Insect predators often hang around the bee hive and catch a hapless worker going about her honey collecting business. Here a praying mantis (Mantodea) drops in for an afternoon bee snack without being asked to tea. The mantis methodically munched away on the bee body, likely enjoying a sweet treat when it reached the bee’s honey stomach.
Another bee snacker at the hive was a Wheel bug (Arilus cristatus). The bees ignored it as it moved about on the front ledge of the hive bottom board. Eventually it pounced and extended its sturdy beak down into the bees interior.
Then there are those pest that come to “tea” at the hive and
never leave. The Varroa Mite (Varroa
destructor). It is a parasitic pest that feeds and reproduces in the cell
of a developing bee. The mother (Foundress) mite enters the pupa cell just
before it is capped. It then starts laying eggs, with the first egg laid being
a male. Subsequent eggs are female who all then mate with their brother mite.
When the bee emerges from the cell, all these fertilized
mites become foundresses and quickly cause a population explosion. If the mites
are not controlled with mite treatments, they will decimate a hive by spreading
diseases and viruses such as DWV (Deformed Wing Virus).
To estimate the number of mites in a hive, a few bees can be rolled in powdered sugar to knock off the attached mites. Above are mites on a paper plate after a sugar roll and the other is a close up of three mites.
The moral to this story is to be careful who you invite to afternoon tea!
The homespun Sunflower is the flower that heralds summer’s tumble into fall and is a pleasing site in the landscape. The nectar of Sunflowers and Goldenrod are some of the last floral sources for the honey bee to collect before the onset of the barren winter months.
Black-eyed Susan and Goldenrod both in the Sunflower family of Asteraceae
Our Blooming tea for the month of September, bloomed with the yellow sunlight of sunflowers but this one also included tiny pink rosebuds. The flavor and scent was definitely a bold floral rose, encompassed in a green tea liquor.
“And the
yellow sunflower by the brook, in autumn beauty stood.” ― William Cullen Bryant, American poet 1800’s
I recently met an intriguing and enthusiastic young man, Nishchal Banskota, at the Midwest Tea Festival in Kansas City Mo. He is the creator of Nepal Tea LLC, a social business venture to promote Nepal’s first certified organic tea from Kanchanjanga Tea Estate and Research Center (KTE-RC). His father established the tea estate in eastern Nepal in the 1980’s. It consists of about 100 farmers who pool their marginal land holdings to create 235 acres for tea production.
KTE-RC has several amazing projects to help raise their farmers standard of living such as providing housing for the full time farmers as well as subsidized food so the farmers can keep a greater portion of their earnings. They also provide schooling scholarships for the children. Their Cow Bank Project provides an initial cow to local farmers who can then generate extra income through the sale of the cow’s milk and selling the cow’s dung to Kanchanjangha Tea Estate to be used as organic fertilizer for the tea bushes.
You can read the full story of Nishchal and his family at the website www.nepalteallc.com
The tea I purchased from Nepal Tea was Shangri-La Oolong. To my palate, this oolong is smooth and slightly sweet with mild astringency. I must confess, however, that I was seduced to buy this tea because of its packaging. The farmers at the tea estate actually weave the two-piece baskets to hold the vacuumed packed tea. A very novel packaging idea, which I love, and another Nepal hand produced item. I am truly enjoying this tea.
While at the Tea Festival, I also purchased two enameled cast iron cups to match the red cast iron teapot I already have. The earthy red and black colors make drinking tea a serene experience.
I have been waiting over a year to attend the Midwest Tea Festival in Kansas City, Mo. It was as all about tea: teapots, tea paraphernalia, types of tea, tea education and of course tea tasting. In our welcome tote, we received coupons, tea samples and a tea-tasting cup, which was kept close at-hand both days of the festival to be ready to taste the myriad of teas presented to Festival attendees. There were over 30 venders present to offer their wares but what I found most intriguing was the tea education available through the free speakers stage and the purchased workshops.
SPEAKERS
Stacy Robertson from Tea Market, a Kansas City retail tea shop, spoke about how to find your perfect cup of tea. Because so many people come into her shop and ask, “What type of tea should I buy?” She tells us to ask ourselves two questions. “How do you want to feel?” and “What do you want to taste?” The answer will be your perfect cup of tea. She has six feeling categories and six taste profiles into which every tea falls. You might want to FEEL calm, energetic, youthful, healthy, restored, celebratory and you may want to TASTE a single leaf tea, a floral, a fruity, an earthy, spicy or a sweet tea.
Another speaker, James Orrock a graduate student of the University of Florida and owner of an online tea business, Single Origin Teas Inc., spoke about US Tea cultivation. I enjoyed his presentation but I was thrilled to find he had included in his slides a picture of honey bees pollinating tea flowers! Hopefully I can obtain these pictures and share them later.
TEA BAR
My daughter Keely attended the event with me and we were able to participate in several “Tea Bars”. This venue allows 10 people at a time to experience teas from different tea venders and hear them explain their teas.
PROFESSIONAL TEA
CUPPING
I took the opportunity to expand my tea knowledge by participating in a “Professional Cupping” workshop lead by Suzette Hammond of “Being Tea”. Each participant received a cupping set to use during the class then to take home. We were arranged in groups of four people and given four different types of teas to evaluate side by side and a perception sheet to record our impressions about the teas. We learned the proper cupping technique to steep and decant the teas that every professional tea taster uses so that evaluations are uniform.
The first round of teas was green teas and the second was black teas. Fascinating information but I must confess my tongue was very confused by the end. I will be working on my descriptive words for the tastes of teas. I do not know my “vegetal” taste descriptions or what the taste of “River Stones” might be, but I will have fun exploring this new avenue of tea tasting.
It’s finally time for the Honey Harvest! An intense time of work to transfer the golden sweetness of the comb into the bottle. Follow me as I give you a quick picture of the many steps involved in this process.
Pulling the Honey Supers
The first step is to pull the honey supers* off the hives
WITHOUT the bees. There is a variety of ways to do this but for just a few hives,
I accomplish it by pulling each individual frame and brushing the bees from
both sides of the frame with the soft bristle bee brush, and then place the bee-less
frame into another covered box. Do the math, I have four hives with a combined
total of 7 supers with 9-10 frames in each super so I must do this 70 times to
get all the frames off the hives.
Set up and Uncap
Next step is to wash, dry and set up the extracting equipment. Before uncapping, each frame of honey is cleaned of excess wax and propolis* clinging to the outside of the frames. At the uncapping tank, the wax capping that covers the honeycomb is cut off with a heated knife. The cappings fall into the tank and the honey that clings to the cappings drains into the bottom tub.
Extracting and
Filtering
To extract the honey from the comb, the frame is placed into the two-frame, hand cranked extractor. The frames must first be spun slowly so the wax foundation does not collapse under the weight. The frame is flipped to spin out the other side, then both sides are spun again very quickly to get as much honey as possible from the frames. The honey from the extractor drains into the bottling bucket by going through three sets of filters – course, medium and fine mesh – to screen out wax and any stray bee parts.
Honey Super Clean Up
All of the empty honey supers are carried back out to the
apiary and stacked so the bees have access to the frames. Within a day, they
will lick every square inch of the combs and frames until they are clean, dry
of honey, and ready to be stored away for next year.
Wax Cappings
(Wax Cappings before cleaning)
After the honey has drained from the cappings, it is filtered and added to the bottling buckets. Now the cappings can be cleaned by the bees in the same way they licked up the excess honey from the honey supers. Afterwards, the cappings are washed in plain water then melted in a double boiler or in the oven before straining the melted wax through a nylon and poured into a mold to harden.
Bottling the Honey
But we’re still not done, after the honey has set in the bottling bucket for several days to allow air bubbles and foam to rise to the top, it is bottled. From these 7 supers, I extracted about 160 pounds of honey. The buckets, which still have a residue of honey left in them, are set in the bee yard to allow the bees to lick up that little bit of honey, then EVERYTHING must be thoroughly washed and packed away for the next honey harvest. Finally, the kitchen floor must be cleaned because, even as careful as I am, that honey and wax get everywhere.
As you can see, there are MANY steps in getting the honey from the comb to the bottle but it is all worth the work when you enjoy this “Essence of Summer” on a scone during teatime.
*Terms
Propolis– Bee
keepers call it bee glue. The bees collect tree sap and bring it back to the
hive to seal up cracks
Honey Super – the
small boxes placed on top of the two brood boxes where the queen lays eggs and
the brood is raised.
What’s better than a cup of Darjeeling tea? Reading a Tea Shop Murder Mystery WHILE sipping a cup of tea. Death by Darjeeling by Laura Childs is a delightful read. Theodosia Brown, owner of the Indigo Tea Shop, is on the list of possible suspects after a prominent businessman is found to have been poisoned by drinking a cup of her Darjeeling tea. Her natural curiosity implores her to find the murderer and solve the mystery before the culprit strikes again. This easy read tantalizes the reader with incidental tea information and descriptions of the beauty and charm of the Charleston, SC Historic District.
The enchantment of this Tea Shop Mystery series is that we can enjoy a second pot of tea with another book! Now I’ll just have to see if she has any bees in her stories!
In a previous post, we learned the proper way to stir a cup of tea is with the spoon moving from the 12:00 to 6:00 o’clock positions, not in a circle. Today we will discuss what additions to tea are likely to be added. A tea served in the afternoon is usually a full bodied, unflavored black tea, which is often complemented with the addition of milk, sugar or lemon.
Let Us Begin with Milk
The first purport of milk being added to tea was in France during the 1600’s. In one of her many letters about the French court, Madame de Sevigne wrote about one of her contemporaries tea drinking habits. “Madame de la Sabliere took her tea with milk, as she told me the other day, because it was to her taste.”
Cream is never added to tea due to its heaviness, which will mask the flavor of the tea. Milk is much lighter. Etiquette declares that milk is always poured in AFTER the tea so its strength can be determined.
Apparently, there is a hot debate about milk in first or last. It has been theorized that English servants, when making their own tea, would put the milk in first to prevent their stoneware mugs from cracking from the hot water. The upper class used fine bone china and did not have to worry about cracking their drinkware thus they poured the tea first. At some point this milk in first or last became a matter of snobbish contention by upper and lower class. As to this snobbishness, the rest of us can simply furrow our brow, shrug our shoulders and say, “hmm” as we sip our tea.
Sugar
I am partial to honey as the sweetener of choice for tea but the sugar cube is always a fun way to sweeten the cup. It is usually preferred at a tea gathering for it neatness and the elegance of using the sugar tongs.
Lemon
Lemon is amenable with most black teas served for an afternoon tea. However, those who enjoy the citrus tone of an Earl Grey tea or the smokiness of a Lapsang Souchong say they are best enjoyed unadulterated. Lemon is never served in wedges but thinly sliced on a serving dish near the milk and sugar. A serving utensil should be provided, such as a lemon fork with splayed tines.
Lemon Faux Pas (a
sour experience)
Transferring the lemon slice from the cup of tea to the saucer. You will end up with your cup resting in a puddle of tea.
Using the spoon to press the lemon slice after you place it in the cup.
Asking for BOTH milk and lemon. The lemon will curdle the milk!
Disclaimer: There are no Etiquette Police, however,before you can break the rules, you have to know them first!!!
During these hot August nights, it can get mighty warm inside the hive. The bees will gather outside on their front porch to spread out and cool off just like people were want to do before air-conditioning. This is called “bee bearding” and is a normal activity for the bees.
We may not sit on our front porches anymore but we can keep cool with a cold glass of iced tea made with HONEY ICE. It will cool the tea and slowly sweeten it as it melts. During extraction of honey from the honey frames, the wax cappings that cover each cell must be cut off. Before the cappings can be melted down into bee’s wax, it must first be washed in clean water. This water is very sweet and can be frozen into honey ice for those hot summer nights!
Bees also cool the hive by fanning their wings at the hive entrance. In the picture, you can see individual bees on the lower edge of the entrance with their stinger end pointing up. These are fanning bees but there is so much congestion at the entrance, it probably isn’t doing much good.
You can make your own Honey Ice by mixing a small amount of honey into water and freezing it.
My daughter Katelynn and I enjoyed a farewell tea to celebrate her trip to Peru. She has taken a 6 month volunteer position with a non-profit organization called Seeds of Hope -Peru. She will be the International Volunteer Coordinator for the organization.
For our tea, we enjoyed the Pineapple Blooming Tea from the set she presented to me on my birthday earlier this year. This snugly wrapped bulb bloomed into a cluster of three dainty, yellow chrysanthemums sitting atop a basket of green tea leaves. The citrus tone of pineapple did emerge in our cups to transport us to our own tropical retreat. Our Kansas humid weather helped to encourage this illusion!
While in Peru, Katelynn promised to look for local Peruvian tea for me. My research finds that Peru has had tea plantations in the past but these have mostly been abandoned. There are a few small tea farmers who are trying to rekindle the trade but there are many obstacles to this endeavor. I look forward to visiting my daughter in Peru and searching out a local tea grower and hopefully a few beekeepers too. Stay tuned for those adventures.
Everyone has a favorite place to spend time; mine is in the apiary enjoying a cup of tea while my bees busily zip from flower to flower gathering nectar. This special place or “Sweet Spot” is the inspiration for the blog, “Robin Bee Tea”. Here I can share with others this unique little corner of Kansas and a good cup of tea, even if it is only through pictures and words.
For those of you who like stories, this Sweet Spot location is actually the concrete slab atop what we call a “cave”. This is an underground, rock lined room, which will remain cool in the summer. Before rural electricity, it was used to store the milk and cream from the dairy cows to keep it cool.
A cool retreat on a hot summer morning
My maternal grandmother was born in the house that once stood next to the cave. Years later, my paternal grandparents acquired the house and my father grew up on this homestead. Now I’m the 3rd generation to call it home. My husband and I built our house about 300 feet behind where the original house once stood.
I consider this Sweet Spot my outdoor breakfast nook, surrounded by a miniature cottage garden and the apiary nearby. The old walnut tree stretches out its branches to become the leafy roof of this outdoor room and perfectly shades the nook from the early morning sun. In the summer, I look forward to spending time here each morning.
This morning, the tea I enjoyed at the Sweet Spot was Mandarin Silk, an oolong Tea from Art of Tea which is perfect for supping among the flowers. The Taiwanese oolong is blended with marigold petals and Lemon Myrtle, a flowering evergreen plant found in central and south eastern Australia. The scent from the open tea tin promises, and delivers, delights for the tea sipper.
A honey bee getting her tea
7 honey supers on this hive!
Thanks for sharing my Sweet Spot
and enjoying a cup of tea with the bees and me.
Robin Bee Tea 