Thanksgiving in the Bee Garden

Chickens rotating on string while roasting by the fire near the coals

This year we decided to make Thanksgiving more than just dinner.  We decided to make the preparations for dinner into a reminder of the first Thanksgiving by cooking our dinner out by the garden.

As a part of the Mint Wars, clearing out one of the garden beds, I reclaimed a fire pit I had built in there many years ago. I dug out all of the bricks and rocks buried there and re-stacked them into a new fire pit- a three sided one to create a wind block.  We drove iron posts into the ground on either side of the pit and put a third post through them as a place from which to suspend chickens cooking next to our fire.

We planned to start our feast with salmon.  This we prepared by taking a cedar plank and soaking it well.  Then we greased the skin of the salmon and nailed it to the plank with square cement nails.  The salmon was well spiced and oiled and set to leaning near the fire- close enough to cook and smoke it but not close enough to burn.  I had seen this technique at a historical re-enactment site and wanted to try it out.

The chickens would be the longest cooking of the foods we were preparing and required a great amount of coals so we had the fire going at least an hour before we started cooking  to build up the coals we needed.  We used wild cherry and mulberry wood from trees that came down on our property a few years ago.  They made a fine long-lasting bed of coals!  I found the idea for cooking the chickens at a website that specializes in teaching about and selling all manner of grills and grilling techniques. (  http://www.firepit-and-grilling-guru.com/roast-chicken-recipe.html  )   They are a wonderful resource .  We decided to build the fire away from the back wall of the fire pit and use that wall as both a wind block and a reflective surface to increase the heat for cooking the chicken.  We trussed and suspended the chickens from strong, heavy, cotton twine after first having a bit of a disaster with the jute cord I sometimes use for fuel in my beehive smoker.  While the chickens were suspended, we spun them on their strings and they were slowly rotating for about and hour and a half before they were done.  I had marinaded the chickens first and rubbed them with oils and herbs, basting them repeatedly during the cooking. We kept wetting down the string as we went along so it would not burn and break.

The salmon cooked on the other side of the fire and took only about one-half hour.  As that was cooking, we set up a grill over the coals and sauteed kale with hard salami adding wine vinegar and some herbs and spices.  We also had a dish of green beans with onions and mushrooms going in a cast iron pan at the same time.

The feast was delicious as we had earlier prepared a cranberry relish and a pumpkin pie- with Cinderella pumpkin harvested out of our garden.

The day was lovely and brisk- a bit too cold for my bees nearby (who remained in their hive).  There is not too much else as relaxing as cooking by an open fire, drinking apple cider with my honey and sharing a delicious feast afterward.

Hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Mint

Mint- A hardy , fragrant and very useful plant to have in a bee garden (or any other garden).  Mint is also in that category of invasive plants and will make itself very comfortable and reach its fibrous roots to all corners or your garden.

At this time, I am at the beginning of the Mint Wars.  Mint has taken over one bed of my garden. Peppermint, spearmint and chocolate peppermint. 

I originally planted it in large clay pots and sunk them into the bed.  I thought this would keep it from spreading uncontrollably.  I did not know that it would reach and stretch its lovely stems and put down new roots wherever it touched the earth!  It  has crept and burrowed and filled the space to its very corners and walls.  Harvesting it has only helped a little!  My honeybees enjoying the nectar of its flowers has probably increased the fertile seed which will fall to earth starting new mint plants for the coming season!

Truthfully, this did not happen in one season.  I must admit to negligence in working my garden for the last two years, except minimally.  A back injury and a massive increase in mosquitoes have made things more difficult for me.  But I am back and hopefully stronger and smarter.  I am ready to do war against the mint! 

I realized that I would have to dig out and sift all of the soil in this bed and so I have begun.  I have a large screen- a wooden frame with a hardware cloth screen.  This is set over my wheelbarrow.  I dig up a narrow strip about 10 inches deep at a time and gently rub the soil against the screen, sending the good earth through and leaving all of the roots and rocks (and other surprises) behind.  When I have filled the wheelbarrow with soil and my trash bag with roots (I do not put perennial roots into my compost-you can guess why!) I dump the soil carefully back into its bed. 

I am taking some of the mint to replant into its original pots but will not reset them into the bed.  Instead there will be large, beautiful containers of mint alongside my garden attracting my honeybees this coming season. There will  be fragrant and delicious mint teas to sip while sitting and enjoying my Bee Garden.

Primary Role for the New Season

New Year for the world. One thing I try to do now is to reevaluate my role and my goals for the upcoming year. Near at hand is the fact that I will be feeding all of my bees frequently over the coming seasons. My hive in the city has by far the most stored food. The hives on two different farms are woefully short supplied. I am thinking that I should consider not only feeding the bees with the usual sugar syrup but also adding something that contains vitamins and minerals, as they will not be eating honey much over the winter. Cane sugar syrup is pure carbohydrate and will be completely utilized by the bees for energy . This is easier on their digestive systems because there is no waste to be stored in their digestive tracts. That means a reduction in gut waste and bacteria and the diseases to which that exposes the bees. The question is will the length of time only eating sugar syrup substantially weaken bees who must survive and work to rebuild their colony for the Spring and how can I balance the exposure to waste derived illness from added nutrients stored in the bees digestive systems with the sugar syrup diet. I must pursue answers to these questions- that is my primary role as a beekeeper for this season.

Evaluating the Season

Part of gathering the harvest is evaluating the year that has passed, which leads to hopes and plans for the upcoming year. As I was busy removing the honey from my hives, I was noticing that the stores for the upcoming winter seem significantly more in my hive in the city. The hives in the country, on a farm, have been fraught with problems, one after another.

One might expect that the city would be a dubious place for a hive because of all the buildings, people and traffic. In reality, the nature of my neighborhood in the city makes it an ideal location for a beehive. There are street trees by the dozen- all mature, that produce hundreds of thousands of Linden blossoms for well over three weeks. There are flowering and fruiting trees and bushes. There are the spring bulbs, summer flowers and vegetable gardens all through the neighborhood. People have planted so many varieties of vegetation that there is something blooming in almost every season.

Out in the country with fields and woods seems the obvious place for success as a beekeeper but I am finding that to be untrue. There were a variety of flowering plants around the farm where I have placed my hives- Wild raspberries, Black Locust trees, Jewel weed, Clover. A nearby farmer plants Alfalfa and there are all sorts of garden flowers and landscaping in the vicinity. So why do the bees seem to have put so little away for the winter out there? Weather is a factor in any place, for all agricultural endeavors and this seasons has been unusually wet. Yet, that didn't seem to be a problem in the city. Perhaps I didn't pick the best location for the hives. I think I need a second year in that space to evaluate that properly. The alfalfa farmer may not have let his field flower and that would be a big problem for my bees. I have learned that the current way of crop management may not suit honeybees at all. In fact, Alfalfa that is grown for hay makes a more nutrient-rich product if it is not allowed to flower.

There seems to be large amounts of the country floral sources I mentioned above but there is empty time between the flowerings- perhaps the bees eat most of the previous harvest before the next is available. There isn't much edge space along fields and forest anymore what with the use of pest and herbicides, so there are not many wildflowers growing there anymore, just mown grass. This is no good for honeybees or for any other pollinators. It is also a problem for predatory insects that might eat field crop pests and raise their young on these wild edge areas.

It is a real dilemma for beekeepers and for all of us who depend on the honeybees and other pollinators for our food. This season I will be thinking about how to improve that situation.

Garden Harvest

Autumn is the time when we gather and put away our harvest for the winter. While the honey harvest has been taken off and processed into delicious treats for the year, the honeybees are still busy gathering nectar and pollen for their trip through the coming winter. Early autumn is when the queen bee and her workers are raising the bees that will over-winter and they are very much in need of both pollen and nectar.

Autumn flowers are very important sources of honey and pollen for the bees and there are a number that will help the bees make enough food to carry them through until spring. Some of the most floriferous are Asters, Solidago, commonly known as Goldenrod and Vitex. Asters come in both annual and perennial varieties. Goldenrod has many varieties, some of which have more nectar and are thus more attractive to honeybees. Vitex agnus costus is a flowering bush that blooms well into autumn here in the mid-Atlantic. Another beautiful and useful crop to both bees and us is the fall blooming Crocus sativus, also known as the Saffron crocus. Plant enough of them and you will have saffron for your cooking while the bees have lovely orange pollen and nectar for their stores.Later in the season and into the winter there will be Witch hazel and Hellebores blooming, both of which can be important for honeybees in our area during the warmer days when they will venture out of their hives.

As we finish with our harvesting it is becoming the time for thinking and planning the garden for the spring. It is the time when I look for gardening books in the library and order plant catalogs for my winter musings. Just thinking about cozying up with some hot mulled cider and some catalogs filled with beautiful photos gives me a warm happy feeling, perhaps like my bees all snuggled up with their mom and sisters and lots of honey.