Monthly Archives: April 2012

Morning Fog

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There is something about a fog that distorts perspective. It can unnerve us and it unnerves livestock. A heavy rain a few nights back left us with a dense fog before sunrise. Heading out to feed I heard the cattle bawling. Cattle bawl and we are always alarmed. The sound often heralds a lost calf, escaped steers, injured cows and errant bulls.

As I neared the barn I saw the steers lined up by the pig paddock. The edge of a hill dropped off behind them creating an illusion that the world ended at their feet. They were bellowing into the fog in the predawn. Answered by the cattle at Mr. Kyle’s and echoed by another herd down near Johnson Valley.

I counted head and all were home. Continuing on my rounds I checked their hay, well stocked. Still they hollered, twisting and looking in all directions waiting on wolves that didn’t exist, I imagined. The echoes of the other bovines bounced around my ears as I finished the feeding.

I came back inside. But twice over the next two hours I went back outside to recount. I was sure I was missing something or some steer. Each time they were all on our property.

The sun rose over our hill at 8:45. The fog began to thin and was gone by 11:00. The sounds of the cattle in the valley gradually faded with the mists.

Bee Swarms

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Tickner Edwardes in The Lore of the Honey-Bee, calls a swarm “one short hour of joyousness and madcap frolic after a lifetime of order, commendable toil, chill and maidenly propriety”.

Why bees swarm is still more guesswork than science. But the principle reason seems to be based on a need to preserve hive health and to federate the colony. Swarms typically occur in the spring and happen suddenly, as we now know. The bees that leave the colony take off with the old queen. In the remaining hive a new queen cell is being produced. The bees, when they realize they are overcrowded begin to slow down brood production and begin to pack-up to leave by eating surplus honey.

Scout bees begin to fan out in the neighborhood looking for an acceptable site. When all the environmental factors are ripe the signal is sent and they all take off; leaving half the hive behind, the new pioneers settle on a branch or on a building. This is where we found them last week, in a pear tree.

Once they are out of the hive and bunched the scouts come back to the swarm and try and convince the others that their location is best. Bees fly off and visit the prospective homes. Basically the home that attracts the most visitors wins in a sort of bee democracy. At that point the rest of the swarm moves to the new home.

That decision could take hours or as much as a week. Our swarm was still in the pear tree on Sunday evening and unlikely to move during the chill of the night. Monday morning, while still dark, we suited up in our bee suits. Using flashlights and a tree saw we made preparations to capture the swarm. Cindy held the branch from just above and below the swarm while I sawed.

Once the branch was cut Cindy handed the swarm to me. We had a hive body (bee box) positioned on the ground with a piece of plywood underneath and a window screen to cover. Holding the branch I gave it a firm shake and promptly 90% of the bees fell into the box. After a moment we put the screen on top with a bottle of sugar water for food and then we both left for work.

We were still short a number of items that would allow us to set up a new hive: namely new frames to hold the hive. Cindy stopped after work at the farmer’s co-op for the supplies needed. We spent a couple of hours assembling the frames. Once they were complete back on went the bee suits and out we went. I picked up the box of bees and moved it to the new location. Using the smoker to quiet them I then took off the screen. Cindy began to move the frames into place.

Imagine a box that seems to be 50% full of bees. Now imagine squeezing ten frames in that box so that they sit side by side into that swarming mass. Can’t be done, right? Actually it went smoothly. As Cindy eased the frames into place the bees either moved out of the way or got to work building a new home on each frame. By the time the tenth frame was slid in the box the bees were home. A number of bees were still outside the new hive and were bunched up against the wall. They gradually began entering through the front door.

One day after the swarm we now had a third hive with free bees. We plan on keeping a spare hive body and frames for future swarms.

Hatching chicks: not the Hollywood ending

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Looking through the fogged window, I spy a single eye peering back. Surrounded by shell, the hatchling has managed, just, to break out a dime-size portal into the outside world. The eye swivels as the chick gathers strength to peck at its shell. For 21 days, the shell has provided nourishment, protection and room. Now, an overcrowded, solitary chamber limits movement and life.

Eleven baby chicks are already hatched and under the brooder. One moves with more energy and peeps with enthusiasm. Waking from a brief sleep, I come downstairs to find it stretched out oddly, unmoving, beneath the heat lamp—the measure between life and death recorded in a 30-minute Sunday afternoon nap.

The eye still swivels as the chick peeps loudly from its confines, answered by four others in shells slightly cracked. Eleven empty shells in pieces mock their pipping sounds and efforts. Experience has given us knowledge that a chick aided in shedding its shell almost always dies. Nature provides this last hurdle to birth: Batter your way out of your fragile shell and you get a chance at life. Fail and the sounds fade away, and die out.

Forty-eight hours of fighting the confining shell, the peeping is still strong but growing less frequent.

Monday morning, six o’clock, I grab a plastic Kroger bag. Removing the cover to the incubator, I place the cracked eggs inside. Some emit peeps at the change. Swiftly I walk through the morning dew to the pond. How do you kill baby chicks that have not hatched, and won’t?
Not dwelling on the task, I reach in and toss them one at a time into the pond. They bob, fill with water and sink beneath the surface.

Later that day, the peeping of baby starlings breaks my focus at work. Later that night, a bird’s chirping turns out to be a bathroom fan in need of oil. I recite under my breath, “I admit the deed, tear up the planks. Here is the beating of that hideous heart.”

Mushroom Foraging

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The forecast: 20% chance of afternoon showers. The plan: a mushroom foraging event for twenty. The reality: it poured buckets all morning.

Rounding the corner of one of our fields I came upon a member of our foraging party standing under a large oak looking for all like the proverbial drowned rat. We had been hunting mushrooms in the forest for an hour and half in the pouring rain and no let-up was in sight. I told her to head to the house. She trooped of with half a dozen other soaked to the skin foragers. A few of us soldiered on for another hour before returning to the farmhouse.

Cindy meanwhile had many of the returnees clothed in various combinations of our work clothes, hair dryers were going, clothes spinning in the dryer, hot tea in each hand and a bottle of stouter stuff passed among the group. Lunch was laid out on the table and everyone dug in while we identified our meager finds:

One mushroom we found throughout the woods with the somewhat gelatinous shaft and the round cap was probably one of the Calostoma members. My reference “A Field Guide to Southern Mushrooms” indicates it is “of no interest as an edible”. The other common mushroom we found: salmon colored cap, white gills meeting the stalk meets most of the criteria of the Hygrophorus family. Many of these are edible. But none of my sources raved about their culinary properties.

We also found a lot of turkey tails which one of our foragers had experience with their use. Apparently this genus is prized in Asian markets as a medicinal herb used to reduce inflammation and tumors. That was kind of cool.

Anyway, our wet and bedraggled crew dried out and all claimed they had a terrific time. This claim includes the woman who jabbed a paring knife to the hilt in her upper thigh. As everyone drove off the skies had cleared to a brilliant blue spring day.