The Bee: Part I, what is the bee, bee colony and fun facts, ding.

these are honeybees the big one towards the center is the queen

Please welcome Noah, son of regular author Sarah, for his debut on this blog  .

     Hello I am a new author for this blog and for my first story story/post I will be talking about bees as a hive, individual and just in general the common bee that is kept in hives. The honeybee or Apis melllifera. So to begin bees are arthropods which are a group of animals that all have jointed body parts and a exoskeleton, some examples are spiders, bees, butterflies, crabs, scorpions etc. More precisely bees are insects which are arthropods with 6 legs. So bees, ants, butterflies etc. 

So enough with that now I bet you want to know some interesting things about bees. You may have heard that bees live in hives that are made of wax organized in hexagonal cell's. Ok where to start hhhhmm, well bees can't see red but

this is me the author who is the kid in usually green

they can see ultra-violet. Ooohhhh. Now some of you the people who are reading this might bee wondering, hahahah do you get that! No of course nobody does. Ok what is ultra-violet. simply put it is a color beyond what humans can see. Also you are probably wondering why do they kneed to be able to see ultra-violet, well because flowers have ultraviolet markings on them giving instructions on how to get nectar and pollen. 

Also some of you might be wondering, gee when is this kid going to tell us how to take care of  bees? Well for you just read and you will find out. For those who wonder "why should I trust this guy he is a kid for crying out loud?" Well I have been taught by my dad who sometimes has 50 colonies, I have gone to many a bee keeping meeting, have a certificate that states I am an apprentice level which is the same as my dad and I have been beekeeping for almost half my life. 

Ha so there! 

this what are family calls the bee tree which ha tons of different kinds of bees pollinating it

this is one of my dads bee colony sites

Another interesting thing is that all honey bee stings have barbs on them meaning that when they sting and the bee flies away the stinger stays, pulling out the bee's gut, killing the bee but meaning that the stinger pumps venom through the stinger until there is no venom left or the stinger is out. This brings up the question, how do you get a stinger out? Whatever you don't try to pull it out it will just pump more venom into you :(  .Bad idea. So what you should do is swipe the stinger out. 

Bees have 3 different types in the colony. The drone or male who does not have a stinger and is bigger than worker bees. His only purpose in life is to mate with other colony's queens and once he has mated he dies (look I don't know why he dies, I will ask my dad!). 

Then the most common the worker bee which is all girls. These have stingers do all the jobs except laying eggs. Finally and most important the queen who is the biggest and the fattest of them all. A queen starts as a regular larvae except she gets fed so much royal jelly. 

Right before she comes out 2 things happen. 1 - The old queen high tails out of there in a swarm which is when the hive is overpopulated so not all the workers get the queens pheromone meaning they make queens, so the queen leaves unless she wants to die. Because the workers make multiple queens at once so they know they got a good queen because, 2-When the new queens are ready to come out they beat their wings against their cell wall or the piping. So only one queen per colony which means one queen survives by being the last one standing. 

Now you are probably like this if you are new to bees, "but you said that bees' stingers have barbs that make it stay in their target." Well that was kind of incorrect, the queens stinger doesn't (because she is the queen), also bees stingers don't stick in other insects or in arthropods in general.

queen cell frame thing

Something my dad just told me is bees generate an electrical charge which makes the pollen attracted onto the bee. Also honey is basically partially solidified bee vomit.Gross huh. Now you are probably want to know what is a colony already!!!!!!!!!!! Basically a colony is a group of bee's that when healthy has 60 to 80 thousand bees in it. There that is what it is. Done. So now I  done.

CLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAP.

Thank you thank you this is the end of my guest author debut

Feel free to post any comments or questions about bees or other topics including things you think we should write about or spelling or grammar issues

shared on:  backyardfarmingconnection , homestead-barn-hop-107 ,gastronomicalsovereignty.com, frugal-days-sustainable-ways-68 , wildcrafting-wednesday-16 , simple-lives-thursday-143

The great dissapearing lawn

It's always scary to move from the idea stage to the action stage.

This week, we took the first step in turning our sloping, grassy front lawn into a garden of fruits and nectar. But before we get to the beautiful vision in our heads, we have to put in the work to get there.

The hill in front of the house looks gracious and inviting, but in reality it has been anything but. The slope is too steep for comfortable mowing - there is always the lingering fear of falling down the side.

It's also too steep to play most games on. Rolling downhill or sledding seem fun except you would end up in a thicket of English Laurel, with a poorly lighted street on the other side. Less fun, that. Especially because we live across the street from a park with a nice flat grassy area plus a good sledding hill. We didn't need a less useful version of either.

So we are going to convert it into a garden.




We have wanted to do this for years, but dreaded the labor. Luckily, the neighboring community of White Center is home to one of the best equipment rental stores around. For $75, we rented a sod cutter for the day.

sod cutter and some rolled sod

This baby sliced through the grass much more easily than we imagined. It was harder than mowing the lawn, but much easier than rototilling. It didn't take over in quite the same way.



We did learn that if you cut sod, you should remove the cut strips immediately, either by lifting them or rolling them up. Otherwise you won't be able to see where you cut, and will either miss spots or slice up your nice strips into little tatters.


Four hours of cutting yielded 3500 square feet of bare soil. Or rather, soil with cut sod on it. We lifted the sod strips and piled them into long walls which followed the line of the hill.

This was hard work, and really dirty. But it was also fun - like making a fort. Using sod strips as building material was a new experience for us - but was once a common building method. The folks who did it to make homes, without the benefit of a sod cutter, were truly stout hearted.





It took David and me about 12 man hours to roll and stack the sod. It takes weight as well as strength to wrestle the sod rolls. Noah was not able to budge them, but he helped by working the broadfork to loosen the soil.

Here is the slope with two rows of sod walls, positioned about seven feet apart down the hill. The walls ended up about eight or nine inches tall. We expect they will settle with age and time but remain as boundaries to the edges of each garden bed.

In all, we made three long terraces. They should act as water catchments, slowing the percolation of rain into the soil and storing winter moisture for our dry summers. All Meggie knows is she doesn't usually get to this part of the yard so she's excited.



Next we covered the hill with burlap bags.


Seattle is a coffee town. Many of the warehouses for the bigger companies will give you huge numbers of their bags. You just have to ask around and see who has them.


The hill used two full bales of bags - about 1600 of them. Each bag is about 4' x 2', or eight square feet, so we had 12800 feet of surface area.

That means we covered the whole area between two and three bags deep. We hope the bags will block out light and prevent any residual grass from growing back out. More crucially, they should hold the soil in place between now and our next steps - adding mulch and planting the garden.








                                    









Laying out the bags was unbelievably fast. David arrived with the bags at 11:30. Then we built a campfire and roasted hot dogs and veggie dogs. Then we started laying out the bags.


Two or three hours later, the rain started and Noah went inside. By four, David and I were done. The rain weighted the burlap so it conformed with the  contours of the hill.

From our new staircase, you now see a rounded beige hill off to your right.

It looks like some one's paper mache project. Or like a pair of khaki pants cast off by a giant.

As the rain softens the fabric I am starting to see the higher ridges where the walls of grass and soil rise up.

Right now we are all tired. The school break is over so I go back to work and Noah goes to school.



The hill will wait. Soon our buddy Heath will call to ask where we want him to drop some wood chips.

We will be ready!

 To be continued...

shared on: backyardfarmingconnection, homestead-barn-hop-107,gastronomicalsovereignty.com, frugal-days-sustainable-ways-68, simple-lives-thursday-143

A big step for Several Gardens Farm

From the day we moved to Several Gardens Farm, one thing was obvious. In true farmhouse style, guests come to the back, kitchen door, not the front guest entrance. When we entertain, people gather in the kitchen, and stay put in the one room where they started. The more guests, the more crowded the kitchen, because no one ever wanders beyond.

The front entrance, the formal door, is only used by people who do not know us: kids selling candy, folks with religious tracts, meter readers, pizza delivery, etc.

And Halloween ghoulies, of course. Each year, intrepid children stagger up the grassy hillside to our dark, imposing house.





The back porch has a clear, simple pathway.

The path to our front door. Nice huh?

The front has a steep, grassy hill to clamber up, and dark, narrow, walkway.


We can make the door inviting once you get there but the property does nothing to get you there.

We have always wanted to modify this, but it's been a little unclear how.

Above all we needed stairs, but that was easier said than done.

Until the day we got the great deal on ten stone slabs from a  demolished building. The stones were big rectangles with rough faces. Perfect risers for stairs cut into the hillside.

The prospect of cutting into said hill, and setting the stones in it, kept holding us back. The stones weigh at least 120 pounds each. They were stacked at the top of the hill and would have to be lifted and settled into place. In addition, we feared doing the job badly and ending up with ugly, slippery, unwelcoming steps.


But we have a tractor, and that helps cut back on the physical labor. So on an early spring day, the sun was shining and we decided to jump in. Well, do some math and then jump in.

We measured the rise of the hill = 34". The run from start to end following the shortest path was 140". The steps were each 4" high, so we needed eight of them to get our height, with 2" left of height to figure out. If we used eight steps, each needed to be 17" deep.


Our stones were long enough, just barely. We then had the idea of slightly curving the path. This would lengthen it a bit, which was fine, as we had extra stones. The extras would be used as path, like stepping stones bedded on grade with no gain in elevation. The curve would let us meet the sidewalk straight on, as it follows a slightly different curve than the driveway below.

So we excavated a spot for the first step. We dug down below grade and filled in with sharp gravel. This lets the stone settle in very smoothly and lay really flat. The first an second stones went in well.

But by the third stone we noticed a problem. The bottom of the steps was the concrete rim of the driveway. The driveway is on a slope, so the rim itself is not level.

We had measured from the top - but there was a difference from top to bottom.

The top walkway is also sloped. We miscalculated our rise! Luckily the mistake worked in our favor because we had the extra stones. We backed down the driveway till we had a rise of 36" and used stone 9 as a stair instead of a stepstone.



Once the steps were in place, the hill is much easier to navigate. Perhaps we will add hand rails or a row of solar powered lights.

Next we should add some pretty flowers along the sides, to hold the earth in place and mark it out as a walkway.

It remains to be seen if more people start coming to the front door, but I feel that they certainly will.

And I know for a fact that we will.