Where are the bees? Part next.

It is bee season in south Georgia. What does that mean? Well it means looking at a lot of boxes like the one above.

Bees reproduce by swarming, by making new colonies. A new individual bee is nothing without a colony. When a colony is doing well enough to fill its home they start to change their roles. The queen lays eggs in specially prepared queen cells. When they are sufficiently advanced, usually about ten days, the workers stop feeding her and she gets smaller and restless. At some point she takes about half the colony and leaves to find a new home while the ones left behind nurture the new queens, one of which will take over the egg laying task.

Beekeepers use this to make new colonies on their own schedule. We watch the spring build-up and then step in to make artificial swarms. So I’m out there opening giant bee boxes completely full of bees. I find the queen and set her aside. Then I make one or two, sometimes three new colonies from the brood (pupating worker bees) and honey, move them a couple of miles away so the workers don’t find their way back to the old location and put a new queen in them, usually in the form of a queen pupa supplied by a queen dealer with a specified hatching date.

Finding the queen in a box like that pictured above ain’t easy, can you see her? It takes an unusual level of concentration and awareness, the smell of fresh nectar all around, the buzz of a disturbed colony, the occasional sting and distractions like keeping track of the stage of the honey flow, pollen levels and keeping an eye out for pathologies.

This makes for hard work, especially because it usually goes on in a heavy honey flow. The frames are full of nectar, your gloves get sticky and full of stings and the usual structure of the hive is disrupted by all the honey coming in; the queen can be in all kinds of places she might not ordinarily be as she looks for new places to lay. One holds frame after frame at the right angle to scan it for the queen, making mental notes of the strength of the hive, the location of pollen and brood, trying not to think about the wonderful spring going on all around, the wrens, warblers and vireos singing and whether there might be snakes hiding under the pallet.

 

Raptors

We went for a hike in the Okefenokee Park and, as usual, had an excellent day.  The first thing was the new tame hawk in the parking lot.  It must put up with a lot of gawking and camera clicking.  We saw wild hogs, a fine buck fox squirrel, sand hill cranes, turkeys, bluebirds and all the usual suspects.  Still no red-cockaded woodpecker.  Brad says you have to get to them right at dawn when they spring into action.  Ellen says: Not likely.

Up in Virginia my brother took a fine series of photos of this immature bald eagle.  It appears to be honing in on some litter but realizes it’s been had and flies away.

 

I Believe We Have A New Winner

Where are the bees?

Beekeeping is so far outside the normal experience of most people that I get a lot of boneheaded naive questions.  The most common, by far, is;
“Do you get stung?” which I’ve answered here.  Other popular queries include;”How do you get them to go on the truck?” This last weekend we were getting a load ready to go out to pollinate almonds in California.  Half of the commercial bee colonies in America go to the almonds and these belong to a friend and business associate of mine that sent them here to enjoy our balmy winter in preparation for their trip to the Central Valley.  California has strict rules to prevent the introduction of fire ants and we pressure washed all the pallets and hives to make sure the load didn’t get sent back.  The bees were all lined up, ready for the big truck to pull in when a retired couple stopped in to buy a jar of honey.  They drove in the truck driveway and right by 400 colonies (see photo above).  When they found their way to our back door they bought their jar and then asked, “Where are the bees?”  I guess they expected little hornet nests hanging from the trees.

 

Return to the Sandpaper Drawer

When last we saw the sandpaper drawer it contained a slithery reptile.  While that was a shock at the time I think it was preferable to this:

There was about 15 pounds of chicken food, presumably brought there two little cheek pouches at a time plus the feathers, muscadines and upholstery you see.  Whatever rodent went to all this trouble it appears to have not enjoyed the fruits of its labors, indeed I suspect it made a snack for ‘The Sandman’.  mmmm, grain-fed rat.  On the whole I think I prefer the snakes; they keep the drawers nice and clean.

Here’s something a little nicer, mid-winter camelias.

And: The Sandman

 

Mustelids vs. Rodents. In my pants.

From an excellent commenter (that sounds better than ‘very rare’ commenter) we get news of ferret legging.  We’ll give you time to go digest that.  Back? This certainly beats flying squirrels in one’s pajamas.  As hilarious as it is though it is fiction and is yet more slander against those fun little critters ferrets.  I knew one that would chase ping-pong balls up ones sleeve and around one’s clothes with great glee and gentleness and saved its needlesharp teeth for rodents.

Don't pants me bro!

Hence two ferrets in your pants: not bad.  Two squirrels in your pants: probably not bad.  Once again, Audubon claims they can be ‘trained to the hand’ in less than half an hour.  He doesn’t say anything about ‘trained to the pants’ but I’d be optimistic.

A ferret and two flying squirrels in your pants: watch out.  Nightmare on Limb Street?  Halloween VII: The Squeekening?  Weasel Dead?

 

Now with even more bees

There’s been plenty going on here in South Georgia this week.  A friend from the frozen north decided that the frightful weather was hurting the bees he would be sending to California for almond pollination and sent a couple of truckloads of them here for six weeks of basking in the Georgia sun.  We’ve had beautiful weather, mostly in the high seventies and the maples have bloomed early making for a big winter boost for bees.  Fortunately the day the bees came was frosty and never got over 50F so moving them was pretty easy, at least as easy as bee moving ever is.

A couple of weeks ago I’d heard a rumor of a bear in our woods but thoroughly discounted it as local fabulosity.  Not so!  One of the yards we looked at while setting out the new bees had been visited by a bear and bashed up a bit.  So driving all through the woods to look at the others to see where else he’d been took some more time (only one other yard got hit).  An old-timer once told me that bears here are mostly in transit from Okefenokee to Penholloway Swamp and I believe that.  This high sand ridge doesn’t have enough forage to support bears and the crowds of hunters that lease the land would be discouraging to any critter.  Hopefully this one is gone and won’t be back.

Just about the only benefit associated with Ellen’s job that hasn’t been eliminated in ongoing cost cutting is the Xmas turkey and I cured it and smoked it with some success the day after Christmas.  Seven hours at 150F over oak gave it a delicate smoke flavor that balanced with the honey/salt cure really well.  I didn’t leave the gravy out this time in case of more owls (see previous entries).  The cat has been leaving the owls alone and concentrating on flying squirrels (again, see below).  One of them I did catch in my pajamas, it ran right up my leg until my jumping up and down and yelping got it out again when I grabbed it and let it go outside.  He brought another one in last night and I let him eat it because we suspect that he’d been catching the same one over and over and they were developing a dysfunctional relationship.

Yesterday I spent covered with hydraulic oil trying to fix the Bobcat.  It required contortions and the usual knuckle busting and wasn’t exactly fun but the beautiful sunshine, flocks of bluebirds and waxwings and warm gentle breezes made it better than it could have been.  I actually may be able to fix it.  I hope 10W30 is good for one’s youthful complexion because I’ve been soaking in it.

 

Another update from my pajamas

Today, for the second time in a week it was a flying squirrel.  Usually they’re easy enough to catch but this one had extra vim.  Last week’s managed to run up my leg inside my pajamas so perhaps I was a little hesitant with this one.  Audubon says they are easily tamed “to the hand” in less than half an hour.  Evidently this one was behind on it’s Audubon reading because once I caught it I was thinking of taking another picture and it started in on my hand with it’s rodentine incisors.  Thus it was considerably less than half an hour that we were together as I rushed it to the door while it gnawed on my index finger.  Usually the cat only brings in dead rodents; perhaps it classifies flying squirrels as birds that it should show me before eating.

 

We Really Like Oyster Roasts

It is oyster roast time in south Georgia, in the last two weeks we’ve been to two and that’s a good thing.  Saturday night was with our naturalist friends, leavened by folks from the hospitality and wellness industries.  There were sea turtle people, manatee scientists, sea bird researchers, a fish and clam man and their various families.  Wild Georgia oysters over coals, roast wild hog, shrimps, quiches, fresh breads and fancy birthday cakes, three of them.  I know that not all scientists eat this way but our friends do.

The picture is the birthday boy, our friend Brad, holding a marbled godwit earlier on Saturday showing how the new tracking device sits (comfortably we hope) just behind the wing.

Georgia oysters are rarely seen in commerce.  Long, thin and very sharp they fuse together into big clumps.  This makes the size sorting necessary for retail difficult and the shells will cut you.  Their flavor is worth the risk though, rich, round and salty.

 

This morning I caught an owl in my pajamas…

What it was doing in my pajamas I’ll never know.

Yesterday I smoked my first home cured ham.  This ain’t one of your dry cured fancy iberico’s, this was brine cured and then hot smoked.  I’m going to try dry curing soon enough but I should learn to slither before I crawl.  In the event it was really good and it’s fun to have the smoker going for any reason.  After a generous 8 hours of oak smoking I brought it in the kitchen and drained off the gravy/fat/grease into a big pyrex pitcher, re-wrapped the ham and went to bed.

I went out to the kitchen just before 5 to get some water and a bird flew from the dining table across the kitchen and landed on the stove hood.  I finally got some eye focus working and saw that it was a screech owl but something was off.  Evidently after being rudely thrown through the kitty door by our favorite predator it had suffered the additional indignity of falling into the ham goo which it had then distributed liberally around the kitchen.  From the (owl) waist down it was completely basted in spicy barbecue ham stuff.  It was resigned to letting me catch it and I toweled some of the sauce off and checked for broken bones.  The cat usually brings birds in unharmed and brings them to me.  I’ve gotten pretty good at catching them and letting them go (it was a meadowlark just last week).  The rodents, pack rats, mice, swamp rabbits, whatever, he brings in but usually eats, pronto.

Feeling that the owl  (its hard not to spell it like Pooh, ‘wol’) was going to be OK I showed it to herself and we let it go.  It flew away with that wonderful muted flight that owls have and I hope that it could groom the ham sauce away.  I bet its mate would have some pointed things to hoot about, what with the spiciness, the smokiness, the cattyness and the sauciness.

 

How much do I miss Mexico?

monte alban

I miss Mexico so much that I made manchamanteles. Usually translated as ‘tablecloth stainer’ it is one of the famous seven moles of Oaxaca, deliciously evocative of that wonderful place though something of a job to make. With onion, garlic, sesame, cloves, allspice, pecans, almonds, prunes, cinnamon, oregano, bananas, pineapple and a big pile of chilis there is a lot of flavor in this sauce. I like the version in Susanna Trilling’s “Seasons of My Heart” cookbook, a great guide to Oaxacan cooking. All the ingredients are toasted or fried and ground or blended and by the time I was done I decided it should be called ‘ensuciacocinas’ (roughly, ‘befoul kitchens). When the various components are all combined the result boils and bloops like lava sending molten blobs around the stove and cook. It was all worth it, the balance of chilis, spices and fruit making for a memorable coating for one of our fat chickens.

In Oaxaca one can buy premixed moles in the market but locals are somewhat dismissive of their quality ( so who buys them? ) and very proud of their own versions. One time I was packing to come back to the States when a knock at the door proved to be our friend Jaime with a big tupperware of his granny’s mole for me to bring home. Mmmm.

the view from Yagul, Oax.

Another visit there I was buying chilis at the market, chilcostles, amarillos, pasillas, etc., and ended up behind a local woman who was stocking up for making a mole for a family reunion at which she’d be feeding more than a hundred. The ingredients filled two large grain sacks and required the services of a porter to get to her car and that was just the spices and chilis. Her care and precision about every aspect of the ingredients was an inspiration to me and I always think of her when I make a mole.