Omer and Bees!

[tanarill]

It is after sunset, which in Judaism is counted as tomorrow. My last post was also after sunset, so ought to have been the sixth day of the Omer. Today is the seventh day of the Omer, which is one week into the Omer. (Six more weeks to Cheesecake holiday).

Now, bees!

I have found a beekeeper mentor! His blog is online at http://living-in-socal.blogspot.com/ He has lots of hives, and keeps getting called out to remove swarms, which are like extra free hives to beekeepers. Californian bees get an earlier start, so the wild colonies are swarming. They do not have the pedigrees that a "bred" queen does, but the bees make good honey :) They are more likely to leave just because, though. Most of the wild colonies around here are apparently Africanized or descended from Africanized bees, and that's one of the things they are known to do. So we shall have to be extra careful to make sure the bees do not feel crowded or threatened.

I went to Dan's house. He has a beautiful house with a massive (for California) yard, and a beautiful wife, and a big bouncy full-size poodle dog without the ridiculous poodle hair-cut. He has a big garden and some fruit trees (oranges, peaches, and tangellos), which he says the bees are causing to thrive, and also he keeps free-range chickens from which they collect eggs. He showed them to me, and while some were white or brown like you'd expect, some are blue and even pale green.

But bees. First we did some crush-and-strain honey harvesting, which is where you mash the comb up and let the honey drain through a sieve and cloth filter. The mashed-up wax stays behind. Later, you can put the wax out near the hives and the bees will clean it out much better than mere gravity, and then you have wax to melt and do . . . whatever you want with, really. This method is obviously more destructive, because you broke up all their hard working building the wax comb. There is a much less destructive method that uses centrifuges to fling the honey out of the frames, and then you can then put them back in the hive, but it requires a pretty big setup; crush-and-strain just needs two buckets and some cheesecloth and something with which to mash up the comb.

Then, while the honey was percolating, we built a hive box. They come in kits, so really it is just assembling. The sides have box jigs on them, so we glued and nailed them together. I learned how to use a compressed air nail gun. Then we made some frames to go in the hives, so the bees will build out some wax. These are also glued and nailed together, but it doesn't have to be very exact. Bees don't care. Finally, we went and did a (small) hive check, with me using a spare suit. Dan is from the Netherlands, and all his bee suits are sized for him, while I am tiny; I was swimming in suit! Clearly I shall have to get a bee jacket. Anyway, the swarm hive we were going to put in the box had flown off just because, as Africanized bees do. We added the leftover workers to another hive, where they might not be accepted but then again just might. Oh well, now at least he has a box to put a different hive in.

By this time, a bunch of honey had gone through, so we got some. Yum-yum, unprocessed be barf.

That was my first bee experience. No stings, even without a smoker. Dan did a cutout collection of a wild hive living in someone's birdhouse on Caturday, but of course it was Shabbat so I could not go. But I will be able to go elsewhen, and he seemed to like my "I've never done it before but there is a first time for everything" attitude, so I think this will be good.

Now if only I can get permission to keep bees at the university, or in this housing subdivision . . .

Bees!