Mites in the Hive

Sorry for the radio silence over the weekend, I just couldn't seem to get everything done. Adam had the regional Odyssey of the Mind competition (they won first place in their division!), then a dress rehearsal at the Conservatory; I had a massive take-home test to work through, plus some memorization for a lab practical (I think it went ok yesterday). Plus the dreaded late-winter colds are making their way through our house, and on top of that, it was raining. So that's why we didn't get a Weekly Walkthrough video up. This coming weekend is looking pretty busy too, as Adam has his first solo recital Saturday night, but we'll do our best to get something up on the YouTube. We need to go pick up compost, which might be a fun ride-along for you guys.

I'm starting to get more into the rhythm of my new schedule. Monday and Wednesday are just for school - I'm there all day both days, basically. Tuesdays and Thursdays are for homework (and often Friday too), though on Tuesday I also try to get caught up on cleaning and cooking. The garden projects get done in between all this stuff. I'm usually out like a light every night at 9:30 pm; there's not much time for reading or TV (though we have been keeping up with the new Planet Earth, it's awesome!), and I haven't been on a real hike in a week.

This morning I decided to spend some time outside before I got the grunt work done; we're supposed to have a stretch of seven days without rain, and temps into the low 70's tomorrow, so a good time to pot up tomatoes. I got everything ready to go, and went to get some water from the rain barrel, which took me past the beehive, where I stopped abruptly in my tracks when I saw a smattering of dead bees on the landing board.

Damn it. I expected to have some dead brood, because we broke up some herky winter comb when we inspected the hive last week, but did not expect any dead adults. So I took a closer look, and that's when I saw the varroa mite (picture above, the mite is the red circle on the bee's leg). Double damn it. I've never seen evidence of mites this early in the hive. But we did see an awful lot of drone brood last week during our check, and mites especially like to procreate in drone brood. 

So, deep breath, on to treatment, a necessity if the hive is to grow and get strong over the summer. It's just not warm enough for formic acid, which does better at summer temperatures (this is what I use in the early fall). Too late for oxalic acid, because that doesn't work on the mites in the brood, and there's already so much brood and that's where this problem began.That left Apiguard, which is made of thyme. Apiguard needs temps over 60 to work, and the warm temps on tap for this week are perfect timing. The downside is that it makes the honey taste like thyme, but we already harvested the honey we are planning to take this year, and the bees will manage. Some of them will die due to the fumes of the thymol, but that's better than all of them dying due to mites.

All these treatments are made for Langstroth hives, so I have to jerry-rig them for our top bar hive. I waited until the sun hit the hive and then I opened her up. Right away the bees were pissed. I had to make several journeys around the yard to lose some aggressive bees, but I got the little dish of thymol into the back half of the hive, hoping both worker bees and nurse bees would walk through it. I took a popsicle stick and smeared some gel on the bottom board in a couple of different places. No one was happy, least of all me, but hopefully this will mitigate any mite problems we have. I'll have to reapply in two weeks.

Fuming but resigned (fuming because LORD I HATE MITES, and resigned because I did all I could do), I set myself to transplanting tomatoes. Every thirty minutes I had to go in a knead the bread, and the combination of methodically removing the tiny seedlings and firmly patting them into their new homes, and rhythmically stretching and pulling the warm dough, got me back into my happy place, mostly.

The peppers aren't ready to transplant, and I want to start a second batch of those anyway, so they'll stay in trays for a while yet, but at least the tomatoes are potted up and happy. I found myself saying things aloud like 'good girl!' whenever I pulled out a particularly strongly-rooted tomato. Are all gardeners this way? I imagine so. We do get awfully attached.

I love these compostable plastic cups for the in-between potting stage. They're the same size, basically, as plastic four-inchers. In another couple of weeks these little guys will go into larger pots. I'll keep them under lights at night for now, but when they get larger, they'll go into the greenhouse. Meanwhile outside during the day as long as it's above 50 and sunny. That way they'll be hardened off when it's time to plant them.

I've pretty much decided to plant the entire summer garden in tomatoes and peppers. I'll do cucumbers in the new fire-rings; I'll do bush beans and basil in pots. That's really all we need. I'll skip melons this year, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to plant corn anyway (it takes up so much space for so little yield), so this will work. Then over next winter, I am not going to plant crops in the raised beds. Instead I'm going cover crop everywhere, in order to build up nutrients in the soil and provide organic matter. Probably clover for nitrogen fixing, mixed with winter wheat to provide both grain and weed-free straw (I'm having a terrible time finding good straw). As for winter greens, I can plant those in pots and move them around to catch the best sun. We can do without peas for one year and buy frozen at the store. This is my current plan, but of course it could all change - stay tuned!

Now I must face the music and go clean the house, then knuckle down to my studies. How are your tomatoes coming along? If you have bees, have you had to treat in the spring? Let me know about your garden in the comments!

March Planting List

Happy March. The photo above was taken where my 'Weeds in the Urban Landscape' class met this morning, Cesar Chavez park, in the Berkeley marina, with a view west over the bay to the San Francisco skyline. Not bad, huh. I kept thinking about all the Merritt students stuck behind a desk in an old building, hearing a lecture and taking notes. I couldn't help but feel that it was much better with clipboard and pencil, hiking around an urban park, looking at the weeds and bugs. I brought a bulb of fennel from the garden to a classmate who requested it; he said he'll make fennel-onion jam and bring it next week for all of us to taste. I told him I'd make bread to have it with, and before you know it, other students were volunteering cheese and pickles. We will have a feast at our next location. I think I love school.

Then I got home and opened the mailbox. Check out what was inside.

I order a pound of red wigglers every other year or so, to go in our small compost bin. I do this because the bin is too small to heat up and decompose the contents quickly; the worms do the work and it finishes much more quickly. I got these from The Worm Farm, my usual place, and they were packed safely and lovingly. 

I dumped them in, and there they will be happy and multiply, I hope.

Here's your handy-dandy printable for March. I must confess, I did all of this in the past week or two. I just couldn't wait, even though the Master Gardeners told me to. However, if you haven't jumped the gun like I have, now's the time, so get busy!

I know more rain is on the way here, and possibly you're having a March-coming-in-like-a-lion thing, and I'm so sorry if that's the case, but at the moment the sun is shining and I've had some vitamin D and I can't contain the sense of possibility. Spring is coming!

Woodworking

Above is a picture of Kate's new 'art shelf.' Kate loves to draw and animate; you can see a sample of her work on the desk. A week ago, this desk was completely covered with jars of pens and pencils, and art supplies. It was impossible to work on, not because she was messy, but because she had too many things to keep organized. She was having to do all her work on her bed, which wasn't ideal. 

When I broached this with her, she said that she'd been looking at art shelves online and would like some. I looked at the pictures with her and agreed that it was the solution to her problem. I didn't have to figure out how to budget to buy something, or where to go to find the precise right thing, all because we have a woodworker in the family. Isn't that wonderful? Kate and I just had to talk with my dad, who luckily wanted to take on the project.

Woodworking is a skill that I feel is becoming extinct, along with skills like carpentry, food preservation, and raising livestock. Well, maybe not extinct, but certainly rare. Time was that everyone knew how to fix an engine, rotate a crop, make a pickle. These are valuable skills that I believe we should take time to learn and preserve. Tom agrees with me, and it's why we make it a priority to sign up for classes in everything from butchery to plant propagation. It's why we challenge ourselves with building projects that often do not come out right, which doesn't matter because we're still learning. It's one of the reasons we have this blog, to help folks recognize that it's a good thing to try something new, to stretch the brain creatively, to try to honor these skills and pass them on. 

My dad has been making furniture all his life. He is a master at it. And still he goes, every year, to Williamsburg, to study with other master woodworkers, in order to hone his craft. He teaches classes through local adult education, and blogs on Fine Woodworking, in order to bring his knowledge and skills to others. 

And meanwhile, I have never had to buy a piece of furniture, except maybe a love seat or mattress. The gift of this is two-fold: It has saved us an awful lot of money through the years, and more importantly, our home is full of museum-quality art pieces that are even more special because they are made by a family member. Each piece has a double history: each was made just for us, and yet each is developed from a piece of furniture that is housed in the world's greatest museums. My parent's desk is a reproduction of George Washington's desk. The cupboards on either side of my fireplace, made because I needed a place to store both books and video game equipment, were made as replicas of a cupboard found in Longfellow's Wayside Inn in Sudbury, MA. Our coffee table was originally made as a train table for Adam, and is based on a Pennsylvania Sawbuck dining table from the mid-1700's. This brings rich history to our home - both the stories of the original pieces and the stories of how Dad came to make it for us deepen the meaning and feeling of everything we use, every day.

I've often joked, that when I was young, every piece of furniture had a name: the Deacon's Bench, the Shaker Chest, the Chippendale Chair. Every piece still does; we own a Maloof rocker, Hans Wegner chairs, Windsor fan-backed and sack-backed chairs. A delightful mix of both old styles and modern. All kinds of different woods are represented, and an interior designer would probably be horrified by both the mix of colors - the deep reds of mahogany and redwood, the lighter poplars and pines, the refined silver maple, the various milk paint and shellac finishes - and periods. It's a delightful jumble of styles. 

You can see that in the above picture of just one corner of Kate's room, with the desk being a Hans Wegner design, made with Modesto ash, from a local sawmill that planed it from a felled tree in Oakland. To finish it, Dad used a light coat of white milk paint to bring out the grain, followed by a French polish (which takes days). This design would be from the early 1900's, probably the 30's. The chair is a Double Rod Back Windsor design from around 1800, one of the latest Windsor designs. It's made of the same ash, but the seat is made of pine. The art shelf was Dad's design, heavily influenced (as he says) in the Williamsburg style, made of Radiata pine, the wood that is most often used in construction. It's similar to our local Monterey pine, which is hardly used at all, for some reason. Dad finished it with a dark blue milk paint, then a white paint overlay, then linseed oil to give it shine and durability. 

Every single piece of furniture in every single room of our house has this kind of story. I really need to start writing down all the things Dad has told me about furniture and wood and history over the years, so that we have some sort of database of his artwork for future generations. 

Are you at all interested in learning how to build furniture? Dad uses Sketch Up, free design software, to translate these designs into plans for others to use. You can contact him at his website, Killenwood. There is also a link there to his blog on Fine Woodworking, as well as information about how to take a private workshop. He also teaches locally, and he can give you his schedule if you are interested. 

I'm so thankful that both Adam and Kate have spent significant time with Dad in his workshop, learning the basics that I never had the patience for as a child (I just wanted to read books all the time). Tom, too, has spent some time soaking up Dad's knowledge and skill, and hopes to more in the future. I see a real resurgence of a respect for true craftsmanship as well as an appreciation for historical skills, especially among twenty-somethings. I love this, of course. I do very much believe in progress and technology, but some things are always going to be needed to be done in an analog way. It's important for our kids to grow up knowing how to cook a meal, use a hammer, grow a tomato, mend a tear. I so admire folks who can knit a sweater, or milk cows, or make a dining room table. All these things do not have to be lost arts. 

Weekly Walkthrough: The first hive check of the year

This week's walkthrough is up; we decided to take advantage of a dry, sunny day and open the hive for the first time this year. We're always anxious to see how the bees fared over the previous winter. 

What's Blooming Now?

We're having sun today for the first time in a long while. It feels great. I moved Adam's homemade Adirondack chair into the sun, and you can find me there pretty much any time I'm not doing homework (the school kind) or home work (the cooking and cleaning and errand-ing kind). 

There, I chat with the chickens about the still-brown garden and watch the sparrows and chickadees dart from tree to tree. The bees tell me spring is coming, as they fly home with their leg panniers full of bright orange pollen. If you look with a honeybee's eyes, you can see spring arriving.

Westringia fruticosa or Coast Rosemary - an Australian plant that does well here in full sun with little water.

Pea blossom. I had to look back to see which peas these might be as I was expecting white flowers. Turns out they are an heirloom called 'Blush Tendril' and I planted them in September of last year. They are vigorously blooming in purple, pink, and rose colors - and apparently the pods will be green blushed with pink.

Ipheion uniflorum 'Wisley Blue', or Spring Star Flower. An Argentinian bulb that requires very little water and has a nice clumping, spreading habitat. Often the first flower out in spring, although it's usually a race between this and my manzanita bushes.

Ceanothus thyrsiflorus 'Snow Flurry' - this ceanothus requires a little shade inland and gets quite big - mine is way over my head, as you can see in from this photo. It has beautiful white blossoms (unusual for a ceanothus) that bees love. I do not irrigate it at all - it survives on winter water alone.

This is a blueberry cultivar I got from Stark Bros. called Bushel and Berry Pink Icing. It was made for use in zone 9 and has done well here after being transplanted THREE times (my fault, not the plant's). Because of that it is still small, but it is clearly plucky. I bed my blueberries in deep organic matter that is not so fertile - leaves, sawdust. This cultivar is self-pollinating but I do have several other varieties of blueberry in the yard which might mean it gets cross-pollinated somehow.

Vaccinium ovatum, or California Huckleberry. This is our native species and it does well in a mostly shady location in our yard, protected from wind (in the wild it would be in a riparian, woodland area). The flowers are lovely and the hummingbirds go mad for them.

Claytonia sibirica or Peppermint Candy Flower, this is a native Californian related to the other Claytonia we know well, Miner's Lettuce. It likes shade and damp conditions and is a perennial.

Lewisia longipetala var. 'Little Plum' - another CA native and one that likes dry spaces or rock walls. I have it in my pallet planter in bright shade. Isn't that flower something?

Our Santa Rosa plum is blooming heavily this year! Very exciting, as this means we will likely get a good fruit set. Santa Rosa plum is a cultivar developed by Luther Burbank in Santa Rosa CA in 1906. It's a very popular plum tree here.

I have Chinese Forget-me-Not all over the garden, as it readily self-sows. This is Cynoglossum and is also often called Chinese Hound's Tongue. I also have a purple variety growing - check out the next photo - 

I don't remember planting a specifically purple variety, so I'm not sure where this came from! But it's charming.

This is a Heuchera or Coral Bell or Alumroot. I have so many in my garden, I can't remember the which one is which - there are some with white flowers, some with pink, and they all start to bloom in early spring, in the shady parts of my garden.

This is some sort of geranium - perhaps Geranium pratense? Not entirely sure. I have it in the woodland garden and it blooms reliably and has a lovely, rounded clumping form.

Fuchsia thymifolia - or Thyme-leaved Fuchsia, this one hails from Mexico. The entire plant is compact and a beautiful green, and the flowers simply cover the plant. Bees love this. I have it in the woodland section of my garden, so it gets dappled shade and infrequent water.

I think this is a salvia? I have so many salvias and sages all over my garden, in both shade and sun, water and no water. They all perform spectacularly. This one has been blooming all winter, and in fact I don't think I've ever seen it OUT of bloom. The Salvia iodantha is also blooming now and is really something, I've posted a picture of that one recently.

And of course lavender and rosemary are blooming too, and a native nightshade that I forgot to take a picture of. 

Indoors, the tomatoes have begun sprouting - the first one out was 'Black Krim,' an heirloom variety, followed closely by 'Sungold,' an F1 cultivar. Now more and more are starting to poke up. 

I hear spring is happening all over the midwest, so here's to sun!