Honey Chocolate Cake, Bee Keeping in the Tropics, and our Honey Harvest

Hello to all Chocolate Cake lovers. I'm not a chocoholic, in fact I can give or take chocolate most of the time, but it is one of life's little luxuries along with honey. However, I do love a slice of Chocolate Cake. On the weekend, when I had a craving for chocolate and chocolate cake I was unaware of what was to follow. 

Harvesting honey from our beehive, we're beeside ourselves.

 

We've only been home a week and shortly we'll be heading for Sydney for a small holiday to watch Andrew Lloyd Webber's amazing Phantom of the Opera at the Sydney Opera House, watch the Rugby League Football Grand Final, visit Taronga Zoo and find some amazing places to eat. We will also be spending a couple of days in the famous nearby Hunter Valley Wine Region, we are really looking forward to that. Our interests are very eclectic. So this is a very quick post in between packing, just to say hello and let you know that this Spring, our beehive is now going gangbusters, it's very reassuring.

It's been a busy week tidying up the garden, catching up with friends and beekeeping. This week we managed to harvest some golden honey from our beehive. We both donned our Bee Suits, I took the photos and Mr. HRK inspected the hive. Thankfully we found that the bees are thriving, however we needed to replace some of the full honey frames with empty ones to create space so that the Queen will have room to lay more eggs. The rule is to move a couple of the full outside honey frames in the lower Brood box where the Queen Bee resides to the top box (the Super), move the frames along in the Brood box toward the outside, and place two empty frames in the middle of the Brood box so that the Queen can keep creating new brood there. We removed only four of the full honey frames from the Super to harvest some honey, ensuring there was still enough honey in the hive for the bees to feed on. It's the season when bees like to swarm, and decide to leave their beehive and build another one somewhere nearby, that's if the Queen feels the urge to move house, so we needed to ensure that the bees felt minimum disruption, had enough to eat, and felt there was still enough room in the hive for the Queen to lay new brood, work and live. It's a complex business. We are still learning so much about beekeeping, and it seems that we need to know as much just managing one hive, as those beekeepers who manage multiple hives. 

This frame is still a work in progress, and not ready to be harvested yet.

Once the four frames were removed, and all the bees gently brushed off the frames outside so they didn't enter our house, and they will follow the honey trail if allowed, we scraped the racks clean of honey and beeswax into a large bucket in our kitchen, where it was strained into the bottom bucket for that glorious honey.

Here is the rich honey and honeycomb falling and dripping into the buckets below.

Two of the frames were totally capped and very heavy, and when they aren't all capped it just means there could be a little more moisture in the honey, but it's fine to eat and ok for non-commercial purposes.

As you can see, this is very much a cottage industry for us, and it is so much easier to harvest the honey in small batches at home. We'll need to repeat this process in another 4 weeks or so, presuming the bees are still expanding in the hive. Spring is a beautiful time of the year for bees but they will still swarm if they aren't totally contented.

Beautiful honey dripping into the bucket, pure and clean.

We like to give away a few jars of our honey to friends for gifts and to thank them for helping out watching over our home while we are away. We think this batch of honey is perfect, light and delicious.

I am having trouble commenting on some of my favourite Wordpress blogs that I follow on my phone, and as I won't have my computer with me when we travel next time, please be sure that I will be reading your amazing blogs, but might not be commenting for a little while. Take care, and I hope you are enjoying some delicious honey where you live. It's so important that we keep looking after our bees and planting lots of native trees, bushes and even the exotics that they feed on. More about that later.

Thanks for dropping by.

Warm wishes,

Pauline

in My Kitchen - November 2021

When I looked through all of my photos for the past month, and all the food I have created out of my kitchen, I realised it has been a busy month, it certainly feels like it, and this past week for example has gone so quickly. Christmas is just around the corner, so the next projects will be Plum puddings, Christmas cakes, and Mango Chutney. Could we just extend November though please? I am sending this post to Sherry of Sherry's Pickings for the In My Kitchen event.  If you would like to join in, send your post to Sherry by 13th of the month.  Or just head over to her blog to visit more kitchens. 

A recent dinner party for 12 people, and I brought out the Big Guns in my cooking repertoire when catering for a crowd. Curried Beef Lasagne, Moroccan Chickpea salad, and Chocolate Mousse. All can be prepared well in advance which I love, and were delicious. I also made a big green salad, just because we need our greens my friends.

A Moroccan Chickpea salad is the perfect partner for this Lasagne.

Moroccan Chickpea salad

And then for sweets there was Chocolate Mousse based on Nigella Lawson's recipe. I worked on this recipe for a couple of days as I found it too rich to start with.

Stovetop cooking certainly improved for me when we installed our new stovetop this month.  It has made me realise just how fast and very hot two of my stove elements were, and now I need to be patient to achieve that level of heat if I need it. Here's a photo of Mr. HRK preparing to remove the old stovetop, with screwdriver in place of course. It became a major operation though, when we lost power, which was caused by a green faulty fuse box located two doors up the road, which our power runs from. Who knew our fuse box was there, not us? The fuse box  hadn't been maintained for 30 years apparently, because of a huge and very happy plant growing in front of it. Of course nobody admitted to planting the plant. The electrician arrived, our Power Company, Ergon, was called in, a convoy of vehicles lined the road, the plant was removed using a winch, and all was well by dinner time that night. Phew, what a drama. However because of the issues we had encountered, we had to wait for a specialist electrician to call the following day to install the stovetop, much to the chagrin of Mr. HRK, who had planned to do the job himself.

There's been an exciting development at our family. We've have invested in another Beehive, during this last month, Italian bees, not native bees although we have plenty of the latter in our garden all of the time. Farming bees is a real learning curve and a wonderful interest, and our friend and bee mentor whom we bought this hive from, told us that beekeepers who have had problems in the past become the best beekeepers. Well thanks Keith, here's hoping. We lost our hive last year when some Robber Bees infested it with a killer American virus, called American Foul Brood, which is eventually fatal to a hive. It was a big year for viruses in 2020. So we had to destroy the hive and every piece of equipment associated with it, which was so tough, and then wait until we felt strong enough to take on another hive. 

Here's a photo of Mr. HRK and Dylan, a young friend who lives nearby, preparing to smoke the hive to pacify the bees so they can check on their progress. By all accounts the bees are going well, and we should be able to add a "half super" box soon which is where they start making the delicious honey that we hope to harvest in the future. The weather here at the moment is hot and windy, and we saw a few of our bees on the bird bath yesterday trying to cool off. We have high hopes for this hive. The Queen bee came from Duaringa in Central Queensland so she has travelled quite a distance to be with us and her new hive. Beehave Lady Queen Bee,  we need you and some homemade honey.

Adding bark to the smoker

Lighting the smoker

Checking our hive. I didn't get close to take photos of the inside, but the bees seem to be very calm

Here's a lovely little bouquet of flowers in my kitchen that a friend gave me for cooking her dinner. The frangipanni perfume is quite intoxicating, and is one of my favourite flowers and contrasts beautifully with the blue flowers.

Halloween brought us a scary but lovely surprise this year. Generally we don't have any trick or treaters knock on our door, but this year we did. These two dear little girls have recently moved into the neighbourhood, we know their family well and it was lot of fun when they called to trick or treat with their Mum. Thankfully I had some chocolate on hand in the refrigerator so they were happy.

This morning, for a camping trip we are planning, I made a version of my Beef, Mango Chutney and Sauerkraut Goulash, however I seared the flour coated meat in a hot pan, and then added red wine and stock and simmered that down to capture all of the delicious beef scrapings. This is a step I sometimes omit if I am pushed for time, but I want this stew to be full of flavour, some of which might end up in pies.

I made a delicious Vietnamese chicken salad recently, which was perfect as the temperatures rose. Here's the link to the recipe if you missed it.

One of the highlights of my cooking adventures this month has been this Beef Brisket with prunes and vegetables. You can find the recipe at this link. Such a great recipe from Monday Morning Cooking Club, so tender and full of rich flavours.

Last month, 4 weeks ago in fact, when we said goodbye to our beautiful Border Collie, Locky. Our dining room table overflowed with beautiful flowers sent by our family.

There's a very funny story attached to the table runner that you can see on our family dining room table, well we can laugh about it now. We purchased it in Istanbul during a trip to Turkey about 6 years ago, during which of course we embarked on a compulsory carpet buying spree. We were targeted by a supposedly well meaning tourist guide, and taken to a questionable Government Carpet wholesaler. Mr. HRK and I still think we were lucky to escape with our lives in tact, slightly inebriated and well fed though, but we still don't believe this is the actual carpet we purchased.  However it was shipped home to us very quickly, and we weren't in a position  to take the matter any further, despite our doubts. All of the Lonely Planet guides and Turkish tourist books can't prepare you for what really happens during a carpet buying adventure in Istanbul. Older and wiser they say. This Magic Carpet is the curve ball of my story.

Best wishes,

Pauline
 

It's World Bee Day and Saving our Bee Hive

Have you heard the Buzz - it's World Bee Day. It's celebrated every year on the 20th May to raise awareness of the importance of bees and what we can do to help towards their preservation. When I heard on the news this morning that it was all about the bees today, I knew I would have to contribute. Having a beehive is taking conservation to the next level.

When we returned from overseas in early March, and thank goodness we came home when we did just before all of the lock downs started, our Italian Honey beehive was full of honey. However, little did we know that from here on we were on another steep learning curve, making us realise how fragile beehives can be. We extracted lots of honey from the hive on Saturday, a big day, and the following day the whole front of the beehive, bottom brood box plus 3 supers above were covered in a black mass of bees from top to bottom. We had never seen so many bees en masse,  thousands of them, and this was the ominous sign that our bees were getting ready to swarm. And they did. The next day the black buzzing population of bees had gone, but there was still some activity obvious around the hive so we remained optimistic.  However within a week we realised that we had probably lost our Queen Bee, the old queen had swarmed with the hive without a new queen produced to keep the hive going. The female bees left in the hive desperately try to produce another queen but because they are unable to fertilise the egg they only produce drones. This is the tell tale sign that the hive is queenless when a lot of drone cells appear in the middle of a frame.  We called in Keith, our friend and local bee expert, and he very calmly worked with Mr. HRK to salvage our hive. He brought a new Queen for us in a small box, with three escorts, (Keith hatches the Queens and sells them to beekeepers), reduced the hive to just the brood box, and to cut a very long story short, we have basically started from scratch again but our beehive is alive. If we had left it much longer, we would have lost our hive.

Freezer full of beehive frames

 We have our second fridge freezer full of beehive frames which will kill off any diseases present due to the weakened state of the hive after the swarming. They will also be used when our beehive is back on track to expand to another super, that is beehive terminology for another beehive box on top of the existing one. The frames will be a food source in the new box for the bees.

It appears that by the time we returned home the bees were hungry, because there had been lots of hot weather and then rain, and being a very large hive they were depending on the supply of honey in the hive to keep them sustained. Perhaps they were planning to swarm anyway, after all they swarmed to our place in the first place and perhaps the Queen had gypsy tendencies, anyway lesson learned. They didn't appreciate us extracting the hive for honey although our friends that we gave lots away to certainly did and it was beautiful honey. Since then Mr. HRK has been monitoring the hive closely, and to supplement their food sources every couple of days he feeds them sugar syrup to give them the energy to fly off in search for food. The sugar syrup is a mix of 2 cups sugar and 2 cups boiling water. He pours this into a ziplock bag and when it is lukewarm, and the sugar dissolved he places it with a couple of holes  prodded in the top of the bag in the top of the hive and the bees feed off that until it is empty which may only take a day. So I have certainly been supporting the local Mackay sugar industry with the amount of sugar I have been buying. We also bought some hive beetle baits from Keith as that is our main concern now that there is evidence of hive beetle in the hive, which eat the bee larvae. But it all appears to be working and the hive is becoming more active each day. I hope this story reinforces for you just how fragile beehives can be and that beekeepers need to be vigilant and constantly monitoring their hives as environmental circumstances are constantly changing. Beehives and the beautiful honey they produce can't be taken for granted. It's a primary industry to be protected.

This is what our beehive looks like now. 

When the hive has grown sufficiently we will add another super or box to the top. Last weekend Mr. HRK's mission was to let more sunshine into the backyard area around the hive. So the day was spent pruning, something that needs to be done regularly in tropical gardens. The Golden Penda tree and the Lychee tree were both given a good haircut. All the foliage was moved to the shredder, so that it could be shredded down to mulch, and then Murphy's Law intervened. The shredder wasn't working, so Mr. HRK pulled it to bits, but with no luck. The pile of tree and plant cuttings is still sitting there as there are no new shredders available for sale anywhere in town. Another consequence of the pandemic.

Did you know, that all of the worker honey bees are female, only live for about 28 days, and do all the work? The male honey bees (also called drones) have no stinger and do not work. All they do is mate but the health of a hive can be judged by the number of drones it has. Did you know that the Honey Bee is the only insect that produces food eaten  by humans? Interesting eh?

Honey bees are so important for the pollination of all our food crops in Australia and the hives have been hit hard recently with drought and bushfires, as I'm sure you know. Native Bees are the backup plan in case Honey Bees become decimated and so they need to be nourished as well. Moths, ants and even butterflies play a role as well with pollination. One positive bonus of the Covid 19 pandemic and isolation is that many more people are gardening and growing their own vegetables and planting fruit trees. Now that we have the beehive, every vegetable plant and flower in our garden is a potential food source for our bees and a celebration although bees are known to fly 5 kilometres in search of food. Butterflies, moths and birds are also beneficiaries. 

The following are some photos of our garden at the moment. I hope you enjoy looking at them.I planted a whole lot of seeds a month or so ago, rather randomly throughout the gardens, not having a lot of faith that the seeds would germinate but I think most of them did. So now we have lots of tomato plants growing from seeds that I dried myself between sheets of paper kitchen towel, pak choy, zucchinis, eggplant, strawberries and some herbs. I have transplanted some to better spots in the garden

Here are a few photos for you.

Red Cherry Tomatoes, I think. This one is doing well in a pot. The rest are in the garden. I noticed it's first little flower this morning.

Zucchinis

A few female flowers with small zucchinis attached are now emerging and Mr. HRK plans to give them a hand with pollination to ensure that the small zucchinis don't fall off. 

This one seems happy in a pot

Capsicum growing from seeds I dried

Eggplant which I think must have germinated from seeds in the compost heap. I have seen Italian honey bees in their flowers which is inspiring.

Some kind of bug on the Eggplant flower

This is our leafy patch, mignonette lettuces, beetroot, rocket and other greens.

"Beauty is in the Eye of the Bee-Holder" - Some flowers, to brighten up the garden and add to it's diversity.

The Brazilian Red Cloak just coming into flower. This is at least 12 years old, originally from my Mum's garden in Rockhampton.

Cut flowers of the Brazilian Red Cloak I brought inside to enjoy

 If you look carefully you can see a yellow honey eater salivating over my orchids. It was difficult to get a good photo through the kitchen window.

The flower from one of my Cattleya orchids which I brought inside.

Reliable and pretty Pentas flowers that all insects enjoy. We also have a purple one.

Beautiful begonias

Perfumed Chrysanthemum

Old-fashioned Coleus flowers, almost finished and ready to be pruned but adored by bees.

  Beautiful salvia, can you see the Italian honey bee on this one? Loved also by the honey eaters, butterflies, and native bees.

 Happy World Bee Day my friends, enjoy your daily dose of honey, and the vegetables and fruits that Italian Honey and Native bees have probably pollinated just for you.

Thanks for dropping by.

Best wishes

Pauline.