With the tools and garb assembled, I head out to the bee yard. I was told early on to site the hives in the sunniest spot I could. The first couple of years I placed the hives where I thought they looked right: at the end of a suitable grass path through the garden. The sun didn’t hit that spot until mid-morning and the bees never got a good start. Since I learned to locate the bees with more exposure, they have been happier. Bees are sensitive to temperature: they only forage when the temperature reaches an acceptable mark inside the hive (in the nineties, Fahrenheit), and the queen only lays eggs when the warmth is adequate. A few degrees here and there can mean the difference between bees making honey and bees relaxing and waiting for the sun to hit the hive.
It is the beginning of spring, the start of the growing season. All the boxes are cleaned and lined up, the outer covers are leaning next to the boxes on one side, the inner covers leaning on the opposite side. On the ground to the side of each hive box are the individual boxes of bees that will go into that hive in front of it. I only walk on the back side of the bee boxes; the openings where the bees come and go is on the opposite side, where I never walk. I was instructed that it annoys the bees, but I think it is more than that. It reminds me of being taught as a small child to only walk up to the altar in church and then turn and return to the nave—to never walk behind the altar. God would not strike you down if you did wander around the altar, but you knew that it was just wrong. Beehives are the same way. The front is for the bees, the rear for the beekeeper. Order is important.
When all these steps are prepared, then I begin to install the bees. The sides of the bee boxes are made of a tight metal screen. Through that screen you can see the bees, hundreds of them. They are not flying errantly around their smallish confinement, but rather are clumped solid. It is difficult to discern that these are in fact bees. They look like a large brown mass with the edges moving constantly, not a series of individuals. The mass of bees is hung from the top of the box, never touching the bottom of the wooden crate. They resemble an oversized ornate chandelier, hung in a tiny dollhouse room of a diorama. If you move the box to the left or right, the mass of bees moves as well, but with a bit of a drag, swaying in a drunk fashion, trying to right themselves back to their preferred position.
They are clumped together around the queen. As her survival is their survival, it is imperative that she live through the travel until she can take up residence in the hive. Cool drafts, the warmth of the afternoon sun, sudden movements—nothing comes near her; she is protected by her army of worker bees a dozen thick around her.
The queen is not loose in the box amid her subjects but rather is sequestered in a small wooden box. This small reliquary is made of the same cheap wood as the main bee box, covered in the same tight metal mesh, but one end is stoppered with a small cork, keeping the queen from leaving her confines until the hive is ready for her.
The top of the outer wooden box is stapled shut with a plank of thin wood, and underneath it lies a small metal can, a soup can sans label. In the can is a simple syrup of sugar water, a wet cloth in the small hole leaking out drops to feed the bees on their voyage. It looks like a Molotov cocktail, ready to light and throw toward the angry mobs. But no such violence will come from these bees.
The goal in the next few minutes is to install the bees and their queen into their new hive. Losing the queen would be the worst outcome. She is not designed for flight, but rather for slowly moving around the hive, laying eggs. The worker bees have the ability to create a new queen should something happen to their queen, but it would take three weeks. In those twenty-one days, many of the worker bees would come to the end of their lives, new bees would not be born and the strength of the hive would suffer.
The first task is to pry the staples off of the box lid that is holding the bees in, using the metal hive tool. Once the staples are removed, the lid is ready to be taken off. It is at this step that I stop and pause. I have done this many times, but I still get a kick out of it. I approach the act of getting the bees into the hive like I approach eating a really great chocolate bar (presently my favorite is a Scharffen Berger bittersweet). I know what the foil inside will look like, I know how the outer paper is folded, I can remember the smell of the bar and the feel of the bar and the way the back of the chocolate bar always has a bit of a swirl to it. Even though I know how the entire experience will go, I want to take my time, pull off the stiff outer paper, reveal the thin, wispy foil and then break off a corner of the bar. It is because I know the experience well that I can plan how I want to attack the chocolate bar to get the most enjoyment. Releasing the bees is the same for me. I know what will happen. I could rush through it to the finish, but it is great fun lingering.
Under the flat lid of the wooden bee box is the tin can. It takes up the full opening in the top of the box. It has to be removed before you are able to grab on to the handle attached to the queen’s small box. As it is a tin can and it is level with the top of the wooden box it is very difficult to grasp with your thickly gloved fingers: the hive tool comes in handy to pry the rim of the can up.
The trick at this point is to pull up the can until it is entirely free of the box. Once it is out of the box, then the queen box can be quickly removed with the other hand. When the queen box is free, then I cover the hole with a flat piece of wood on the top of the bee box to seal it until the bees are needed. Now, the only challenge is that as soon as the can is removed, the bees will begin to fly out. Quickly.
There is an extra challenge that I mischievously forgot. The hundreds of bees are surrounding the queen in the bee box. It would be impossible to lift the queen’s box out of the larger bee box while all the bees were grabbed on to each other, surrounding her. The solution is to untangle them from her so that she can be quickly removed. This is done is by slamming the bee box down quickly so that all the bees fall to the bottom of the box, confused and a bit angry, but having let go of the queen box. In this moment, the lid is removed, the can of sugar water removed, the queen box removed and then the buzzing bees resealed in their bee box. It is really quite exciting.
The fear is—actually, the only fear is—fear. Opening a box full of bees is not terribly difficult. It is like walking on an open train trestle over a ravine. The wooden trusses are large and ample to walk on. When the train tracks are on solid earth, I am calm and it is easy to walk along the tracks. I would never fall off. On an open train bridge, though, the fear overcomes me; I walk along the bridge, staring at the earth as it falls off deeper and deeper, my legs stiff and my feet leaden. I obsess over whether to turn back or to keep going. I am sure that I will fall through the gaps between the large wooden planks.
Working with bees is the same. Pulling a tin can out of a hole of a wooden box and then putting it back quickly is really quite simple. Throw in a few hundred or a few thousand annoyed bees, and it gets much more difficult. The exhilarating rush is achieved by overcoming your fear and skittishness. Then you are dancing down the bridge.
With luck, the bees have been kept mostly at bay within their screened box. The queen box has been removed and the few errant bees are so confused that they are not interested in you. The goal is to insert the queen into the new hive box without dropping her, stepping on her or entirely losing her. The cork on the end of the small confine is gently removed with the tip of the hive tool. She will have a tendency to move toward the opening, so work directly over the hive box. As I write this, I am reminded that the reason I can recommend these things is because I have panicked while working with bees and dropped queens, lost queens, even stepped on a queen.
I try to wedge the queen box, with the queen still in it, between the middle frames in the hive box. The frames will keep the queen box from moving about, stuck right in the center of the hive box, and will keep her from walking off the side of the box and falling to the ground. The queen likes the darkness of a sealed hive and will head down into the darkness of the hive quickly.
Now for the best
part. The queen is in her box, making her way out of her confines. Her attendants are stuck in the bee box, trying to find their errant queen. The bees need to be put in the hive. The bees need to find their queen quickly before she gets lost or gets chilled, if the spring afternoon is less than cooperative. If the lid of the box were simply opened up, they would certainly find her, but what is the fun in that?
The quickest way to get the bees to their queen is to shake them out, covering the queen with thousands of bees. Pick up the bee box, remove the wooden cover, exposing the round hole where the tin can had been. The bees will immediately begin to fly out. Turn the box upside down over the queen and shake out as many bees as possible as fast as possible. When the majority have fallen out into a big pile on the top of the frames in the beehive, slam the box on the ground, pushing all the remaining bees to the base, then invert and pour them out as a confused pile of bees. It sounds a bit cruel and forceful, but they recover quickly. Then there is this moment: There you are, standing at the back of the hive, an empty box in your hand, a large pile of bees covering the queen, the bees slowly migrating down through the individual frames to begin their new life. The air is filled with hundreds of bees flying around the hive, around you, landing on you. It is spring at its best. The noise is not a simple buzz, but the sound of hundreds of bees buzzing all at once. It is glorious.
Once the bees trek down to the center of the hive and calm down, I replace the inner cover and the outer covers, and the colony is left to do its work. I take credit for the hive even though it is truly the bees that do all the work. The basic statistics for bees are incomprehensible to me: one hundred and fifty five trips to a flower to make a tablespoon of honey. I read this over often and cannot believe it. Is that even possible? I take for granted so much of my life that the idea of bees working so hard for such reward seems downright antiquated.
The rest of the bee season is generally anticlimactic after the original installation of the bees. I feed the bees additional sugar syrup to keep them alive until they can secure their own food source. I make simple syrup with 50 percent water and 50 percent sugar and fill a mason jar. I punch holes in the tin lid and place the inverted jar in a stand at the base of the hive. The sugar slowly drips onto the stand and into the hive, allowing the bees to access the vital sugar. I open the hive every few days to check on the bees, make sure the queen is laying eggs, look for any problems. In reality, I feel that the beekeeper is simply trying to gain a sense of purpose. I really have almost nothing to do with making honey. I collect no pollen, make no beeswax, fill no combs and yet I really want to take credit for the lovely haul a few weeks off. Opening the hive, pulling out a frame or two and doing a bit of inspection fills that need. It does little, I would say, except for the soul. The man who checks in on the hive is a beekeeper; the one who only collects the honey at the end of the season is a thief, a robber, a cad.
If the season goes well, the bees will perform a great deal of work to produce a sweet haul of honey. Weather has a large effect on the quantity of honey. A warm clear summer will feed the colony well, the queen will lay well for weeks and the hive will increase manyfold. With more workers comes more honey. If the spring is wet and damp, the result is a small work force with a correspondingly small bounty.
The first harvest is generally around June and produces light-colored honey; a subsequent harvest in the fall will yield heavier, darker honey. Experienced beekeepers are able to keep bees alive year-round, but mine die off when it gets cold. Since I enjoy ordering my four boxes of bees at the start of each season, and at $75 per box it’s not prohibitively expensive, I’ve never investigated what causes my bees to perish around the first frost. Cold is the most likely explanation, along with the especially damp northwestern coastal air. It could even be varoa mites that invade the hive and slowly kill the bees—I really have no idea.
The official way to harvest honey involves adding small boxes of frames—supers—to the hive for the bees to fill with honey. When that box is full, another is added and the full unit is emptied of bees and the honey harvested and so on. I am simply not organized enough for this system, and it requires a greater variety of equipment at the ready than I have ever possessed. Instead, I have created a hybrid system of honey production and harvest.
On top of the main hive box I place another large box of frames. The frames on the base are separated from the frames on the top by a wire rack with thin spacing. The spacing is such that the worker bees can squeeze past, but the queen, with her longer thorax, cannot. The result is that she lays her eggs on the lower frames, which reserves the upper frames for honey production and storage.
When the upper frames are filled with honey, they can be removed without taking any of the valuable eggs. I like to remove two or four frames at a time, maybe six out of the total ten frames in the upper box. The frames are quickly removed, the bees brushed aside and the heavy, honey-laden frames moved away from the beehives. A hot sunny day assures me that most of the bees will be out of the hive foraging, not in the hive to cause havoc as their honey is removed.
When I have a few frames safely away from the main hive, I take a dinner fork and scrape the thin layer of beeswax from the comb. The beeswax seals in the honey in its small hexagonal chamber. If the honey has been capped, it has been dried enough by the bees to be stored; if there is no capping, it is still full of moisture. Still tasty, but a bit wetter.
The honey is removed by spinning the frames filled with honey in a centrifuge. Although the name evokes university research labs, the centrifuge would be better described as an extractor. A large stainless steel cylinder, it holds two frames of honey vertically inside the chamber on a steel rack, spinning on a central axis. When the lid is closed, the frames are spun by a hand-cranked gear, whipping the honey out of the open-ended hexagonal cells to the side walls of the extractor. As the crank is well geared, it takes very little effort to gain a great deal of speed.
The honey flies against the side walls and slowly rolls down to the bottom of the extractor. When ample honey has collected, a side spigot is opened and beautiful golden honey flows out with great aplomb. Honey is thick, yet fluid. It flows, yet it flows with a certain reticence; with great formality. My prior experience with honey as a kid had always been the plastic honey bears containing a cup or two of honey, a small squirt on toast now and then. To see a gallon of honey flowing out of a two-inch valve is positively regal.
I strain the honey as it comes out of the extractor. Bits of wax from the cappings, bits of bees that got stuck in the process, are removed, making for a cleaner honey. Small bits of wax will remain in the honey, unlike in the commercial product found on supermarket shelves.
I continue to be amazed by honey and the bees that produce it. The sum total of labor that goes into the making of honey by the bees is incomprehensible to me. If so many bees make so many trips to so many flowers to make a single tablespoon, how can I even imagine how much work goes into five gallons of honey?
I am also confronted with spatial relationship issues with honey. A large frame from a beehive is nine inches by eighteen inches and an inch thick. It weighs a lot when filled with honey, maybe ten pounds. It feels like a large laptop computer. Bulky, but not like a carton of potatoes. When it is extracted, the honey flows down the sides of the metal extractor. When the frames have been spun dry, I look into the extractor and am generally disappointed. It looks like so little. The sides have a thickness to them, certainly, honey is puddling in the bottom, but it looks like a trifle. Then, as I wait a few minutes, the honey slowly collects on the bottom of the stainless can. I position a sieve and a large white plastic bucket, hopeful that I will need that large bucket. Then I open the valve and honey starts to flow out; a lot of honey. More so than seems possible.
The same feeling comes over me when I harvest corn or squash from the garden. When the vegetables are lying in the field, they look like a decent-volume crop, but never like when it is brought together in the barn
. When a bin is filled with corn from the field it doesn’t seem to match the volume of the rows in the garden. And yet with distance between each plant, the ears seem small and inconsequential. When placed one on top of another, they constitute real volume. Honey is the same. Each small hex cell is minute, a half inch by three-eighths by three-eighths, and might contain a quarter teaspoon of honey. Miraculously at harvest time the pail at the base of the honey extractor is filled with golden honey; the miracle of the loaves and fishes lives on.
Four
Fruit, Apples, Vinegar
In the center of this farm are fruit trees—an orchard, if you will. Oddly planned rows of trees, not quite straight, not quite parallel to the house, of a motley variety, my orchard makes me smile.
This orchard began when I first started to hack away at my blackberry forest, and continued as I bought bare-root fruit trees one by one at local nurseries and hardware stores. Occasionally I ordered a special tree by mail, something cheap with a grandiose description. I spent very little on the trees. Twenty dollars here, maybe thirty dollars there; a small price to pay for a tree. I would quickly plant them in the ground, expecting no fruit for many years. My hope was that these twenty-dollar expenditures would grow into something of value over time, much like a business investment, one that would hopefully be more successful than my foray into farmers’ market retailing. Like a 401(k), fruit trees grow with compounded interest. The first year, nothing; the second, still nothing; maybe the third year the odd fruit here and there. And then they take off. The volume of fruit starts to increase dramatically after five or seven or nine years and the abundance continues for many years.
Growing a Farmer Page 6
