More Buzz

Yesterday, it was decided that a bee colony should be split into two because it had grown large enough to fill two hives.  We piled into the front and back of the beat-up Ford pick-up truck, along with the needed equipment, and drove up to the old apple orchard where the hive to be split was located.  Megan and Kirstin opened the hive known as Frannie and began looking for a couple of frames containing plenty of developing bee larvae (also known as "brood").  The plan was to move those frames to a new hive, without the queen, along with some nursemaid worker bees to care for the larvae, and a couple of frames of honeycomb for their winter food supply.  When the worker bees discover there is no queen in the hive, they will begin feeding one of the female larvae a substance called royal jelly, which causes that larva to develop into a queen.

This plan sounded reasonably simple, but it became more and more complicated as one by one people were either stung or harassed by the bees (those who were harassed were wearing dark colors, which makes them targets for bees).  Once you've been stung, especially if the sting is on a hand, you have to move away from the hive because pheromones are being emitted from the sting area that will cause more bees to attack.

After a bit of not-so-smooth maneuvering, the brood was transferred along with the nursemaids, but we still needed to transfer the honey.  A third hive known as Queen was opened because there weren't excess frames of honey in Frannie.  At this point, I had to step in and assist Megan with separating the frames in Queen in order to locate some honey.  I put on a hat with a wire mesh mask that surrounded my head (also known as a "veil"), pulled a hive tool out of my back pocket, and carefully worked with Megan to pry the frames apart, all the while negotiating with the numerous bees that were crawling all over the frames.  As I often played with bees and other insects as a kid, I was quite calm standing over the buzzing hive.  Megan found the honey we were searching for and I gently pulled the somewhat heavy frame from the hive and held it up for inspection.  I then carefully handed the frame to Megan and she carried it to the new hive.  It was placed near the outer wall of the hive so that it can serve as insulation as well as a food supply during the cold winter months.  I'm pleased to say that I was not stung in this process, but I know I will be eventually.  I'll be sure to give a full account when that happens.

Today, I handled the morning watering in the greenhouse then caught up with the others at the paddock where I cleaned one of Eva's hooves.   Because it was raining, we spent the rest of the day in the greenhouse weeding and removing dead and/or yellowing leaves from the numerous plants for the upcoming plant sale.  We finished early, which gave me time to get my reading done for tomorrow's discussion group.  I had planned to do some of my cleaning chores in the dorm, but somehow never quite got around to them.  Now it's time for bed...

The Buzz

Two days of training in beekeeping...I don't know where to begin.  They are fascinating creatures.  By a stroke of luck, I was able to experience my first swarm on Friday morning just a few hours before the workshop began.

A swarm usually occurs when the queen bee is aging and not able to keep up with her duties to the colony.  She and about half of the bees in the hive will leave in order to allow a new queen to be established.  The new queen is one of the original queen's daughters and those daughters will engage in mortal combat in order to determine who will succeed their mother.  This involves stinging each other to death or chewing open the cells in the comb containing their still developing sisters, which results in their deaths.  This is what is known as a primary swarm.  A secondary swarm occurs when a fight between two queens ends in a draw and one leaves.  It's quite a dramatic time in the hive.  It is also described as a birth because it means the start of a new colony.

The photo I've included, courtesy of intern Kirstin, shows Garden Assistant Megan and Senior Intern Peter preparing to remove the swarm from a tree that was fortunately quite close to the hive.  Sometimes you have to track the swarm over a distance.  Megan climbed onto the taller ladder and gave the branch a quick shake to get the bees into a box (she was stung several times in the process).  The box was then shaken into an empty hive.  From the obvious activity that is now occurring there, it appears that they are happy with their new home.

Here are some other things I learned about honeybees over the weekend:

• That smoke you often see beekeepers puffing around hives distorts the bees' sense of smell so they can't detect your pheromones.   It also makes them think there's a fire which distracts them from the fact that a person is coming into their home.  This makes them easier to work with.
• When working in hives, you shouldn't wear dark colors such as black or brown, nor should you wear anything fuzzy or woolly, because the bees may mistake you for a bear that will rob their hives and attack you.
• Fossilized honeybees have been found in Nevada, so they are not non-native to North America as previously thought.  Apparently, they were here millions of years ago, died off for some reason, and then were re-introduced by Europeans.
• The amount of nectar a bee gathers in its lifetime is the equivalent of 1/12 of a teaspoon.  
• It takes 50,000 nectar-gathering trips for a bee to fill a single cell in the comb.  The nectar is then concentrated to make honey.  
• It takes nectar from 2 to 5 million flowers to make 1 pound of honey.
• Bees also collect 66 pounds of pollen per year, per hive.  They use it as food: it contains protein carbohydrates, enzymes, several B vitamins and vitamins A and C, among other things.

I could go on and on about the bees.  I'm looking forward to gaining more experience working with them this year.  They are quite amazing.

Today, I helped groom the horses, had a eurythmy lesson (a type of dance/performance art that is taught here), and planted lettuce.  We were all a bit punchy having had little downtime due to the annual deep cleaning of the dorm on Sunday.  In the midst of planting the lettuce, an earthworm hit me in the side of the head after having been tossed by Josh.  Kirstin ended up with dirt down her pants courtesy of Peter.   Plenty of taunts and quips followed.  Not surprisingly, we were all given the afternoon off...

Perks

Here are just a few of the benefits of being an intern here:

• Free produce from the garden, like delicious spinach and chard 
• 10% off at the food co-op
• Free dinner at the restaurant on Thursday nights

The last one I learned about at around 4:30 today.  This was much to my delight as I was already planning to make a ritual of having dinner at the restaurant on Thursdays because it's the only night that dinner is served.  Little did I know that Chef Anthony has a soft spot for the interns and let's us come for a "family dinner", including wine and dessert (I'm more interested in the dessert than the wine, but I appreciate the offer).

It was great to sit and enjoy a meal with the other interns as well as Anthony and his family and friends.  I'm getting to know my team little by little; they have all had interesting experiences that led them here and they have good senses of humor.  I'll profile them for you one by one over several postings:

Josh started just two weeks before me.  He lives across the hall and we share a bathroom (only one person can use it at a time, but we have had no problems with this).  He grew up in Massachusetts, studied art and film at New York University and later worked in Los Angeles.  He's easygoing and kind: when he found out that intern Kirstin had never learned to ride a bike as a child because of hip problems, he gave her a lesson in the parking lot.  He also helped me move into the dorm last Saturday without my asking.  Since we're on somewhat equal footing as far as agricultural experience, he'll be a good teammate to have for the coming year.

Beginning tomorrow afternoon, I'll be in workshops on organic honeybee care.  This will conclude on Saturday afternoon, about 15 hours of training in total.  As I know very little about honeybees, I expect to learn plenty...

A Horse is a Horse

My first activity of the day was allowing Captain, the male horse, to graze in the pasture next to the paddock he shares with his sister, Eva.  Mac gave me some direction as to how to keep control of my new equine pal before handing me the rope attached to Captain's halter.  Since we are not well-acquainted, I've been talking to the horses so they will get used to the sound of my voice.  Captain had 20 minutes of grazing time to help him transition from his winter diet of hay to fresh grass, so I added some songs to my monologue, including the classic "Camptown Races".  Captain was far too busy to notice my serenade, however, as he was devouring nearly everything he could reach.

Once I returned him to the paddock, fellow intern Elexis showed me how to groom his coat, clean his hooves, and brush his mane.  Cleaning a horse's hoof is a bit challenging.  You have to bend their leg up and brace the hoof on your thigh while you are in a bit of a squat, then you scrape out the dirt with a thin metal tool.  Captain cooperated while Elexis cleaned his left front and rear hooves, but when I tried to take his right rear hoof, he held it up and stood there on 3 legs.  After a bit of coaxing, he relented and I completed the task.

Mac showed us how to reconfigure the electric fence so that Captain and Eva could go straight into pasture from their paddock.  It was the first time they had been able to do so since winter had ended, and a more joyful display would be hard to imagine.  They were leaping, kicking up their back hooves, and running through the grass together.  I really have never seen anything quite like it.

After weeding the pepper seedlings for the upcoming plant sale, I spent the rest of the morning collecting dandelion heads like the children did yesterday.  Another school group was due to visit, but cancelled at the last minute.  More children will be coming tomorrow.

In the afternoon, I helped with the preparation and application of a field spray made with compost from cow manure that had been aging for several months.  The preparation involves stirring a solution for an hour, so we took turns.  I was then given a bucket of the solution and a small broom with a short handle.  I dipped the broom in the solution and proceeded to fling the liquid over the vegetable beds that have not yet sprouted.  Fellow intern Kirstin added some slinky shoulder moves at the end of her flinging, but those are strictly optional.

Next, I assisted with the set up of a woodchuck-proof cover for some of the flowering plants that are to be sold, and then received a detailed lesson on watering the greenhouse plants from senior intern Peter.  He congratulated me on completing my 2nd day.

I share a kitchen with two young women from Japan, Yasuyo and Noriko.  They invited me to join them for tea and cherry pie tonight.  I still remember enough Japanese words from study abroad during college for Japanese people to find me amusing, so I was workin' it.  I think they will share more desserts with me in the future. ;-)

First Day!

My first day of the internship was great!  Tuesday morning is set aside for tending the compost and the weekly planning meeting.  I arrived at the compost piles at 7 AM in my Wellies, ready for action.  Shortly thereafter, I was handed a shovel and told to help add the layer of well-rotted manure to the pile of refuse collected from the kitchens of the school, restaurant, and food co-op that are also part of the Threefold Education Center.  The manure layer comes after a sprinkling of lime is added to raise the pH.  After building up the pile and adding a layer of old wet leaves to give it a "skin", we headed into the cabin near the garden that's used for class time and projects like making herbal teas.

It was Intern John's last day, so we had a rhubarb-apple crisp (made with rhubarb from the garden) and other treats.  John is my age and was living in Manhattan before the internship, so it was a similar lifestyle change for him.  He's not actually leaving; he's going up the hill to the Fellowship Community, which is an intergenerational community with a focus on caring for the elderly.  There is also a farm there.

A group of early elementary students arrived for a field trip later in the morning.  They were kept busy with collecting dandelion heads (used for a preparation that's added to the compost) and filling pots with the potting soil the interns had made.  Internship Director Mac Mead is planning to sell 16-pund bags of  the potting soil at the co-op and during the plant sale, so he challenged us to come up with a catchy name: the winner was Garden Gold.  We used the pots of soil to transplant several hundred tomato seedlings.  Some will be planted in the garden later while others will be sold at the big plant sale coming up in a few weeks.  Since most of the tomatoes are heirloom varieties, most of their names were new to me: Pruden's Purple, Chadwick's Cherry, Black Cherry, Golden Delight, Mayona, Green Zebra and others.

After the hour and a half lunch break, I was wandering around the tiny orchard of peach, apple, and pear trees and I tripped on a garter snake that was crossing my path in the grass.  Something about this really brought home the fact that I'm not working in an office anymore and made me laugh.  The snake just looked annoyed.

Based on the celestial calendar used for planting here, today was a root day.  This meant that the afternoon was spent cultivating the soil around the leeks and onions in the upper field in order to reduce weeds and increase water absorption.  We called it a day around 4:30 PM.

Tomorrow is a flower day, so we'll be harvesting more dandelion heads in the late morning.  The work day will begin with mucking out the horses' pen and grooming them.  More on that later.

Settling in

Hey look, I made it to New York and I started a blog!  Things are going well.  My dorm room is about the same size as my bedroom back in DC, but it's comfortable.  I don't officially start the internship until tomorrow, but yesterday I helped feed and water the pair of horses who help plow the fields here.  There are also honeybees, chickens and cows on the property as well as chipmunks, rabbits, and a lot of birds.  Currently, there's a parade of small children in rain hats passing the dorm on their way back to the Waldorf school that's on the campus.  There's no shortage of activity around here.

I'll try to be good about providing regular updates.  It will all depend on how exhausted I am at the end of the day.  Thanks for your interest in my agricultural odyssey.