Brownie Batch #2

I cheated a bit and found a recipe that won a blue ribbon at another fair. I had high expectations; alas they were dashed. This batch tasted good, but more like a sponge cake than a brownie. The texture was rubbery.

Sooo, I am back to baking. I grabbed a new round of supplies and plan to make some changes to this recipe. I am going to add more chocolate to start with and bake it in a slightly smaller pan to make it more dense and luscious - more brownie-like.

Stay tuned...

Brownies

I am trying to make brownies with just honey as a sweetener to enter in the Spencer Fair. The fair is next weekend, so I've left it a bit late especially since I don't have a recipe that actually uses honey. My first experiment was going to be using three chocolates: unsweetened, bittersweet and cocoa. Alas, my lovely friend Andrea gently pointed out that bittersweet chocolate has sugar in it.

So in addition to switching the sugar out, I also switched out the bittersweet chocolate and substituted unsweetened.

Experiment #1 - total failure. The brownies are terrible!! They have the weirdest texture and are, believe it or not, too chocolaty.

Tomorrow will be Experiment #2 - I am going to actually change two things, which is generally one too many for most scientists, but this girl has a deadline and it is soon! I am going to jump ahead and I think this will be much closer to real brownies moist, rich and oh so sweet.

Now this is science I can love!

Good friends

I have the nicest friends!! A lovely friend of mine gave me a book called The Hive Detectives.
This is targeted to middle school aged readers but is a great book for adults. Loree, the author, visited with many beekeepers and scientists to explore colony collapse disorder.

If you open the book, the first pages show a beekeeper, Mary, who is my mentor! I have visited her beautiful purple and gray hives. Totally cool.

Good reading and I never tire of looking at beautiful bees.
:)

Honey Harvest

We harvested honey for a second time this year and got about 50lbs. It was a long day but made extra fun by my mom, my husband's mom, his grandmother, and my sister joining in on the fun. We were hoping for a larger harvest but were foiled by Joy.

Yes Joy - the queen who likes to do her own thing got on top of the queen excluder and well, did what queens do, she laid eggs. Sigh. So we took the offending excluder off.

A queen excluder is a grid with openings that are too narrow for the queen to go thru. You place it above your brood boxes, where the queen is suppose to live to keep her out of the honey boxes. Now we have learned the lesson that it can work both ways - it will keep her out of the brood boxes if she's in the honey super.

My six year old, was in the honey and wax from the first cut and declared the honey GREAT!

The New Queen

We loved all the suggestions folks came up with for the queen's name. Finally it just clicked. My six-year old came up with the new queen's name.

Daughter of Rose will be...

Ruby.

The good, the bad and the painful

First the bad.
We didn't find any young larvae in Joy's hive. We went in to give them some empty frames so she'd have room to lay eggs. We found plenty of capped brood, meaning the larvae are at least nine days old. We gave the hive a frame with young eggs (under three days) just in case. Just in case what you wonder... in case Joy is no more. They can make a new queen out of any old tiny egg. If she is there and doing well, then these eggs will be just a bit more brood - no harm done..

The good.
Sun's hive is rockin'! We took seven frames of people honey from her hive - yep you read right - PEOPLE HONEY. Whoo hoo. Sun had lots of brood and honey. We extracted honey from ten frames in total and got about three gallons. Yay!

The fabulous.
Rose's daughter is gorgeous! Yep, we actually got to see her in all her magnificence. She's a really nice size and the bees are quite plentiful in this hive despite swarming. (Which, we never did see.) I would have taken pictures, but I was too scared to remember! No name yet, but I am still taking suggestions.

The painful.
After coming in from extracting, I thought to myself that it has been over a year since I'd gotten stung. Ahhh the hubris. Sure enough, I went out to plant some basil I got at the Millbury MOMS Club Annual Banquet and a bee got caught in my hair. You can guess the rest of the story. Mike was amazing and got the stinger out super fast.

Let me know if you are interested in purchasing honey this year - we will be selling again in August! Yay bees.

Inspector's Report

We got a visit from the State Bee Inspector last week. Ken Warchol, our local inspector, must check our hives at least once per year. He checks for diseases, pests, honey, equipment, and how well you keep your bee yard.

This was a milestone year for us. We are no longer "New Beekeepers" on the inspection sheet.

He confirmed exactly what we found in Rose's (formerly Pink's) hive - they are going to swarm (if they haven't by now) and he found five capped swarm cells. This is great - there will be plenty of strong contenders for the throne.

Sun's hive is in lovely shape with lots of people honey and good stores of bee honey.

Joy's hive is getting honeybound AGAIN.

So, this was a good report. Ken kindly stopped by on his way home just to chat and have some lemonade. I learn so much from him about my hives and he is a generous teacher.

Yay bees!