Nichols and May? George and Martha? Sam and Diane?

defunct bee boxes and squalor

Owen now refuses to eat Parmesan as he says it makes his mouth hurt and he picked off all the cheese I’d sprinkled on our pasta last night.

WILL THIS TORTURE NEVER END??? 

Dinner wasn't worth writing about, but what happened after was most exciting. I decided to see what was up with the bees hovering around our defunct bee boxes lately. The boxes have been mouldering on our deck for several years, waiting for me to cart them to the dump. 

I had to use a chisel to pry off the lid.

a visual in case video doesn't work

Yow! Apparently, a swarm of bees found our boxes and set up housekeeping. I only got stung once last night, which was amazing.

This morning I asked Mark if he wanted to take charge of the new hive, as he was always fascinated by the bees and less scared of them than I.

He said no.

Jennifer: Why not?

Mark: I don’t want to take the time. We already went down that road and the bees died. Are you quoting me for the blog? I think if we want to invest in bees we should give to a bee charity. The other thing is, no one uses the honey. If you got bees that made sugar and flour, that’s something I’d consider helping with.

Jennifer: By that logic, you should help with the chickens because we go through a lot of eggs.

Mark: The chickens aren’t consistent about laying year round. Until they’re consistent year round, I won’t help.

Jennifer: But you thought the bees were so cool.

Mark: I think a lot of things are cool that I don’t do. 

Jennifer, typing: Can you elaborate?.

Mark: Fuck off! I’m going to have breakfast now.

Jennifer: What are you having?

Mark: Cold leftover Domino's pizza.

Good one. Lately, he's been playing his part with real brio.

This Bon Appetit strawberry cake is delicious. You have a layer of rich almond cake, a layer of fresh strawberries, and a layer of streusel made from butter, almonds, and freeze-dried strawberries. Trader Joe's carries freeze-dried strawberries and a 1.2-ounce bag sufficed. I'd make this cake again.

Finally, a book report, nothing to do with food:

"Secrets had the power to kill a marriage, she said. Nonsense, Sylvia said, it was secrets that could save a marriage."

A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson

Atkinson is my favorite living novelist, but I wasn't sold on God in Ruins until the final pages when there came a dazzling passage that turned everything that had happened thus far upside down. The passage gave me goosebumps and I read it again and again. This is a brilliant book. Unfortunately the brilliance isn’t spread evenly throughout. To put it another way: the plot (long life of pleasant Englishman) lacks momentum, but if you make it to the thought-provoking finish line, you’ll be amply rewarded.

Verdict: Recommend with hesitation. If you’re new to Kate Atkinson, start with Case Histories. 

A Monday Night Ad Hoc Meal

It really is hard to whip up an Ad Hoc At Home dinner without planning well in advance. Yesterday afternoon I surveyed my options and they were few. Many, maybe even most, of Thomas Keller's recipes require some step -- a special order from the butcher, brining, marinating, a blowtorch, homemade court bouillon, chive oil, slab bacon, serrano ham -- that I could not make between 4 and 5 p.m. and have dinner on the table at 7:15.

Don't worry, I'm not going to belabor this endlessly. I'm up for the game! I'm just explaining why last night I made the pan-roasted halibut and sauteed broccoli rabe, among the few Keller recipes that sound very boring, but also require no special ingredients or advance planning. These dishes actually were very boring, and I say that as someone who loves both halibut and broccoli rabe. 

Abridged family response to meal: 

Owen: I don't like fish.

Isabel: You ALWAYS say that about everything. What IS this vegetable?

Tipsy: It's broccoli rabe. I love it. It's bitter.

Isabel: Um, yeah. I noticed.

Husband: My favorite vegetable is celery and cream cheese.

Isabel: I like vegetables that aren't all wrinkled.

Owen: I like carrots that aren't cooked.

It went on like that. You know, discussing ideas, values, Bach. After all, the dinner table is the cradle of civilization.

Let's just hope Alice Waters is wrong about that.

 

When I was at the supermarket yesterday I bought chives to make chive oil, and parsley to make parsley water, both of which are essential components of Keller's asparagus coins, which I planned to serve tonight. But last night I was too tired to put the chives in the blender and make the oil, which requires 24 hours to steep, so we will not be dining on asparagus coins. I did track down some slab bacon, so I guess I can make his asparagus stew instead. 

Here's why I was tired: 

After a long talk with a bee expert about the fate of our lost bees and the future of our brand new bees, I decided to harvest last year's honey and let the new bees forage. These pictures do not quite convey the sticky drudgery of scraping, crushing, straining and re-straining required to hand-extract several gallons of honey in an ordinary kitchen. 

But it was worth it. Very pretty.

Bees: They're there

A friend of mine constantly nags me about our bees, thinks that my infatuation with chickens has led me to abandon the bees. It is true, I do like the chickens better than the bees, but there's not that much to do with these bees except leave them alone. 

Yesterday, my mother was over and I offered to let her inspect the hives with me since I haven't done so in a couple of months. Plus, I wanted to show off. She wore a bathrobe, I wore a winter coat because we don't have suits. I know that some people inspect hives in shorts and t-shirts, but I will never be that kind of person.

What did we find? There are fewer bees in both hives and they are more concentrated in the lower boxes than they were this summer. There are signs of a queen (specifically, babies) in both hives, but not very many. We will harvest no honey this year; all the honey -- there is a lot and it is beautiful -- is for the bees to use over the winter. I did not do a mite count, though I know I should at some point.  And I need to fix my feeders, in which the bees were drowning in vast numbers before I removed them. I've read that this is a common problem with the type of feeder I bought and can be remedied with duct tape. I have a short bee-related to-do list and I will tackle it within the week.

My husband took these photos of my mother and me after I was stung on the neck by a bee that got inside the coat, which didn't bother me at all, but immediately before a bee began buzzing inside my bonnet, which bothered me inordinately. I am terrified of bees getting trapped in my hair, so I did the most irrational, childish thing imaginable: I ripped off my bonnet. Then there were a lot of bees (maybe three? five? it seems like a lot in the moment) buzzing around my face and head and I began to wail and ran into the house. My husband brushed the bees off me and gave me a withering look. I put the bonnet back on and resumed my duties, but the act I was performing for my mother -- remember how I used to be scared of bees when I was a foolish little girl? see how cool I am now? -- was somewhat spoiled. 

These are some of our new chicks. 

I used to think it was a shame that tiny, adorable chicks had to grow up to be hens. I still think tiny, adorable chicks are tiny and adorable, but there's nothing quite like a plump and clucking full-grown hen, pecking and scratching and dust-bathing. We got wire for the new, high-security chicken run from a neighbor, but we're going to hire out the actual carpentry.  This is very good news for the chickens.

Cost v. benefit on backyard chickens

Good story here on the dubious economics of backyard chickens. I still think ours might eventually pay for themselves because we already had a shed to use as a hen house, a tall fence, and lots of forage. But maybe not. Maybe they're just amusing pets who happen to lay eggs. That's also okay.

I can't wait for someone to write a story about the cost of beekeeping.   

Bees & Birds

After visiting Novella Carpenter's farm yesterday, I came home and nervously decided to inspect our bee hives.  One morning last week I got up and, still in pajamas, decided to go peek at the entrances of the hives. During the day there are bees flying everywhere and they pay no attention to me. But this morning, when there was zilch going on, a guard bee spotted me four feet away, came zooming out and went for my head. Started thrashing around in my hair and after two minutes of frantic/furious buzzing, stung me on the back of the neck. It was horrible. Not the sting, but the sound of a tiny, angry creature crawling around in my hair. I have some primal issues with bees in my hair.

Anyway, I screwed up my courage and went into both hives yesterday.

The bees are doing okay, despite the proximity of the toxic buckeye tree. I did not see "brood" in the upper chambers of either hive -- just lots of comb and pale honey, both capped and uncapped -- which is not ideal. But I'm not sure what to do about it. According to my reading, there should be more brood.

I was also slightly worried that the bees were producing queen cells when I saw the lumpy formations on the bottom of this frame: 

But the raggedy comb extrusions appeared to be filled with honey and were not as tidy as the queen cells I've studied in photographs. If an experienced beekeeper sees this and has any thoughts, I would be grateful.

As I've mentioned before, I spent $934.69 on starter bees, two hives, and equipment. This morning I got curious and made some calculations:

A fairly average Bay Area hive can produce 25 lbs. of honey per year according to this site. Some hives produce much more; other hives perish. I don't expect any honey this year, but let's say I'm perfectly average and end up with 50 lbs. of honey from my two hives in the summer of 2010.

 

Twelve pounds of honey = 1 gallon. 

You can buy "Marin Mix" honey  -- which can't be much different from what my bees are making -- from Local Harvest for $88 per gallon.

 

So if I were to sell 4 gallons of our honey at that price, we could conceivably take in $350 per year. There would be other expenses -- sugar water, extra supers, jars, charming labels, etc. -- but at this rate, we would earn back our starting costs in roughly three years.

Interesting. And completely hypothetical. It's hard for me to believe that a beekeeper as amateurish as I am will ever actually collect honey.  It's even harder for me to imagine finding the wherewithal to bottle, market, and sell it. 

I still think the chickens could eventually earn their keep. Check out our handsome chicken house, built by Husband a few years ago as a fort:

I'm sure our neighbors love it. 

The garden is much prettier, albeit overcrowded. 

I was underconfident after years of disappointment, overplanted to make up for mingy yields, and now have a jungle. 

Bees: This is bad

You can't really tell from the picture, but the bees are clearly in trouble. I went out today and while there are a few bees coming and going from the hive, there is now a large contingent just hanging around the entrance. They seem very sluggish, they are not fanning at all, just crawling slowly. It is strikingly different from their usual behavior. Whether or not this is due to the proximity of the toxic buckeye tree, I don't know.

Options: 

a. Move the bees elsewhere in the yard. But is there any point in our yard that is far enough? And is it too late for these particular bees?

b. Cut down the buckeye.

c. Give up on the bees.

If it could work, "a"would obviously be my first choice. Until two days ago, I loved our buckeye tree.  But if "a" is impossible, I am currently leaning towards "b." It feels like a crime to cut down a native buckeye, plus it will be expensive. But the poor bees.

Horrible.

 

Buckeye honey

We have an enormous, spectacular California buckeye in our yard that looks like the picture above and every spring grows long, ruffled wands of white flowers. I situated our bee hives a few feet from the buckeye and yesterday realized, wow, we're going to get buckeye honey! How cool is that? I decided to see if there was anything written about buckeye honey. Indeed there is. 

From the USDA: "Do not plant buckeyes near apiaries as the flowers are poisonous to honey bees."

Further reading has only deepened my concern. The bees will have to be moved, the sooner the better. Shockingly bad luck.

My review of Molly Wizenberg's Homemade Life and Giulia Melucci's I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti is up on the NPR web site. You can read it here.

The price of birds, the price of bees

**When I first posted this I erred in my chicken calculations. Anyway, it's been fixed.

Slate ran a story a few weeks ago in which the author asserts that "keeping chickens is a filthy, time consuming, and expensive way to keep the pantry filled with eggs." 

I expected keeping chickens to be all those things, but have been rather shocked by how easy and cheap the whole experience has been. So far. For us.

In terms of cost, we had a head start:

1. we have a big yard that was already well fenced to exclude deer 

2. we had a ramshackle playhouse that everyone avoided because it was funky and filled with spiders. This was converted to a henhouse in one afternoon with an $18.99 roll of chicken wire. 

Here are our out-of-pocket poultry expenses as of today:

wire, water bowl, chick feeder, feed, bedding  $68.54

 bulbs & clamp lamp $18.24

the chicks themselves $35.00

Total $121.78

That's a steep down payment on eggs we will not get until August at the earliest, assuming nothing goes wrong. Alberta Einstein comes from a breed of bad layers and our bantam's eggs will be puny, so I'm going to assume those two losers will contribute nothing. Let's say the ten other hens (we're hoping they're all hens) lay 3 egg a week. Thirty eggs a week are worth $6.98 at the rate I've been paying for moderately fancy supermarket eggs. Will the chickens ever earn their keep? Don't know. But it seems at least conceivable. I'm keeping track and will report back.

As for labor, the chickens require 10 minutes a day. Filth is a non-issue now that they are outside. 

The bees, on the other hand: MONEY PIT. We won't get any honey until next year:

Here's what I've paid so far: 

sugar for feeding the bees in early weeks   $13

bees themselves (2 packets)         $188

equipment, boxes, gear, books, smoker, paint         $733.69

 

Total             $934.69

That is one freaking expensive hobby. Interesting and noble and all that, but holy hell.

 

Bees: I think we are becoming friends

That was thrilling. After a week of dread, we finally went into the hives to check that the queens had been released (they had) and remove their empty cages (we did.) You can see Husband in his suit; I put on a giant bathrobe. When the hives were open, bees were flying around everywhere and clustered on our clothing, but it felt safe a. because we were covered b. the bees did not seem angry, maybe just a little flustered. They reminded me a lot of the chickens when you take them out to clean the cage, or fill their water dish: agitated but willing to go along with whatever.

Anyway, it was great. I'm breathless. Amazing to stand there in the middle of all those unthreatening bees and peer into their home. They've built a huge amount of comb in just seven days and it's absolutely perfect, pearl-white comb. I wish I had a photograph.

This is what the hive looked like after we replaced the cover:

I went out again a few minutes ago and it was almost completely back to normal -- just a bit of traffic at the entrance. Baking a loaf of banana bread suddenly seems incredibly dull.

A little about bagels, a little about bees

My usual bagel recipe makes chewy water bagels, but last night, for a change, I baked the egg bagels from Beth Hensperger's Bread Bible. They puffed up to monstrous proportions and were soft, pale, and doughy.

Husband: I like these bagels. Not as good as the other ones. Why didn't you make those?

Tipsy: Variety is the spice. . . 

Husband: No. Make the kind that you know are good.

Tipsy: But what if these had turned out to be even better? 

Husband: Make the kind that you know are good. 

I can see both sides.

Farm report:

Much activity at the bee hives. Today I saw some bees returning to the hive with pollen on their legs. I'd been told about this but figured you needed nerves of steel and a magnifying glass to actually see pollen on a bee's leg. But no, you can spot it with the naked eye from four feet away. The pollen is a gaudy orange-yellow, extremely thick, and makes the bees look a little like clowns. 

I'm not sure if they're supposed to be trying to access the hive through every tiny crack like they're doing in the photograph. 

 

Still uncertain about and around the bees. 

No ambivalence at all about the chicks; they're wonderful. They went outside and pecked merrily at the bricks while I cleaned their room today, which entailed vacuuming up several pounds of sawdust and pulverized manure. I hate to think about mutating interspecies viruses. . . so won't. 

We now have bees and I need an Ativan

A handle would've been nice.

This afternoon, Owen and I drove to Sonoma County to collect our bees, and found thrumming crates of insects stacked on every available surface of the Beekind shop. Stray bees were shooting around in the air and I pretended to be cool, resisted swatting them away from my face or shrieking. While she wrote up our receipt, the proprietor reached out her index finger and petted a bee that was clinging to the side of her clipboard. I may one day cease to fear bees, but doubt I'll ever caress one. The same woman proceeded to give me a peremptory 30-second course on bee installation, brusquely told me to watch the video I've already seen a half dozen times, and sent us home with our two throbbing 3-pound packages.

Though he disapproves of this whole project, Mark gamely "suited up" and we carefully did all the things you must do to relocate bees from packages into hives. The operation was not that complicated, just the tiniest bit scary, and very quick. I was stung once, Mark not at all. The only truly weird maneuver involved a screw, a cork, and a miniature marshmallow and I would describe it in more detail but am completely shot. 

Anyway, the hives are now filled with handsome Italian honeybees and one day I'll lift a lid and and take a photo to prove it. Not there yet. If you're an experienced beekeeper and see something obviously wrong with this hive set-up, which would not surprise me, I'd be grateful for a note.

Tomorrow, back to cookbooks.

The kids are back

To quote the charming food writer and mediocre novelist Laurie Colwin: "Did people create families in order to keep themselves from wondering what the purpose of life was? With children it was a snap. Children were a purpose, and generally there was so much to do in their behalf that you might never stop to think at all."

I can handle the existential stress, but it's definitely restful to be picking up Star Wars figurines and mixing pancake batter after a week of somberly contemplating the horizon. What will I do when my purposes go to college? Is that why I ordered the bees? Why did I order the freaking bees?

Budget matters: 

On 4/15 Mark spent $11 at the supermarket on bread, lunch, etc.

Yesterday, after collecting the kids at the airport we went to Champa Garden, a Laotian restaurant in Oakland, and spent $55.

If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area and haven't been already, you must, must, must go to Champa Garden. Order the sampler appetizer plate, a dish that stopped all conversation for ten minutes while we devoured every last crumb of rice ball salad, sausage, and spring roll. The kids must have been starving because they didn't stop eating long enough to complain that they don't like "Chinese" food. Champa Garden is in a funky neighborhood and looks like a converted corner liquor shop or laundromat, but of course that made it all the more exciting. We staggered out of there stuffed and very happy because of the fantastic food and because we're all together again. Honeymoon should last until noon today.  

Going forward: Two more nights of cooking from Fat and Milk to wrap up and use the caul fat, then I'm going to start Into the Vietnamese Kitchen by Andrea Nguyen.

Hived off

I'm panicking about the bees.

It all seemed very doable and simple in the days after the beekeeping class, but a few weeks have elapsed and I started reading up on bees last night, bouncing around on hobbyist web sites, until I finally had to shut off the computer and get under the covers. There were a picture of a woman IN SHORTS retrieving a swarm of her bees that had migrated into a neighbor's yard. Swarm, swarm, swarm, swarm. There is a horror movie called The Swarm.

Our bees arrive in 9 days.

With my coffee this morning I was reading Laurie Colwin's Family Happiness in which the saintly heroine infuriates one of her brothers and his wife. She does something unforgivable: she insists on having them to her place for dinner when they want her to come to their place. Such is the high drama in a Laurie Colwin novel. Anyway, here's some dialogue:

"Geez, you'd think you put a nuclear device in their elevator, Well, they're pretty hived off."

"Hived off?" said Polly. "What does that mean."

"It is a swarm of bees leaving their nest," Andreya explained.

Hived off. If I believed in signs . . .  but I don't.

Abrupt change of subject. Laurie Colwin just isn't a great novelist. I'm almost done with her complete oeuvre, and while I find her fiction very readable, it's painfully tame and cozy. Cookbooks should be cozy -- it's why I love them -- but life isn't really cozy and when I read fiction I want a little life. You know, anguish and loneliness and contempt and sex and dark comedy. Colwin is way too distracted by poached eggs and china patterns. 

Fat: Breton butter cake baked & bees ordered

Pretty and delicious cake made from a Jennifer McLagan recipe, but I'm too distracted and nervous right now to focus on pastry. I just ordered our Italian bees -- two 3-lb. packages -- to arrive on April 25. I feel like the person who sold them should have done an assessment to see if I'm actually a fit keeper for thousands and thousands of tiny lives. I'm not sure that I am, but will try to rise to the occasion. 

Bees: We're getting them

Introduction to beekeeping seminar: huge success. Fellow students were about evenly mixed between hard-of-hearing retired people and scrawny young men with scraggly little ponytails and ear tunnels. And then there was me, the only non-ancient square person. Though I'm not, by instinct, a lover of bees, Doug , our enthusiastic and very entertaining teacher (see left), made me want to install hives not just in my own back yard, but in the yards of everyone I know. So watch out.

It appears we can get completely outfitted for about $300, then spend 30 minutes a week on maintenance, and hope that none of the many sad fates that befall honeybee colonies (diseases, mites, skunks, drought) befall ours. Eventually, if all goes well, we will have a happy garden, happy bees, and absurd amounts of honey.

I'm only worried it's too late to order bees for this spring. Calling tomorrow. Next: chickens.

Will she or won't she?

My grandfather, a cattle rancher, used to let a beekeeper put boxes on his land and one day my family was out riding around and a bee got caught in my hair. I was fifteen or so, definitely too old to be undone by a bee. But I was undone by this bee. It was buzzing in my ear and wildly thrashing to get free of the hair and I began to cry, shaking my head and batting at it and kicking my horse. I behaved about as rationally as the bee; my parents must have been so proud. Eventually the poor bee stung me on the scalp and died. I was very aggrieved because my family seemed to find my panic amusing and uncool.

That was my last close encounter with a bee and it seems doubtful that I'm cut out to be a beekeeper. But I recently read Fruitless Fall*, a beautiful, troubling book about the mysterious decline in the honeybee population and it inspired me to sign up for a free amateur beekeeping seminar. That's today. I like the idea of of playing some tiny role in helping the bees and I like the idea of suburban hives. Good for the bees, good for the fruit trees, good for honey. Plus, the Obamas are doing it.

But liking the idea of something is very different from liking the thing itself, and I remain extremely wary of Apis mellifera. There's the swarming, the tiny, vibrating, hairy bodies, the stinging. I'm going to try to see the beauty and the mystery and master my fear, become an Earth Mother and wipe the knowing smirks of my parents' faces. I'm giving it my all. Will report back.

*highly recommend even if you don't think you're interested in bees as it is incredibly well written and you will soon realize that you are actually very interested in bees.