So I get this call yesterday morning from my Mother-In-law who is generously hosting a hive a bees at her place. We just put the hive there a month ago from a nuc -which is four frames of bees in a box with a laying Queen, and workers. She said these ominous words “What does a swarm look like?”

We hopped in our mini truck for a peek ourselves. Whenever someone says to me “Oh I saw the bees really swarming the other day?” I say cautiously, “like there was a lot of traffic in front of the hive? Or a big whirling cloud in the air of bees that is loud enough you have to shout to be heard?” Yeah there’s a difference for me between happy busy bees and a Swarm!

After grabbing our bee suits, an extra hive, a cardboard box and my bee brush, we headed to investigate this “Swarm.”

In this picture, it’s a little hard to see from the patchy light, but that shadow in the grass are bees. A great clump of bees on the side of a hill. At least this time they were not 75 ft up the tree! We went in to have lunch. (Being pregnant, the need for food overrules the need to catch a swarm of bees… I know, what’s that for dedication!)

In the meantime, the bees decided they didn’t like ground-clumping and they began whirling in the air and making for a very very high tree branch. We watched in dismay! Not again, another one… Lost! There was still a residue of bees clumping on the ground. I slipped on my suit and went to investigate.

Now just for some background info on swarms. The bees, with the old queen, leave the hive to the younger bees and the new Queen. They fly up in the air in great swirls, then settle in a clump, with the Queen at the centre of the clump, and then scout bees go off looking for a new home. This searching can last for up to a week. Then when the find a new home, they all take off flying in a big swirl to their chosen location. Because the bees clump around the Queen for the most part, you usually do not see her when dealing with the swarm. But wherever the Queen goes, they go. Plus, picture this, we are talking thousands of bees in the air, clumping wherever they choose and basically flying about, being difficult to identify.

Imagine my surprise when I’m looking at a few bees still clumped on the grass and realize I am nose to nose with the Swarm Queen herself! I cupped my hand around her, careful not to squish her (as it would be the end of the swarm for sure) and I try to lure her into a cardboard box. She takes of flying. Of course. So now we’ve had two chances to catch the swarm. 1. when it was on the ground and we chose lunch instead. 2. when I had the Queen in my sticky little hands and in my caution not to squish her, I let her slip between my fingers, literally.

So we have a bait hive set up and I start trying to brush bees into the bait hive, with no luck. And to my great amazement, I find the Queen for the second time. Miracles upon Miracles! I am prepared this time and catch her in a small tupperware container smeared with honey. I give her a snack and then dump her into the bait hive.

Then I begin scooping up whatever bees I can grab and dumping them into the bait hive, hoping that they will reliquish themselves to their new home gracefully!

I place a cardboard box on the ground, rather forgotten and the bees magically start pouring themselves into the cardboard box. It has the Queen’s scent from our first attempt at imprisoning her.

As you can see from the photo above, the bees are marching into the box, flying into the bait hive, as co-operative as a communist country!

Yes, Bees understand “For the Greater Good!”

After dumping the contents of the cardboard box onto the top of the bait hive, the bees funnelled in like the top hole was made of quick-sand. It was remarkable. And the whole time, the sound of thousands of bees around us was incredible.

I said to Gail, after the bees were settling into their new home and tidying up the drawn frames (literally, spitting out the junk they didn’t want out the front entrance. –Better housekeepers than me!) “Where do you want your second hive?”

Gail dubbed the hive after the illustrious women, Marilyn Munroe, because of the Queen’s willingness and aptitude for knowing exactly what was best for her!

As Miss Munroe once said:

“I am not interested in money. I just want to be wonderful.”

Marilyn, you are indeed wonderful! Welcome to the apiary!

If all of you have been on the edge of your seats for the last week wondering what happened to my elusive swarm, wonder no longer. Or keep wondering… They are gone. They have flown from their very high perch and found another home. And it is not the home we designated for them. I suppose they wanted to make their own realty choice and did not appreciate our promise of coziness and ample food. If someone promised you milk and honey (sans the milk) wouldn’t you take them up on the offer? I suppose it was just too good to be true. So Gertrudabelle is carrying on, hatching and mating a new queen, Gerty the Second, and the bees are concentrating their power on the blackberries which are in full bloom.

The blueberry watch is on now. We have 500 blueberry plants that Marc tends faithfully, weeding, scything, fertilizing. And they have a great set on them this year. They are hanging in luscious green clumps right now so we keep checking the weather, hoping for some heat to turn them blue. Rather ironic when you think about it that blueberries turn blue because of heat. I turn blue because of cold. Or because I’ve eaten too many blueberries! These are our big farm crop for the Farmer’s Market.

Speaking of Farmer’s Market, I was asked to give a beekeeping workshop this Saturday so off I trotted. I was fortunate enough to snag an observation 1-frame case from someone getting out of beekeeping, and I put a frame from Cleo Hive and took them for show-and-tell at the Market. I think the talk went well and I was encouraged to have people asking really intelligent questions. The children there even seemed quite informed about the honeybee’s life cycle. Except one well-meaning child asked me if I had bees in the case, or wasps. Marc and I giggled about it afterwards, the thought of farming wasps was quite amusing. It ranks up there with farming mosquitos. I think perhaps if I were to be a super-hero villain, I would choose something so insidious.

I had my first ultrasound on Wednesday to see how “Womb-eo” is progressing. Thankfully, he/she has two arms, two legs and a head. And apparently the technician could see the cerebellum (how you would know in a squirming blob of a tiny sea monkey, I have no idea.) and the kidneys, bladder and spine. It was good to see that the squirt was very active and fiesty. Perhaps 5 months squished in utero will calm that down so that the baby will be nothing but a cooing joy when he/she emerges… Well, we can all cling to our delusions!

And I did want to share with you my successes. Since being pregnant, my baking and cooking skills have completely disintegrated. I have burned more things than ever in my life! And I completely blame the cocktail of hormones coursing through my veins, but a couple of the burning incidences have reduced me to tears and hopelessness. But last night, I had a first ever success!

I attempted yorkshire pudding in muffin cups. I have done this before and they have ended up the consistency of hockey pucks, with the potential of seriously cracking drywall. Well, behold these puffy beauties!

I hope your Canada Day was splendid!

I walk home at lunch because I just can’t get enough of my husband, my kittens and I get to eat leftovers for lunch instead of grocery store concoctions. Well, I was walking back to work, and I heard this roaring buzz. I ran back up to the house, breathless as my tummy is growing, and asked Marc to come help me spot a suspected swarm.

And there it was, 75 ft up a tree, the size of a beach ball. *sigh* It was a primary swarm and after checking all the hives, the only hive that could spare that many bees without emptying the hive completely would be good ol’ Gertrudabelle, my oldest hive. She’s 5 supers (boxes) high and was the most productive, my biggest promise of honey supplies. She’ll still be a source of honey, but not as much as I was hoping. Unless we can catch these bees.

My very helpful co workers suggested phoning the fire department for the longest ladder on island. Yeah, not even the most esteemed fire fighters have a ladder that would have to reach 100 ft. And then you’ve got 30 lbs of bees to haul down a ladder. What misadventure that would be! So instead we went to plan B (or Bee, if you prefer. ha ha)

We made a nice little home for them. A hive box, with honey smeared around the entrance and inside. A bedsheet spread out beneath it with sugar syrup, and a welcome home mat at the front door. Think it’ll work?

And I phoned the neighbours to ask them to check their eaves periodically in the next few days just in case they decide on a different home.

I’ve dealt with swarms quite a few times before but they were never mine, this is the first swarm I’ve personally had and keeping bees for 3 years, it’s surprising that it took this long.

In other news, the strawberries are ripe and selling like hot cakes at the Farmer’s Market. (Not ours, we are the blueberry people…) So my pregnant belly is really enjoying these red explosions of flavour. And, yesterday I ate the first ripe-ish blueberry! *key the ominous music*

Blueberries would usually be greeted with nothing but thrilled excitement, and yes they still are, but they are also greeted with loads of long days picking. When you have 500 bushes to rake through, it means rising at 6am and picking well into the evening. Good thing blueberry bushes are not the prickly type! And selling at the market is ever-so fun!

Hope the emergence of Summer is finding you well, swarm-free, and floating in your favourite berries!

1. Put an inch of sugar syrup in a bucket and put it out for the bees thinking that they will clean it Right Up! (and find them dead and coated in sugar a few days later- an instant dessert and delicacy in some parts of the world…)

2. Put a water dish out for the bees without rocks or sticks so that they drown.

3. Squish them as you put the lid down and hear the crunch.

4. Do not treat them for mites and other diseases hoping that they will miraculously find a cure on their own.

5. Leaving the gate open so that the sneaky deer get in and eat all your lovely blooming radishes and arugula that the bees were enjoying so much!

And Other Unfortunate Adventures:

-Forgetting about an acorn squash you worked so hard to grow for months, and leaving it on the dryer which then the kittens (ahem) roll behind the dryer, thinking it’s a game.

-Letting your radishes get tall and mighty, go to seed and forget the juicy roots that you could have harvested for a nip in your salad.

-Plant lettuce while it is hot and watch it bolt right before your eyes, with ne’er a taste of it’s sweet leaf.

-Plant carrots 4 times in different places around the garden only to watch the ever-present kittens dig new potties for themselves on the freshly disturbed soil.

*sigh* often I found that farming and beekeeping is one step forward and several steps back as the learning curve is steeeeep!

Tonight I harvested more garlic scapes with a passing fancy of trying to make some pesto. Also, I found a couple of black currant bushes and picked them clean, only to realize that these were the foul tasting black currant bushes that tricked me last year too into eating them right off the bush. (very sour face followed.) So I have bested them this year and am turning them into sauce.

*and then got distracted blogging, which Marc is finishing- (ahem) perfecting the sauce for me.* (what a man!)

Some days I’m a better insurance agent than a gardener or beekeeper… I think it may be about time management…

Ice Cream and black currant sauce anyone?

The blackberries are starting to hold out their flowers like presents and the bees are gulping it up. They are on the blackberry bushes on the entire walk to work, just over 1 km. It’s like having friends to walk home with.

We ate our first small handful of strawberries from our own garden yesterday. Our garden is in shambles this year. The upper garden, right in front of our house, is green and growing with inadvertent things. Potatoes that we did not get out last year in time. They are over-running the celeriac, the peas, the strawberries, the spinach and the beets. We have another fragrant invasion. The oregano. What I thought were weeds, and I was pulling up with fury, then wondering why I kept thinking of spaghetti. I put it down to a weird pregnancy craving, until I realized the little fuzzy stems were babies of our oregano monster.

Our lower garden needs constant love and weeding or the horse-tail takes over. We’ve tried mulching (which helps a little) weeding, though not as often as required. And we’ve got strawberries, asparagus, beans and garlic down there. The garlic is growing tasty scapes which we harvested for dinner last night.

Scapes are the Dr Seuss looking curls atop the plant that are where the garlic makes it’s flowers. Garlic has been sterile for many years and can only make clones of itself. There is research into putting the umph! back into garlic’s genetic pool but what we’ve got right now are clones of different varieties.

If you ever see garlic scapes at a farmer’s market or in the grocery store, snatch ‘em up! They are such a treat. They can be eaten raw but they have quite the bite to them. If you toss them in olive oil and put them right on the barbecue, sear them a little on both sides, it takes the sharpness out of the taste and you get such a tasty treat. They made the perfect compliment to our kale and potatoes last night.

They are also great for freezing and putting into soup, stock or stews in the Winter.

Have you discovered any amazing foods lately? I’ve been really interested in using more beans in our diet. Does anyone have good recipes for different kinds of legumes?

And since it’s strawberry season, don’t forget to pop a few of these drops of sunshine in your mouth!