• Category Archives Bees

  • Our Life And This Land Are One

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                      Waxing Flower Moon

    The garden beckons, so a short one this morning.  I’m set for having the garden planted before I leave next Friday, atulips674 week from tomorrow.  Everything I need to get in the ground before I get back will have a spot:  various tomato plants and potato eyes, broccoli, cauliflower, egg plant, onions, leek, chard, greens and cucumbers.

    There is a sense of wholeness now as the orchard begins to blossom, the vegetable garden for this year starts to grow and the perennial flowers, hosta, ferns and bugbane blossom and emerge.   With the ecological garden’s work later this month we will have a yet more integrated homestead, with food and flowers, bees and a home of their own for the grandkids.

    This must be a similar feeling to a farmer’s, a feeling that our life and this land are one.  That means, too, that as the garden comes to life, a certain part of my Self also comes to life, when it grows, so do I.  As the harvest comes in so do I harvest fruits within my Self.

    When the garden begins to go fallow in late August through October, another aspect of my Self blossoms.  In this light I can see September 29th, the Feast of  St. Michael the Archangel, as the springtime of the  soul.  This begins a period more reflective and contemplative, a period, too, when my creativity flowers.  As outside, so inside.

    Blessed be.


    Bees Faith and Spirituality Garden Great Work permaculture 📎and tagged

  • Saling. Bogota. Bees.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                 Waning Flower Moon

    And on the second day of May we turned our garage into a retail establishment.

    This reminds me of my first ever off the continent trip to Bogota.  The neighborhood of our small hotel was residential, living areas above garages, sort of like the San Francisco versions.  A middle-class to affluent neighborhood, not poor.

    I went out one morning for an after breakfast walk, just to take in the unusual experience of a people who lived in a  country in South America, who spoke Spanish.  I was not at home and loving it.  As my walk went on, the neighborhood began to wake up and the garages, too.  Doors slid up to reveal small businesses.  This one had groceries, that one had cleaning supplies, another with snacks and pop.  The neighorhood was one giant, apparently perennial garage sale.

    They had to do better than we did.  You’d think with a recessionary economy that people would turn out in large numbers.  But they didn’t.  The day was slow.  None of our big items the telescope, the dining room set, the bed sold.  It was a nice day, too.

    The only significant retail moment for me came when I sold a Che Guevara t-shirt to a Mexican family.

    Onions got planted today, a large bed weeded and prepared for peas.  The hive came open, too.  Inside the bees had gathered all at one end, working furiously on something, what I could not tell.  The smoker, filled with wet hay, smoked and the bees remained calm. The white bee suit and mesh head covering worked.  No bee got inside.

    Did they accept the queen?  Couldn’t tell.  I’m glad Mark plans to come tomorrow.  We’ll look together and he’ll help with what I need to see.


    Bees Family Travel 📎and tagged

  • Getting the week started

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                         Waxing Flower Moon

    Business meeting this morning.  We decided to go ahead with a vegetable garden renovation planned by Ecological Gardens and to get the deck in on which we will build the playhouse for the grandkids.  That work will start soon. Exciting.

    The bees spend these first days filling up cells with brood and honey made from the syrup mix.  I checked them yesterday and will now leave them alone until next Saturday.

    Finished reservations for Hilton Head with the exception of the rental car.  That’s next.

    Planting this week, too.  Today, though, is docent book club day.  Allison’s work on textiles.   Should be fun.


    Art and Culture Bees Garden Our Land and Home permaculture Travel

  • Weekend

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring          Waxing Flower Moon

    Our bees came here from California so I hope they don’t suffer too much climate shock as the temperatures fall this week.  Lows will hit 35 or so midweek.  Right now, in fact, the temperature is only 42 at 10 a.m.

    I grilled a turkey tenderloin last night on our inside gas grill, cooked up some whole wheat pasta served with a red sauce and cut up some tomatos and the last of our onions for a salad.  Kate had a milder day at work and so did not come home in distress as she often does on Saturdays.  She works from 9-5 every other Saturday and the number of hours, plus a lot of bending and twisting to see into small persons ears and mouths, not to mention the occasional superstrong 18 month old can tweak her neck to a bad place.

    No outside work today.  I plan to move stuff for the great garage sale coming up this weekend.


    Bees Cooking 📎and tagged

  • We Have 6,000 New Residents In Multi-Hive Housing

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring               New Moon (Flower)

    The bees have come.  Mark Nordeen drove over today with our first packet of bees.  This is a picture of a bee package off the web.  The circle at the top contains a can of nutrient syrup for the bees while in transit.  The can comes out and the bees pour out of the opening into the hive, which has four middle frames removed.

    Mark and I donned our bee suits (mine is borrowed from him), me for the first time.  He pulled the can out.  It had seepage on the bottom from three very tiny pricks in the bottom.

    He then turned the box over the opening in the hive and shook the bees out of the box through the circle which held the can.  The bees poured out, most landing on the floor, then climbing up the frame of already built combs.  A few bees remained so he shook the box, spilling the rest out into the hive.

    The queen comes in a smaller wooden box with a screen over one side.  Mark uses the direct release method, meaning he opened the small wooden box on the bottom of the hive and let the queen walk out.  Queen acceptance is the first critical move in the hive.  That seems to have happened.

    We replaced the four frames and then put a patty of pollen replacement on top of the frames.  Pollen substitute comes as a soft material that looks much the inside of a fig newton bar.  Over the frames themselves and the pollen patty substitute went the hive cover, a particle board piece as big as the top of the hive with an ovoid slot in the middle.  Over this slot goes a plastic pail with sugar water.   The pail’s lid has a small screen, smaller than a quarter in the center.  The bees come up to this screen to feed until the plant world provides enough pollen for them to make their own food.

    I was a little nervous before Mark came, excited, too.  The most unexpected part of the process for me was the sound.  The hum of the bees as they took up residence gave off a sense of vitality and unity.

    Much more to learn, a years long course I believe.


    Bees Great Work permaculture 📎and tagged

  • A Green Miracle

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring              Waning Seed Moon

    The bee hives have a new coat of white sealer, a soothing color for them.  The raised bed on which I painted them has some tulips pushing up and the bed across from it have the garlic.  They’ve begun to wake up in force now so we’ll have the pleasure of garlic grown this year from garlic we grew last year.

    We had chard for lunch today.  I thought about it a moment.  I took one chard seed and put it in a small rockwool cube late last fall or early winter.  It got water and light from the fluorescent bulb until it sprouted.  After the first tiny roots began to appear outside the confines of the small cube, it went into the clay growing medium, small balls of clay that absorb nutrient solution.

    The seedling grew in the nutrient solution for several weeks as the roots spread out.  The nutrient solution comes in a bottle, concentrated and goes 3 tablespoons to two gallons of water.  What those roots and the chard plant leaves have to work with then is that nutrient solution and the light from a full spectrum second sun that glows above the plastic beds in which the liquid circulates.

    The wonder in this is the transformation of that small seed, not bigger than the head of a pin, into food with only the inputs of light and some concentrated chemicals diluted in water.  I’m not sure why  you need water into wine when you can turn water into food, better for you anyhow.

    Over the next month the outside work begins to grow and take up more time.  In our raised beds and the orchard this same miracle happens, changed only by the addition of soil.  Seeds into food.  Which in turn create more seeds so you can grow more food.  A green miracle.


    Bees Cooking Faith and Spirituality Garden Hydroponics 📎and tagged

  • A Level Foundation

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                 Waning Seed Moon

    This morning I leveled a foundation for the bee  hive.  Tomorrow I’ll paint the hive boxes and the base with a light colored latex paint and let them dry.   I also ordered a smoker and a hive tool from Mann Beekeeping Superstore in, of all places, Hackensack.  They should get here by Thursday.

    Once I have the hive tool I’ll finish cleaning the frames and the hive-boxes of propolis.  After they’re cleaned up, I’ll assemble the first part of the hive on the foundation.  I need to lay in a supply of white sugar.  At that point I should be ready for the bees which will arrive this coming Saturday.

    Will the dogs get too snoopy and get stung?  I hope not, but I think the hand on the hot stove learning curve will apply.  Daughter-in-law Jen has concerns about bees and I can understand that, no one wants to see kids get stung.  My general understanding is that American bee populations are not very aggressive to downright passive.  That is my experience with bees and bumble bees over several years in the garden.  I can work on flowers and plants while bees feed right beside me.  I have had no stings under those conditions.

    Wasps, that’s another story.  It’s a good thing wasps don’t make honey.


    Bees 📎and tagged

  • Is There Such A Thing As An Individual Bee?

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring             Waning Seed Moon

    The bee hive essentials are in the red car and they come out today.  The bees themselves arrive next Saturday by semi.  Mark Nordeen told me last year’s delivery came during an April blizzard, hit a patch of ice, rolled over and killed all the bees.

    This will be my first year with the bees and I’m looking forward to learning a lot about them.  The notion a hive mind has, I know, fascinated my step-son Jon for a long time.  It gets its intellectual legs from the performance of bees and ants and other social insects who as individuals can only accomplishments small increments of a larger task, the survival of the hive, but together they ensure the hive’s endurance through time.  The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.  Here’s a question:  Is there is such a thing as an individual bee, or, rather do we have multiple flying macro-cellular organs of a single entity?

    It’s a chilly start for the Wishes for Sky day, but I got an e-mail that said dress warm and come.  So Minnesotan.

    That reminds me.  I read the inscription on an early Zhou dynasty kuei (a ritual food vessel) and one of the kids on the tour, a young Chinese girl said, “That’s so Chinese.”   This kuei was made in the 10th century B.C.

    Gotta get ready.  Unload the hives and plant some peas before I take off for St. Paul.


    Art and Culture Asia Bees 📎and tagged