Your Home Kitchen Garden

Archive for March, 2010

I rescued beehives from the mess in my dad’s barn and stacked them in the mess in my garage. Then my enthusiasm plummeted. My wife wants the hives gone; minimally, I’ll move them out of the garage, but I hope to have at least one ready for occupancy by mid-April.

Your Home Kitchen Garden blog has suffered from significant neglect for many months. This is partly because the blog is about growing food—something I pretty much don’t do during the winter. On the other hand, last summer and fall I wandered the neighborhoods of Lewisburg and surrounds, photographing kitchen gardens that I figured to share with readers during the cold months… and then I didn’t share them.

Spring is upon us in hardiness zone 5b, and I’ve started excavating rows in my home kitchen garden for cool-weather crops. This means there’s something else I didn’t accomplish during the non-gardening winter: I didn’t get my behives in order.

The Beehive Story

Last spring, I got very excited to revisit beekeeping. My dad had managed honey bees, and I had participated. He offered up his old gear, and I made a trip to the old family farm to bring home some beehives. I blogged about these experiences in several posts:

Home Kitchen Garden Beekeepers

Have You Bought a Beehive?

Install Bees in Your Home Kitchen Garden

Scrounging Beehive for my Home Kitchen Garden

As excited as I was to start bees, my enthusiasm took a nosedive when I saw the condition of my dad’s old gear: mouse nests, dried up wax, broken frames, missing components (a bee bonnet, gloves, and a smoker are crucial for me as I swell up like a bo-bo doll when I get stung)… I needed a focused weekend to bring dad’s old gear back to life.

The greatest busy-work in reviving my ancient beehives will be in scraping dried-up was from these wooden frames, replacing broken parts, and mounting sheets of beeswax on the frames. A hive box, or “super,” hold nine or ten frames, depending on how you pack them in.

So, weekends passed and I made no progress on the beehives, and pretty soon it was too late in the season to start a hive… and that’s where things stand. I’ve a large stack of wife-annoying gear in the garage, and I must reserve a day to scrape wax, repair frames, mount beeswax foundation, and assemble a hive body and a super.

My Beekeeping Hope

Last year I approached beekeeping with great enthusiasm… but it was already kind of late in the season before I realized fully the challenges I’d face. This year my enthusiasm is back and my eyes are wide open. At the very least I’ll move the beehive components out of the garage.

Still, I have every intention of setting up a hive body in April so it’s ready for occupation in May or June. I’ll evaluate whether I can afford to buy a package of bees with a queen. If bees are too pricey, I’ll set some bait honey in my hive and hope to capture a swarm.

However my beekeeping efforts play out this season, I’ll report here.

Become a Beekeeper

My renewed intent brings me to re-raise the call: If you have a garden and a little extra space, please consider seriously starting your own bees. With Colony Collapse Disorder still puzzling specialists, every new hive provides a smidge of added hope that our honeybee population remains vital.

I’ll provide encouragement… and I’ll try not to let down the honeybees this year. I hope you’ll come along for the ride.

Technorati Tags: beehive, beekeeping, bees, honey bees

Katie Swanberg is very ill. This may mean nothing to visitors to Your Home Kitchen Garden, but it has affected me profoundly. I’ve known Katie since about June of 2009… but to say “known” seems like exaggeration. We started following each other on Twitter back then, so I’ve seen her tweets, grazed her blog, and flipped through her photos on www.flickr.com.

I’ve probably exchanged no more than a dozen tweets with Katie, yet because of the overlap in our social networking activities, she seems very familiar. Goodness, from day-to-day, I learn more about Katie than I do about my golf and poker buddies who I see only once a month (none of them are on Twitter, and none of them blog).

Knowing Katie

I know nothing about Katie that anyone couldn’t learn in about an hour of poking around online. She is going through a divorce and embracing independence. I applauded her New Year’s post (here) which she summarized with this observation:

About a week ago, Katie, who goes by @GardenPunk on twitter, tweeted to no one in particular that she had just chowed too many Girl Scout cookies. I flippantly responded something about liking her more for her confession; I’m sure I have many kindred spirits who open a sleeve of those devil-disks and devour its contents in minutes.

A few days after those tweets, @GardenPunk tweeted dismay over a sudden onset of flu-like symptoms. About a day later, the gardening social network changed.

I’m making a symbolic gesture in support of Katie Swanberg: I’m growing a beard. From now until we see Katie return to Twitter, my Twitter avatar will be full-frontal and bearded. The beard gets pretty uncomfortable in warm weather, so I’m counting on Katie to recover quickly. Find me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/cityslipper

Katie’s Illness

Katie’s sister and other Twitterers close to Katie reported that Katie had been hospitalized. Eventually, we learned that Katie had spinal meningitis, and the earliest prognosis was dire: she had been given a 20% chance of survival. I was astonished at how intensely this information affected me.

Buzz about Katie spread rapidly through the social network, and the visitors’ page her sister created has gotten thousands of hits. The tenor of conversations on the network has changed, and it’s clear that many people who know Katie only through her web presence have been affected as I have.

While Katie is far from healthy, reports continue to be as good as they get for this type of medical condition. Katie’s sister assures us that the doctor in charge is one of the best. Katie’s social network continues its vigil: we miss Katie’s tweets, and we are anxious for her return to Twitter and her blog.

As I said: I was astonished at how intensely Katie’s illness has affected me. I spend a lot of energy trying to convince businesses to adopt social networking for marketing and customer-relations. While I’m often frustrated by the resistance to social media, I’d never encountered the objection I can now voice with authority: Social networking can hurt.

Hang in there, Katie.

Technorati Tags: friends, social network