Who is The Turquoise Bee?

Tsangyang Gyatso the sixth Dalai Lama. He composed poems and lyrics, still popular today, in which he refers to himself as The Turquoise Bee. Tsangyang Gyatso enjoyed a colorful life and loved writing poems and songs. His chief legacy is his poems, which are considered to be among the loveliest in Tibetan literature. Many are about love, longing and heartbreak. Some are erotic and some reveal his feelings about his position and his life. One of his more famous lyrics perhaps predicted his reincarnation:

“White crane!

Lend me your wings

I will not fly far

From Lithang, I shall return”

The poem that resonates most deeply with me is one in which it is speculated he refers to himself as a Turquoise Bee

"Spring flowers fade in the fall;

It is not for the turquoise bees to mourn.

I and my sweetheart are fated to part;

It is not for us to cry”

The 6^th Dalai Lama had no qualms writing about his love of women. He is the only Dalai Lama who never took his monastic vows but kept the temporal prerogatives of the Dalai Lama. He led a playboy lifestyle, wore layman clothing and enjoyed women, song and drink. Surely he was referring to a female love in the poem. For me the poem captures the feeling of parting with the bees in the fall, knowing we are fated to part but without sadness, holding on to the hope that we will reunite in the spring. The poem goes on:

"Frost gathers on the glistering flowers

And then the cold north wind blows.

The frost and the wind must have come

To drive the bees away from the flowers”

The image of the Turquoise Bee captivated me immediately and became the name of our little apiary. There isn’t any coincidence that in the scriptures and practices of all world religions bees and honey are symbolic.

For Christians the references are found in both the New and Old Testament. In Matthew 3:4 we read about John the Baptist living a long time in the wilderness on a diet of honey and locusts. In the Book of Exodus we read about the description of the Promised Land as flowing with milk and honey.

The Talmud has numerous references to honey and in Jewish tradition honey is a symbol for the New Year, Rosh Hashanah. During their celebratory feast Jews will dip apples into honey to bring a sweet year.

In Islam the Qu’ran is full of references to the honeybee and honey with significant recommendation to use honey for its healing properties. I only learned this recently from a family I was caring for in the hospital. When they learned I was a beekeeper they shared numerous reference about the bee and honey from the their holy book, the Qu’ran. In return I gave them a little jar of my honey and you would have thought I had moved the earth. I was overwhelmed by their gratitude.

Buddhists also have a feast, Madhu Pumima, a day commemorating Buddha’s making peace among his disciples by retreating into the wilderness. While there, a monkey and an elephant fed him, the elephant bringing fruit and the monkey-bringing honeycomb. The money was so excited when the Buddha accepted his gift that he began leaping from tree to tree and fell to his death. However, he was immediately reborn as a result of his generosity. This important feast is celebrated on the first day of the full moon in the month of Bhadro, which falls in August and September, by bringing honey to Monks. It is interesting that this coincides with the annual honey harvest! While I am not a Buddhist I am deeply connected to our Tibetan American community and deliver honey to our local Tibetan Monks for this feast day. In return the Monks bless the honey and the blessing extends to the bees, the hives and any product from the hive. This year I am working on having these Monks come to the Flight of The Turquoise Bee Apiary to conduct a Puja, a ritual offering/blessing. I would love the Monks to ask for healthy bees and access to healthy nectar, pollen water. I would also a blessing for Paula and I, for our safety and that any obstacles between the bees and us be removed. Most importantly we will ask for a pardon from the bee, forgiveness if you may, in the fall when we rob them of their honey.

I am a lucky beekeeper to be surrounded by a community of Christians, Jews, Buddhists and Muslims with whom I can share my annual crop for such important feasts and celebrations. I take great joy in sharing the honey with all my friends for such important religious purposes, celebrations and health. Finally in his infinate wisdom the Sixth Dalai Lama writes:

"In the short walk of this life

We have had our share of joy.

Let us hope to meet again

In the youth of our next life."

Beekeeping In The Rain

You can't really see it well but there is a beautiful rainbow overhead after this evenings downpour. There are few things I have such a bittersweet relationship with as rain. I love threatening weather. I will settle for a soaker but much prefer the excitement of something bigger. However I only like inclement weather if I am at home. I can not stand to be out in the rain, mist or sprinkle. But The Yellow Lady had to be release, no options.

We drove down in a downpour, hoping that by the time we reached the bee yard things would lightened up. About 10 minutes out I decided we had to map out our strategy. It should be easy, bees don't really like rain and won't be out and about,  we probably didn't need our suits or veils. We stopped at an gas station with an overhead to gathered our supplies, a hive tool, some gloves, an umbrella and a nail just in case we couldn't get the screen off her cage and would need to impale the cork to release her.

It was still a rabid downpour when we arrived. It seemed like maybe a clearing was heading our way but it was already 8pm and dark enough to make the job a little difficult, waiting just didn't make since. It didn't take long once we opened Royal Ruckus up to realize I'd made a bad decision about the protective gear. The girls were angry. Suddenly Paula fled the bee yard. She is quick when it comes to stings and knows the importance of getting out of harms way fast. Getting the stinger quickly is the name of the game! The longer you wait the more venom injected the worst the end result. Not to mention a sting releases a particular warning pheromone that can prompt other bees to attack. Swift action is in order. Get out of the bee yard and get the stinger out and if you are my friend Colleen your next action would be to get deodorant on the sting, something we keep in the bee mobile. As for myself I have some kind of crazy cowboy reaction to getting stung. I feel hopelessly trapped in my suit which makes it impossible for me to get the stinger out quickly and I usually get multiple stings with the maximum amount of venom release. I think getting the job at hand done is more important hence the National Geographic photo op that results. I wish I were swift and efficient as Paula.

We gave into the frenzy and donned our suits and veils and went back to Royal Ruckus. The first sight of good news, the queen cage was just as we left it and the bees were clustered around the cage in a healthy manner. We brushed them off, removed the cage and could see she was healthy. Now for a good release. I managed the rain with an umbrella and adjusted frames for Paula as she got the screen off and worked on getting the Yellow Lady out. It was difficult to see with so many bees about the cage but I saw her scamper across a frame. "Bingo, she is in, she looks good lets close this hive up" She was way up on the top part of the frame and I didn't want to loose her to the wind and rain. We won't be able to go inside Royal Ruckus for a week now to see if she is queen-right but I am optimistic. We will return to the bee yard on Monday to check all the other hives and plan out the divide of The Turquoise Bee. 

In the meantime, no more beekeeping in the rain. Even the rainbow wasn't prize enough at the end of the adventure and we trapped a few bees inside the bee mobile making the drive home tense for me. If it weren't for the release of a queen. Lets hope our queen drama is over At the Flight of The Turquoise Bee Apiary.

Meet Sweetpea's Bees at The Flight of The Turquoise Bee Apiary

Sweetpea's Gluten-free kitchen is evolving. I have enjoyed my musing here about cooking for the past several years but my attention has turn to the bees. I took up the adventure of Beekeeping three years ago. I keep bees for the magic of utterly unexpected moments filled with challenge and hope; disappointment and glittering joy. I keep bees for the hope that will temper my hyperactive spirit and lead me to a more deliberate, mindful and contemplative life.

I actually didn't imagine I would like it so much, I didn't imagine it would capture my interest like it has. I am thrilled too that I have a wonderful beekeeping partner in this endeavor. I couldn't have asked for more when Paula signed on. We are a perfect pair of beekeepers and the journey is only embellished by our partnership. 

So moving forward I hope to chronicle my musings in the bee yard and impart what little knowledge I actually have about the serious plight of the honey bee! Come along and read and learn and hope for some honey. I imagine every now and again I will still muse about my kitchen but for the most part it will be the bees.

The Rescue of Royal Ruckus

See that beautifully marked queen, the one with the yellow dot? Click on her to make the photo larger. She is currently sung as a bug inside her cage, inside Royal Ruckus getting acquainted with her new kingdom. Why yellow you ask, good question and a perfect segway to talk about queens for a moment.

While she doesn't rule the hive the queen is really is the source of all work and it is important to keep track of her and her age. Marked queens create quite a stir among beekeepers, some like 'em and some don't. The ones who don't, well I can't speak for them but it feels like they think having marked queens is like cheating. I'll admit the little shaming session I got last evening while picking up our Yellow Lady was uncalled for. We had unmarked queens our first year of beekeeping and we learned how to locate her among 70,000 -100,000 bees. And yes, if we couldn't actually find her we could located good evidence of her health and livelihood sighting newly layed eggs. For me finding eggs is far more difficult than finding the queen and it would suit me just fine to find away to make them neon green.  Our second year we ordered marked queens and locating her became a much easier. There is pure joy when you see her, marked or unmarked, pure unadulterated joy. We like marked queens. I don't think I would go so far as calling it cheating, besides it is important to know how old your queen is and if you have unmarked queens it is impossible to know because there are circumstances in which the hive will re-queen itself. You have no idea if your unmarked queen is your original queen. Nay say'ers would probably dismiss this argument and say well you shouldn't keep a colony around for more than two or three years anyway so what's the point. I'll just stick with we like marked queens.

Beekeepers have come up with an international coloring system for marked queens so we can keep track of the age of a queen. For years ending in 1 or 6 the marking is white, 2 or 7 yellow, 3 or 8 red, 4 or 9 green and 5 or 0 is blue. Our supplier in Kentucky does not follow the international system and all the queens are marked in white which was a little disappointing when we got our packages. We picked up our Yellow Lady from a local supplier in Stillwater who does follow the system. Not without a little shaming as I was writing the check telling me I didn't need to spend the extra money on a marked queen and that it didn't matter if I found her in the hive or not as long as I could find eggs. I didn't really want to get into it with him so I just smiled as said thanks and paid the extra buck.

We mapped out our plan. A practice run with the old queen cage and a spare hive box with frames. We got our act together and into the yard we went. First we checked the Drone Den to make sure we had queen acceptance. It was easy to find the queen, not many bees at this point and we feel pretty sure she is laying. Paula is much better at seeing the eggs than I am, even with a little magnifying glass it is hard for me and I am good at imagining things. We added syrup to Drone Den, Crazy Comb and The Turquoise Bee and we also stole a frame of open brood from The Turquoise bee to slip into Royal Ruckus. I would have preferred to steal from Crazy Comb but we can't find her queen so it was too risky. Putting a frame of open brood into Royal Ruckus will hopefully keep the bees busy tending to brood buying us some time while they accepted the Yellow Lady.

The time had come. We took our queen cage out of the plastic container and shook off the travel attendants that were clinging to the cage. The queen supplier doesn't add attendants into the actual queen cage which is what we are used to. He claims you get quicker better acceptance and that the workers will feed her though the screen. O.K. but I would have preferred a few inside with her just in case. We took great care to make sure the cage was secured between two frames, using a thin metal holder to secure it. This cage isn't going to fall. Been there, done that, don't need to repeat that lesson!

We added syrup and closed up the hive. Mission accomplished. We will return on Friday to release her. Paula and I were both reassured that we had made the right decision about the original queen. After seeing how active the Yellow Lady was in her cage there is no doubt the other queen was very sick. It made both of feel a lot better to see this healthy queen. I'd like to think I might start sleeping better but we still have a few hurdles. We need to safely release her and then check for queen acceptance. If you are of the praying sort please have at it! In the mean time I am starting a study of bee biology, reviewing  stages of development and hoping to integrate that into my hive inspections this summer.

More Queen Drama at The Flight of The Turquoise Bee Apiary

We are off to quite a start at The Flight of The Turquoise Bee Apiary. Both Royal Ruckus and The Drone Den have given us major queen scares and for the moment Royal Ruckus is queen-less. I am loosing sleep and making more than one visit to the bee yard on any given day. Our apiary is an hour away so visiting twice a day is a time consuming.

Royal Ruckus’s queen never made it out of her cage. Her attendants got out and somehow the bees lost interest in the caged queen. We think she got sick from not being fed and attended to. When we released her ourselves she was lethargic and sauntering around on the floor of the hive. We should of known better and killed her on the spot but we left her, hoping a little syrup would remedy the situation. The idea of killing a queen is just beyond my scope and I really didn’t want to be faced with it.

I know, I didn’t really want so many hives anyway. So why not just give in to the demise and divide the workers among the other colonies to avoid a total loss.  For starters I have become a honey whore. More importantly I have this nagging over ridding since of responsibility about the bees compelling me to do anything within my power to salvage tricky situations like this one.  I am not opposed to killing bugs in general especially those who take up house in my home. Find me a box elder crawling in my bed, you bet I’ll kill it, no remorse. But the bees are different, they aren’t in my house and if you ask me they should be protected. Not to mention I am raising bees here now.

We got major jitters about her as soon as we left the bee yard. After consulting my trusty mentor we knew we had to return and get her out of the hive. Leaving her in there was simply not an option. A sick queen just leads to a hive of trouble. Even if she made a recovery it was clear the workers had not accepted her and it would be just a matter of time before the girls would revolt trying any number of tactics to deal with her. They might kill her. If she actually started laying They might attempt a supersedure or they might let her march on laying in a sloppy haphazard manner causing a failure to thrive like condition in the hive. She had to go.

So we went back that same day in the early evening. We spent the time in the car driving down giving ourselves a pep talk. Who could kill her?  I said, “I can do this Paula, no problem.” Initially we considered just having Paula go down herself but in the end it was good we were both there.  We started going through the hive frame-by-frame, one, two, three, no queen. I thought I saw her on the bottom of the hive but as it turned out I killed a worker by mistake. I pulled out the forth frame and Paula said, “Whoa look at that big ball of bees, I bet she’s in there and they are balling her.”

Queen Balling is an occurrence in certain circumstances in which worker bees crowd around and enclose the queen in a really tight ball. It can happen if they are trying to protect her, when the hive is stressed for some reason or if the bees think something is not right with her and they are trying to kill her. Paula reached in with her fingers to break up the ball and heard a loud hissing. We got her out and into her smaller cage that we had saved with a single attendant. She was still alive but very distressed. Unsure what to do we sat and watched her for some time. We removed the attendant so we could get a better look at her. Paula wanted to bring her home, so did I. We could study here. You know weird geeky bee stuff. But alas we don’t have microscopes, no point in that academic endeavor. We had more than a fleeting moment of maybe she’s fine; she seemed to be trying to eat her way through the marshmallow we plugged in the cage opening. We went back to the hive to see about putting her back in.  The bees had no interest in her, we got her onto a frame and she didn’t move. Finally we both knew it was time. Paula pulled her off the frame and killed her. We put her back in her cage; maybe we could still take her home and study her. In the end Paula decided it would be best to bury her so we did and Paula being a real legitimate minister and all held a little graveside service.

We have a new queen, we pick her up Monday, long enough for the girls to realize they are queen-less but hopefully not long enough to provoke them to start laying. You see when workers lay they only lay unfertilized eggs which leads to a drone den and eventually without any reproductive capability the hive dies. Been there, done that and passed the test. We don't need to repeat that lesson.

I try and think about the silver linings. We are learning a great deal. We are able to recognize situations that would eventually become catastrophic early enough to intervene and potentially remedy. I don’t imagine will forget how hard this one was for a long time, if ever. I hope to never be faced with killing a queen again. 

Flight of The Turquoise Bee Expansion

The Flight of The Turquoise Bee Apiary is expanding! I never imagined three years ago when I embarked on this hobby that I would be managing more than a hive or two. I remember with perfect clarity our first summer, packaging two hives, one of them went queen-less the day we set up the hives. It was a good lesson and we learned a great deal in the first few weeks watching that hive dwindle away. It was also a major disappointment. All was tempered by the end of that summer when we harvested two and a half gallons of honey in late August.

We attempted to over-winter that single colony our first year but alas they did not survive. I will admit, we had been greedy, taking too much honey for ourselves leaving precious little for the bees to survive over the winter.

That spring we hived two new packages with marked queens. It was a bittersweet season. We honed in on our skills, easily determining our hives were queen-right, moving frames around to make the most of the bee space, moving brood around to bolster a weaker colony and discovering a late summer swarm and a hive that re-queened itself right under our nose without us noticing! Totally excited about the harvesting prospects we purchased an extractor. But the wet spring worked against us and we didn’t even have enough frames of extractable honey to use the extractor. We ended up with a scant gallon of honey.

 Hoping for the best and expecting nothing we put the bees to bed for the winter the end of October. In December we ordered two new packages of bees, assuming they would never make it. We had left plenty of honey in one hive but the other, well it spent all summer building crazy comb all over the darn place and not a lick of honey. January and February brought us several 60-degree days and a chance to check the bees. Much to our dismay both hives were thriving. Suddenly I started to panic. Two surviving hives and two packages on the way could mean as many as six hives.

6 hives? How is that possible? How will we keep them straight? How will we have time to manage them? Will there be enough pollen, nectar and water for all those colonies? It all seems so overwhelming and then there is this little nagging reason I went into beekeeping to begin with that isn’t working out the way I had hopped.

I have written about my visceral desire to keep bees before. My lofty ideas about the bees and me and some kind of spiritual connection I hoped for. I came to beekeeping with a need to be tamed, with the idea that the bees would empower me to be more mindful, more deliberate, contemplative. My work life is intense, managing critically ill children in the hospital. Families turn to me in their most vulnerable moments. It spends me to no end. I hoped beekeeping would temper my hyperactive mind and spirit. Take me away from the drama of my work.

It could not be more to the contrary. I am jazzed beyond measure about the bees. I am easily worked up to a frenzy fretting about getting stung. I am totally preoccupied with getting honey. I come by it honestly. I am easily excitable and willing to concede that little tempers me. Having sustained about 20 stings, all above the shoulders last August while harvesting, rendered me scared silly.  For nearly two weeks I looked like National Geographic’s next photo op. Now I want nothing more than enough honey to host a honey harvesting party. When the post office called Monday morning to say our bees had arrive my heart started to race and flutter. I was giddy with excitement.

I have no idea what the summer will bring. We held a contest to name our hives so we can keep them straight. The parent hive is The Turquoise Bee after the Sixth Dalai Lama Tsangyang Gyatso who was a special Dalai Lama and a legend, leaving scores of poetry behind in which he refers to himself at the Turquoise Bee. That hive is full of a thriving colony of bees, the queen now a year old. We go into the summer with high expectations of this hive which is  full of drawn comb, a sturdy stock and an experienced queen. This hive should be strong enough to divide which means moving half the bees to a new hive and introducing a new queen. Mr. Abbott’s Little Bee will home the offspring of The Turquoise Bee and their new queen.

 Crazy comb made it through the winter although she is a much weaker colony. We will have to watch her closely and decide her fate. Her bees were troublesome last year building that crazy comb in every nook and cranny inside the hive. A colossal waste time and energy and they never gathered enough nectar to come up with a lick of honey. But here they are in all their glory. We may designate that hive to a number of natural and organic beekeeping methods we’d like to try.

Yesterday we packaged two newcomers. Colleen’s Royal Ruckus, a fitting name in honor of my oldest and dearest friend and newbie beekeeper and Katrina’s Drone Den. These two new colonies like their sister’s hale from Kentucky. They are well tempered and hopefully a hard working lot. Hiving these two packages proved to be a challenge and sent us on an emotional roller coaster!

We got Colleen’s Royal Ruckus in without a hitch, one down one to go. I still find hiving to be intimidating, daunting and tricky. You see there is that little queen in cage and she has to find her way into the hive. When we hived our two packages the first year one of our queens took flight. Hoping she might return we waited to long and ended up with a queen-less drone den. To this day I worry about the queen flying away while trying to get her into the hive.  Back to getting Drone Den hived. We got organized, Colleen and Paula opened the package of bees and Colleen pulled out the queen cage. “Hey you got some dead bees here.” I heard her say. I wasn’t alarmed we always have a pile of dead bees in the bottom of the package. I didn’t realize she was talking about the queen cage. Paula and I inspected the cage, sure enough total carnage the queen and all of her attendants. 

Every beekeeper will tell you being without a queen for even a fleeting moment is simply devastating! I quickly called the supplier to secure another queen; she would be there by Thursday, we could go ahead and get the rest of the bees, about 7000 of them into the hive. Paula shook them into the hive box and I peered down into the box. I could hardly believe what I was seeing crawling among the girls. A second beautiful queen, boldly marked and easily spotted. How could this bee? It was as though we had won the lottery. The likelihood of two queens in one package, well its no wonder one was dead. You see bees won’t accept more than one queen so if for any reason there are two they will kill one of the queens, stinging them with their toxic venom.

We are off and running with four hives, fingers crossed and a summer before us. I may not be learning how to settle down and quiet myself but I sure love the bees. I love the smell of the smoker, watching the bees dance to communicate, and seeing the large sacs of pollen the girls are hauling into their hives. I love the queen hunt, the time with my beekeeping partner Paula and watching my oldest friend Colleen mingle with the bees. Occasionally I get overwhelmed about being responsible for all these bees and screwing up but then I remember how rewarding it all is and that in some small way we are giving back to the planet Earth and I settle down.

Chocolate Bundt Cake

Tina is the baker in our house. I cook. There is a difference. Recently Tina has made at least two chocolate bundt cakes with wheat flour and it was getting to bug me. I have a very fond memory of something my Mother made when we were growing up, tunnel of fudge bundt cake. I loved it. I am really more of a savory person and not drawn to sweets or chocolate much but those cakes Tina was making and that childhood memory were causing me to crave chocolate cake. So when my friend Shauna, AKA The Gluten Free Girl posted a recipe for chocolate bundt cake yesterday I said to myself, I am going to make this!

I have been working hard this week. Drilling, nailing, painting (o.k. so that is really what Tina's been doing for me) but I have been working to the bone getting The Flight of The Turquoise Bee Apiary set up for three new hives. Our two existing hives overwintered successfully and we are getting two new packages of bees on Monday so there was much to be done. Today I finished painting and priming, I did about five loads of laundry, several last minute errands, made a pot of soup for the weekend and grilled burgers for dinner. I needed a treat after all that and Tina was game for a cooking project. I ran to the store to get teff flour which we were out of and a few other things and came home to to preform my duties as Tina's sous chef.

It was still slightly warmish when we cut it. I enjoyed two pieces, each with a dollop of ice cream. Tina brave it and had a piece too and rated it a 9 for GF cake. She has a very discerning palette and I think 9 is the highest she has ever rated a GF baked good. As for myself, I loved it. It was the perfect treat at the end of a long week of work. I so wish I had company coming over, I wouldn't hesitate to serve this to anyone. I am giving some thought to bringing the rest of it to work tomorrow since Tina is headed to CA for some sabbatical research work and I don't want to be home alone with an entire chocolate bundt cake. You can find the recipe over at Gluten-Free Girl: http://glutenfreegirl.com/ . I dusted the cake with powdered sugar and we'd had a jar of Tina's famous hot fudge sauce I would have drizzled that on top as well. This is a winner. Thanks Sauna!