.