The Pauley Principle: Gathering the Swarming Honeybees

Welcome to The Pauley Principle!

The Pauli Principle, named for Wolfgang Pauli, deals with atoms and electron-sharing that results in new, stronger bonds. Think 2 parts hydrogen and 1 part oxygen, a shared delectable (!) electron and VOILA! Water!

Similarly, when you prepare whole food to share with family and friends, especially foods you've grown, something amazing happens. Meals become tastier and healthier. Your soul, not just your stomach, becomes fulfilled. You live life more abundantly as a result. During a shared meal, the bonds that people create grow stronger and become something new: GREATER than the sum of the parts! I give you The Pauley Principle.

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Gathering the Swarming Honeybees

In the spring, honeybees swarm as a colony of bees splits to make more room for the ones that stay in the hive. Around here, those that venture out of their old home to find a new one are good news for my friend Desiree. It helps her build her apiary!

Friends and neighbors watch for swarming bees. A quick phone call to Desiree and she flies into action, making plans to go to the rescue, a mission that has to happen within a time frame of 1 to 24 hours. After that, the workers who are out scouting for a new home will have shown the others in the swarm the way, and they'll be gone.

Look closely at this photo of a tree. At first glance you might think you see a hornet or squirrel nest in the center of the photo. It's actually swarming honeybees.

"A swarm is a big ball of bees, piled on top of each other," Desiree says. "When it's in a tree, the bees are all huddled together. We catch them and put them in our hive box, our super. If you can get the queen in, the rest will follow."

Usually, when there's a swarm of bees splitting away, and not an entire colony, the honeybees take a queen cell with them, an egg the queen has laid. The diet that is given to this bee larva determines what the bee will grow into, so when the workers are grooming a bee to become the new queen bee, she gets a unique queenly diet, "royal jelly"! Pretty cool!

Desiree says, "They only sting you when they feel threatened. When one stings, the pheromone (smell) will attract the others and they'll come after you. So, if you get stung once, it's best to leave."

The next day or later the same day, after the bees are settled in the super, Desiree takes them home to her beekeeping operation, Klover Hill Apiary, where she plans to build her bee numbers and continue trying new bee products, expanding from honey and lip balm into candles and soaps.

I asked Desiree where a person is most likely to find swarming bees. She says they can be in homes, barns, trees and mostly, around here, they seem to like lilac bushes. Since we have three large old lilac bushes at the farm, I invited her to investigate for swarming bees. None. Then we went to the barn, another place they might gather. Again, none, but that was a cool, rainy day.

Apparently, honeybees like hot days because Desiree says she usually gets pretty sweaty when she has to put on all her gear to go after them! The last time she went to gather bees, it started pouring the rain, so she plugged the box, strapped it, and then heaved it into the bed of her pickup, getting hot, sweaty, and soaking wet! Then, when her son ended up getting a bee sting, she wondered why she ever decided to keep bees.

Like anything worth doing, if it were easy, wouldn't everyone be doing it? From talking to Desiree and seeing her photos, I know she loves the adventure of finding and retrieving swarming bees and she is dedicated to helping the planet. She will do this for many years to come. Thank goodness! Maybe she can help to increase the declining numbers of honeybees!

The photos in this post are courtesy of Desiree Blaha-Poyner. To see more of her photos, you can Facebook "friend" her.

4 comments:

JillMay 15, 2012 at 4:56 PM
It's all so interesting but something I could never do. That swarm in the tree gives me the heebie jeebies!
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Lisa @ Two Bears FarmMay 16, 2012 at 3:33 PM
The swarms in the trees freak me out too, but I would like to have bees!
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Give Yourself the Fast Food Alternative: 1, 2, 3 makes 4 and More

For many people, late night ballgames, church, work and other events make fast food too convenient to resist, but what's in that stuff? I can't begin to answer. Big franchises such as Taco Bell say the 63% or so that isn't beef is made up of "the secret ingredient". If we consume their food, don't we have a right to know what that secret is? And more importantly, what's it doing to our bodies? My plan is worth the effort since meals eaten at home with the family benefit our physical and mental health.

Here's an alternative and my answer to Rachael Ray's A Week in a Day. I call it 1,2, 3 Makes 4 and More. On the fifth day, Friday, make a quick and easy pizza.
In one day, you can make a roast, a hearty soup, and a one-dish casserole to get you through most of the work week.
Meal 1: the roast with salad and a veggie.
Meal 2: the soup served with warm bread or in a bread bowl.
Meal 3: the casserole with a salad.
Meal 4: soup from Meal 2 served with sandwiches using the roast, Meal 1.
Meal 5: homemade pizza.

Plan meals and shop for it. Then take a few hours to prepare the entrees ahead. Start with a roast seasoned to taste. I'm talking real meat. While that's slow cooking, start chopping veggies and meat for a good, hearty soup, one that will be a meal in itself. Get it started and simmering away and then begin a one-pot meal that takes a little more attention.

This week my plan is Day 1, a slow roasted ham with salad and mashed potatoes; Day 2, minestrone; and Day 3, shepherd's pie. I'm making mashed potatoes for two days (meals 1 and 3) at one time on my cooking day. The fourth meal will be ham sandwiches with minestrone. Salads and breads round out the meals for the week. Fruits with cheese make a quick and good-for-you dessert. A truly delicious recipe for shepherd's pie is in my blog.

Be good to you. Be good to others. On days 6 and 7, change it up by going out, having a pot luck with friends and family or grilling out. Remember, live your life abundantly.

About Venison

Venison should taste really delicious! No kidding. It is my favorite meat, except for crab.

Some things to consider though:
*If you wouldn't think of eating a bull, then don't eat a deer that had huge antlers or was in rut. I don't. It affects the flavor and tenderness of the meat.
*Replace the deer fat with beef fat for your ground meat for an 80/20 ratio. Deer fat tends to be slightly bitter and leaves that thick coating in your mouth that, although edible, is not palatable.
*For roasts, sear with butter and olive oil. These impart a wonderful flavor.
*For sausage, use pork shoulder, at a ration of about 3 parts ground venison with 1 part ground pork shoulder.
*Venison by nature is a lean red meat. A good young deer processed properly will give you many delicious meals.
*Anything you would do with beef, except ribs, you can do with venison. Look for my recipe for Shepherd's Pie. Use either beef or venison. Enjoy, share, and live abundantly.

Plan Now for Maple Syrup

Maple syrup is cooked down from sap that you gather from sugar maple trees. There are no other ingredients, not even water. And it's incredibly good. On the market, maple syrups will often have corn syrup, gluten, color and other additives which can stretch profitability and decrease the steaming time required. Since it takes 35-45 gallons of the thin slightly sweet sap to make a gallon of pure maple syrup, doing it the old-fashioned way takes time but the result is pure YUM!

If you have the opportunity to tap into maple trees and decide you'd like to give this a try, plan ahead. If you steam off the sap inside your kitchen, it can strip your wall-paper! Been there, done that, at our old farmhouse. If you cook it down outside with a gas turkey fryer, the cost can end up being around $8 a pint. We began cooking over a wood fire a few years ago, using a tripod and kettle. Oh, and a large firewood supply. Whatever method you choose, proceed slowly and with caution.

Gather your supplies. We use food safe plastic jugs, buckets, and little water line spouts. Maple syrup production houses will collect into stainless steel vats using long water lines but we simply gather the jugs, pour into buckets and bring it to the kettle twice daily. I buy little pint jugs to store it in. Very fresh, very pure. Start tapping the trees when daytime temperatures are going to be above freezing but nights are still very cold. In Ohio, the sap will be running fast sometime in February.

Try my cousin Stephanie Krupla's recipe for Sticky Bun Tea Ring and you'll want to search for maple trees you can tap into yourself!