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Chicks in Aurora: Update on the Movement to Legalize Chickens in Aur...

2013-04-17T16:32:00.001-07:00

Chicks in Aurora: Update on the Movement to Legalize Chickens in Aur...: A group of concerned citizens have flocked together to encourage folks to contact their Aurora, CO, city council representatives and reque...

The Triage Begins

2012-08-15T19:27:00.002-07:00

So the latest inspection showed that Hive 2 is extremely LIGHT in its honey stores. There was very little nectar, or honey. We've made the decision to add a feeder, and hope they can make it through the winter.

We'll be feeding pollen patties through the fall to ensure both hives are bolstered enough to survive the winter. Hive 1 has a good amount of capped honey, but with so many frames still blank, we are still concerned.

It's been a while!

2012-08-13T10:41:00.000-07:00

We have had a busy summer! Our bees are doing great, and it looks like they will put enough honey by to make it through the winter. (We are still going to feed them, just in case!). They have been buzzing around the neighborhood doing what they do best, and the results are showing in our garden.
It started with the marble size peas we pulled in. I didn't take a picture because we ate them all in one sitting..they were like candy.
And then the zucchini started rolling in. I have dubbed this year the Zucchini Apocalypse. I planted 12 seeds I saved from a zuke a friend gave me last year. I didn't do much when I saved the seeds..rinsed, dried and threw in a paper bag. I thought maybe three or four would grow, but all 12 grew. I watched in fascination as they slowly took over a corner of the yard.
They bloomed in to giant yellow flowers and I did a little happy dance. I watched in glee as our bees threw parties in them, flying out with their little legs loaded with pollen. At times they actually looked drunk buzzing around the patch. Here is the result of that much pollination, some good soil, and some water:

Yes, three zucchini equals five pounds. And they are sweet and not mushy. One friend said she thought they were watermelon. We have harvested probably close to thirty pounds at this point. People see us approaching with bags of zucchini and they run away.

The first batch was made in to some amazing Carrot Zucchini bread. I have 4 more pounds frozen, and about 5 pounds worth dehydrated (makes an amazing lasagna, see recipes at the end of this post!)

Once the zucchini apocalypse is done (I counted twenty more small ones today) it will be the tomatoes..which are huge. Pulled in about a pound of green beans today, most of them at least seven inches in length. (Good thing we just got a pressure canner!) Next come the pumpkins (some are already turning orange, and it's the beginning of August.). And after that more peas! I didn't plant near enough in the early Spring, we have a whole bed full of them now for Autumn harvest.

Our bees are intimately tied with this, and there isn't a day that goes by that I don't stand by the hives and thank them for their amazingness.

The garden takes up quite a bit of time. This year most of the country is in a drought, and everything in our yard that hasn't been hand watered is almost dead. It's depressing after all the hard work we put in to turn our dirt lot back yard in to a green paradise. Next year I guess.

Today I experimented with making nut butters. They are expensive at the health food store, and I wanted to try my hand at making them. It's so easy I will never spend money on a jar of natural nut butter again! Today's creation was Cinnamon Honey Walnut Butter. So many good for you ingredients, and it tastes DIVINE. Can't wait to smear it on some toast or apples.

Before It Goes Bad Veggie Lasagna

I use this recipe to use up all of our veggies before they go bad. What doesn't get used in the lasagna gets blanched and dehydrated (no waste!) This lasagna also works really well with dehydrated veggies, they soak up the sauce and become very savory! You will need:

1 small onion (red, white, yellow...any are good in this!) Chopped fine

2 Tbs olive oil

1 Tbs minced garlic

Black pepper to taste

1 pound (ish) of spinach or kale

1 medium container cottage cheese

1.5 cups pesto

1 pound grated mozzarella cheese

Assorted veggies (zucchini, eggplant, mushrooms, tomatoes, squash..experiment and see what you like!) sliced in 1/4 inch slices or chopped. Can easily use dehydrated veggies)

2-3 Roma tomatoes, or garden tomatoes

1 package fresh baby bella mushrooms

*1 Box lasagna noodles.

Preheat oven to 450

While waiting for water to boil for noodles (put a dab of olive oil in the boiling water to keep noodles from sticking together) heat olive oil in a large deep skillet. Saute onion in the oil until soft. Add garlic and black pepper, stir in. Chop or shred spinach/kale and add to pan. Cook until slightly wilted. Add cottage cheese and pesto. Set aside. Add noodles to boiling water and cook until barely flexible (overcooked noodles are hard to handle) While noodles are boiling, slice veggies and set aside. Spray a 9x13 baking dish with olive oil. Once noodles are done, drain and cool enough to handle. Line bottom of pan with single layer of lasagna noodles. Top with a layer of veggies, then spoon some of the cottage cheese pesto mix over them. Sprinkle some mozzarella lightly over the top. Continue layering noodles, veggies and sauce mix until you reach about 1" from the top of the pan. For the final layer, place noodles, and a generous amount of mozzarella over top. Add slices of tomatoes and mushrooms.

Place in hot oven for about 30 minutes or until mozzarella gets bubbly and slightly brown. Remove from oven and allow to rest for 10 minutes.

* If you are on a gluten free diet, you can use zucchini in thin, length wise slices in place of noodles. It is more fragile to serve though. A great way to use up all that zucchini from your garden!

Zucchini Carrot Breakfast Muffins

These are great for a quick breakfast that you can grab before you run out the door. They also freeze well.

1/2 C Brown Sugar

1/4 C Regular Sugar

1/2 C Olive oil

3 Eggs

1.5 C Whole wheat flour

1.5 C White flour

1/4 C. Ground flax seeds

1/4 C. Ground Hemp Hearts

1/4 t. Baking Powder

1 t. Baking Soda

1 t. Sea Salt

1 t. Cinnamon

2 C. Grated raw zucchini

1 C. Grated Carrot

1 C. Raw walnuts (optional)

1/2 C. Raisins (optional)

Preheat oven to 350

Add ingredients to bowl or mixer in order of recipe. Line muffin tin with papers, or grease. Fill muffin cups 3/4 of the way full. Bake approximately 40 minutes, or until fork inserted in the middle comes out clean. Makes approximately 12- 16 muffins.

Honey Scones with Orange Pollen Glaze

2012-05-25T22:04:00.000-07:00

I am in the process of testing out recipes that use honey(because we plan on having a little with 2 hives!). This one came from The Beekeeper's Bible. I modified the recipe quite a bit, the original seemed more like a biscuit than a scone. The ones I made are not true scones, but are really tasty! I doubled the recipe in the book as well, to make a decent size batch. I ended up with about 24 scones, 2 inches around.

3 1/2 C. Flour
1/2 tsp. Salt
6 Tbs. Turbinado Sugar
1 Tsp. Baking soda

Mix dry ingredients together until well blended. Then add:

2 Eggs
6 Tbs. Dark Honey (I used Buckwheat)
1/2 C. Half and Half
8 Tbs. Butter

Mix until you have a firm dough that doesn't crumble. Don't over mix these, they won't be as airy.
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. On a floured surface, roll out scones to about 1/4 inch thick and use a jar or biscuit cutter to cut 2 inch circles. To keep scones from getting tough, roll out about 1/4 of the dough. After you cut the scones out, add a little more fresh dough and re-roll.
Bake at 400 degrees for 8-10 minutes. Don't over bake, scones will not brown on top and should be barely brown on the bottom.

While scones are baking, pour 1/4 C. honey (I used a lighter clover honey) and 1/4 C. half and half in a small bowl. Add a light shake of cinnamon, a few drops of orange extract, and 1/2 tsp bee pollen. Beat vigorously to mix all ingredients together. Use a whisk or electric mixer.

Remove scones from oven and cool slightly. While they are still warm, spoon a little glaze over the top of each scone. Let cool completely. Share and let everyone envy your gourmet baking ability!

Baking tip: To pour honey more easily out of a measuring cup or spoon, coat the cup or spoon with a spray of oil. The honey will slide right out (which makes impatient bakers much happier)

Update to the 5/24 Inspection, and a Suggestion...

2012-05-24T20:31:00.000-07:00

I have to sing the praises of our friend Marva. She has been an incredible resource for us and is one of those women you just warm up to immediately. She is passionate about her bees, and knows so much. She has helped us through some screw ups as new beekeepers. That brings me to my suggestion...

FIND A MENTOR

Find someone you click with, someone who has a similar philosophy, and someone who has seen the ups and downs of beekeeping. Marva has always been patient with our questions, and never seems to mind answering them...her love for beekeeping is evident and you can hear it in her voice.

Her response to my written question about our potentially queenless hive was good enough to re-post entirely (especially the bit about teenagers and xboxes). Hoping this is useful information for other newbies out there.

'Yes, you are correct about the bees. If there is no queen they have no real purpose and act listless....kind of like waking up a bunch of teenagers before noon after they were up all night playing xbox.

You should see eggs typically within a week of placing a swarm into a box. If she is an older queen, then it may be as little as 2-3 days, with a virgin queen she may have to do a mating flight or three and then it will be a week or two before she's laying. If you take a frame of brood, be sure you have enough small rice grain sized eggs (within 1-3 days old) so they can move some to a queen cell and still feed them the royal jelly so it develops into a queen.

Transfering a swarm may be the easier route....if you chose to do this, place a layer of newspaper with a few slits cut into it onto the top of the first deep box. spray the paper with sugar water. Then place a second empty deep on top of the newspaper interface. Pour the new swarm into the upper box and they will eventually blend together - eating through the paper in a few days.

Be sure to go add frames into the upper box soon after blending though...those creative bees will start building comb anywhere they want to, you know!'

So it looks like we will be on the hunt for a swarm to add, and hopefully soon enough for this hive to take off as well.

Again, find a mentor. We lucked out when a good friend of ours told us his sister keeps bees. If you can't find someone who keeps bees, join a club (we are also members of Denver Bee, which exposes us to great speakers) or find a forum online. It will save you hours of panic and puzzling, I guarantee!

5/24 Hive Inspection

2012-05-24T18:56:00.000-07:00

We now have 2 hives in our back yard. Hive 1 (Queen Honeybutt's hive) was a purchased package of bees installed early in May. Our package was purchased form Apis (http://www.apishive.com/) and were Carniolan bees. The hive started with Queen Buzzina, but we believe she was tragically squished during a beginner style hive inspection. The bees did a great job in spite of us and reared the current Queen Honeybutt. Queen Honeybutt is doing fantastic...now that we know what we're looking for.

Queen Honeybutt. She is the one with the pointy abdomen, and is darker than the bees around her.

Jace and I went to the Denver Apiary visit conducted by Randy Oliver (www.scientificbeekeeping.com). A lot of his discussion went over my head as a new beek, but what I did learn a lot from was his hive inspection technique. Mr. Oliver runs a pro operation, although it is not large scale. His inspections are fast, efficient and something to aspire to. He spent some time showing us newbies what we are looking for on a frame:

1. Progression of brood. There should be a nice progression of eggs, larvae, and capped brood.
2. Brood surrounded by pollen, then nectar. Pollen is a protein for bees and necessary for their nutrition and brood rearing.
3. The brood, pollen, and nectar occur in bands. The brood in various stages at the center, a ring or band of pollen, then a ring or band of nectar.

The picture above was taken shortly after Queen Honeybutt's virgin flight (about 2 weeks ago). If you look closely, you can see eggs in the black bottom of the cells around her. They look like very tiny grains of rice. At this stage, there was a little pollen stored towards the edges of the frame, and some nectar in the corners. We figured with her prolific egg laying that she was doing pretty good.

Queen Honeybutt's current hive.

This photo was taken today at the hive inspection, there is quite a difference in the way the frame looks! The center with the solid yellow appearance is capped brood, which will hatch adult bees soon. Toward the edges you can see some fat larvae (they look like maggots curled up in the cells) The yellow areas are pollen, and the clear areas around that are nectar. The frame directly facing this frame was entirely pollen and nectar (our girls are working hard!) There were several frames that looked just like this one, which made us happy to see!

(Jace: There were also a lot of brood swimming nicely in Royal Jelly!)

Our second hive has a captured swarm. We are keeping an eye on it carefully. The bees are very quiet in this one and we are thinking the queen may not have been captured with the swarm (Jace: or was killed in the transfer/hiving of the swarm). Since there are no eggs for them to make a new queen out of, we will consider integrating them with Queen Honeybutt's hive on the next inspection if there are no eggs. My gut tells me they are queenless, they just aren't "acting" right.

So far so good, in general. I recommend reading through Randy Oliver's site, a lot of what he says makes sense on a scientific level.

I also recommend setting up a lawn chair by your hives and watching the bees. Mr. Oliver pointed out that you want to see "fat bees" coming in. The fatter they are, the more nectar in their honey stomachs.You'll only see it by watching them!

I meditate by our hives in the morning. I find the buzzing of our hard working girls to be a good back drop sound to concentrate on until I reach that meditative state. The girls will let you know if you are not in the right frame of mind sitting next to them. If I think of anything that makes me upset or angry, I suddenly have a lot of bees whirring around my face and bumping in to my head.

I have had a few interesting experiences meditating so far..the bees "told me" that the clover would be blooming by us in 2 weeks. Not Nostradamus or anything but we'll see if it pans out. I also saw a series of flowers so dark blue and purple they were almost black. Rather than being ugly or worrisome, they were very beautiful and my heart beat faster when I saw them. Most days it's just meditating for a still mind, with the humming of bees carrying my thoughts along until I reach that center of peace.

Until next time!

2012-05-22T09:15:00.001-07:00

Book Review: The Beekeeper's Bible- Bees, Honey, Recipes and Other Home Uses. Richard A. Jones, Sharon Sweeney-Lynch. Hard cover.

Pros: This book has a lot packed in it's pages, very comprehensive and thorough. Valuable resource for new beekeepers.

Cons: It is bible sized! Not one for lugging around the bee yard.

Before we decided to become beekeepers, we read just about every book, magazine and on-line resource we could. Every beekeeper does things differently, and some are adamant that their way is right and the only way to do things.

If I had one piece of advice to new beek's (and we are new "beeks" or new beekeeping geeks ourselves) it would be listen to everyone, and everything. Some information will be repeated and probably stands as a good idea, and some will seem weird and not very usable. Ingest it all, and sort out what works for you in your particular situation.

The Beekeper's Bible starts with a rich history of beekeeping history, beliefs, and traditions. The illustrations are beautiful and if you are a bee nerd they are worth the price of the book on their own. The book then delves in to be physiology, and the structure of the hive. There are comprehensive chapters on how to manage your hives written in a no nonsense, easy to approach style. The practical pages are dotted with scientific footnotes that will make curious minds happy.

The last chapters of the book are pure gold...what to do with the hive products you harvest. There are mouth watering recipes for honey scones, marinades, sauces and glazes. The section on medicinal honeys is worth it for herbalists wanting to expand their delivery mediums. There is even a recipe for a hangover cure. There are generously sprinkled recipes for cosmetics as well.

Out of all the books we read and re-read, this is the book that sits on our shelf as a go to reference. It is beautifully presented, elegantly illustrated and contains practical, usable information. Buy a copy for yourself or your local library!

(Jace says: I wish I fully knew what a great book this is...I can't get it away from Miss Bee Haven long enough to read it myself!)

Second swarm!

2012-05-20T20:51:00.003-07:00

It is swarm season! Today we agreed to pick up a second swarm at 5th and Quebec near the Denver Montclair International School. This was the second swarm in as many days. The swarm was situated on a tree just outside the school grounds. This swarm was more alert than the swarm we collected yesterday, especially when the collection box fell off the ladder when the bee's weight shifted the box too much! The homeowner who called us about the swarm was stung when a bee accidently flew in to her shirt and surprised her. Whoops! Fortunately, she was very understanding.

Once the bees were in their transport box and had begun to settle down, we spent some time with the homeowner and her children and even showed them how friendly and harmless the drones could be. The kids had a great time letting the drone bee crawl across their hands and arms.

(Miss Bee Haven says this one maybe didn't go as planned, and a box of bees falling off the ladder definitely gets the bees a little hyped up and irritated. I was soooo impressed with these kids though, and their mother. They asked a lot of great questions and truly seemed to care about the fuzzy insects that had invaded their neighborhood. Aren't their smiles beautiful? The bees were re-located to a friend's bee yard in Lakewood. She had just lost a queen in one of her hives, and the colony was in danger of dying without the queen. She was very excited when we called, and reported this evening that the swarm integrated quickly in to the new hive and seems happy. Talk about perfect timing! In exchange for the box of bees, she brought us some fresh eggs from her chickens, and a divinely scented bar of soap. An awesome trade on an awesome day!)

1st swarm!

2012-05-20T20:26:00.003-07:00

We picked up our first "solo" swarm on the 19th of May. It was an overcast day and had rained the night before, so it was with great surprise that we actually found a swarm at the address where the swarm was reported. The call came from around the intersection of 12th and Adams Street in Denver.

We greeted the homeowner who was very understanding about the swarm, and even knew the exact tree where the swarm came from! We explained to her and the neighbors how we were going collect the bees, then got to work. The bees had swarmed the previous day, and were rained on the night before, so they were not feisty at all.

While we were collecting this swarm, another neighbor approached us and reported a second swarm! We didn't have the equipment to collect that swarm, so we called another beekeeper friend, who agreed to come pick up the second swarm. They were about 25 feet up in a tree. (Miss Bee Haven says Jace isn't telling the whole story here...One of the things we were taught in swarm class was to make sure you seal off the bottom of your pant legs. Jace and I have gotten used to our bees in the back yard..which mostly stay up in the air and don't hang around much on the ground. When you are collecting a swarm, and you shake the branch to knock the bees in to the box, you also knock quite a few of them on the ground. While Jace and I were collecting this swarm, I felt what I thought was a few drops of sweat on my leg, except they were running up my leg instead of down. As soon as I thought it, I got stung. I remembered the bit about tucking your pant legs in your socks to prevent the bees from having a party in your pant legs, and I bent down to tuck everything in. There were 3 bees on my shoes and a few more smiling up at me from my socks. I gently brushed them off and tucked my pant legs in to my socks. No sooner had I done that, then I felt another poor bee crawling around on my leg. Jace tried to help me carefully lift my pant leg up so we could set her free but unfortunately she stung me too. There was a small group of people watching this all happen so I stayed calm. I am a little weirded out by anything crawling on me, and I felt bad that the bees stung me because it meant the end of their life. The fear of the sting is worse than the actual sting, unless you are truly allergic (and only 1-2% of the entire population are!). Jace confessed that a bee had crawled up his pant leg as well and stung him. Miss Bee Haven and Jace will definitely remember to tuck their pants in to their socks next time! )