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It seems the honey worked well as the rooting medium I talked about earlier. It feels as if it is rooting and we have a bloom!
And look to the right. I found an European Ginger plant at a garden club sale. Anyone want to tell me about the care, growing and uses of this plant, I would appreciate it:)
Last night we had a joint birthday party for my daughter Michelle, whose birthday was Saturday, and my grandson Breven, whose birthday was yesterday. He turned 11. Happy Birthday Breven! I love you! Sorry the pictures didn’t turn out too good:(
I made Michelle’s cake in the shape of a daisy, her favorite flower
Last night my husband Gerald brought me home flowers from a Catalpa tree! Aren’t they gorgeous? And heavenly scented! How sweet he is!
And today, I got a phone call about another swarm. This gentleman took my camera and took some pictures of me catching it! Gerald was home so he helped me by bringing the big ladder and steadying it for me
And my hubby helping me! Glad he held the ladder as it was the tall one!
When I got the call to retrieve this swarm, I went to the bee house to get my equipment together and I had noticed that the 2nd swarm I caught, hive looked very quiet, so I suited up and checked and sure enough, they had left! Guess they weren’t happy at Comfrey Cottages! lol! Worked out fine though, as I just hived this one in their box. Hopefully they will like it here. The first swarm is still industrious and seems quite settled, and Eric says the third swarm we hived seems happy at his house. Gotta run now. Someone called about another swarm while I was creating this post!
Herbal and Honey Hugs to all who visit Comfrey Cottages xxx
Thirty three years ago, I gave birth to the most beautiful baby girl! Today my brother Eric and I took her to Her Majesty’s English Tea Room at Fairchild’s in Dunlap, Illinois, to celebrate her birthday.
Not only is it a delightful tea room, but it also is a beautiful store to shop at, with many wonderful things and darling decorations. This was a taxi and one of the teas party’s they offer, can actually be served in the taxi! We are considering that for Michelle’s birthday next year. More pictures of the taxi…
Eric had a dream come true, and got to pose with Prince William and Kate.. (look at that adorable little flower fairy apron in the foreground!)
The tea, itself, was delicious and the presentation was gracious and elegant. Michelle and I had lovely tiara’s and Eric had a coronet.
At the end of our wonderful tea, Michelle was presented with a meringue cake and a little singing bear:)
Happy Birthday Michelle! I love you so very much!
We also stopped at a plant nursery and saw some gorgeous things and sweet fairy gardens, but I will save those for a different post and share about the swarm instead! We had no sooner than got home and I got a call to come get a swarm. I called Eric, who is crazy and helped catch this swarm in his flip flops, shorts and sleeveless shirt, (see I have been telling you swarms are gentle!). The hive had been in this guys tree but he had thrown firecrackers and I suspect other things from the amount of injured bees on the ground when we got there. Anyway, the bees had came and settled on his table umbrella and it took us awhile to figure out the queen was on the inside of the umbrella!
When we got the hive to Eric’s house and reopened it to put in the rest of the frames, the bees were making a bridge between the frames we had in there. I thought you might enjoy seeing this phenomenon.
Eric and the new hive!!
Herbal and Honey Hugs to all who visit Comfrey Cottages xx
I am following my dear friend Lucinda’s instruction for making this rose cream. I decided an infused herbal oil would be nicest. I used the double infusion method. First I put a generous amount of dried fragrant rose petals in the top pot of the double boiler, poured sweet almond oil over it to cover, lidded it and let it slow simmer over a flame for two hours. I strained this, and then added the rose infused oil back into the pot, more dried rose petals, and again, slow simmered it, lidded, for another two hours. Strained, and now I have a nice, fragrant, double infused rose sweet almond oil. Please refer to Lucinda’s post for complete instructions, I will just show you pictures of mine and give you the proportions I used :)
Melting beeswax and oils together. I used 6 ounces of double rose infused sweet almond oil, 3 ounces of coconut oil and 3 tablespoons of melted beeswax.
and pour them into my blender
I allowed them to cool till they began to solidify
then the blender is turned on slow blend and the floral water and glycerin is dribbled in and it is all blended gently. I used 8 and 1/2 ounces of rosewater, 1 tablespoon of glycerin, and 3 drops of Rose Otto that dear Lucinda had shared with me:) I didn’t add more as the type of rose water I used is very, very fragrant, as was the double rose infused sweet almond oil.
This recipe made 4 6oz jars of luscious rose cream:) Heavenly!
Now, my daughter had came over for lunch before I started the rose cream project. While she was in the back yard giving our dog Thor a treat, she saw a stray cat sitting outside Thor’s enclosure right next to Max the Duck! When she spoke to the cat, it ran though. While I was waiting for the oils in the blender to cool, I looked out the window and saw the cat on on patio. It ran when I went outside, but came back to eat when I put out food. Must be spring, we always find stray kitties in the spring:(
I took this picture through the window. We will see if I can gentle him/her down then go about trying to find out if it is a lost kitty or one who needs a home… sigh
I was just getting ready to try out my new cream when the phone rang. Someone had a swarm of bees they wanted removed! So off I went! This was a nice big swarm and very easy to remove as it was so low down on a small magnolia tree, the bottom of the swarm was on the ground.
The lady didn’t want me to cut the branch, which would have been easiest, so I slip a piece of cardboard under the swarm and then lifted the branch up, slid in an empty brood box and gave the branch a good whack so that the swarm would fall in. An easy catch!
My wonderful hubby Gerald was home when I got the hive back to my house and he hurried and put together my lid that was only partially put together! I feel like such a split personality in the spring! Should I garden, make herbal creations, wild forage, or work on bee equipment!? lol! I think I better work on more bee equipment since now I have increased from one to three hives in just a week!
My daughter Michelle and I were talking tonight that we should paint a box robin egg blue and re-hive this new swarm later in it. Then we would have pink, yellow and blue:) We are thinking it would be a fun time to have the kids paint different things on them too:)
The pink hive is the oldest hive and its boxes are more than ready for fresh paint! The yellow hive is the swarm I got last week. When I caught it, I had to put the branch it was on in the hive and so I still needed to remove that branch and insert the rest of the frames. When I opened it I found they had started building their own comb on the inner hive in that empty spot that had no frames, so I had to remove those
I just took my hive tool and gently ran it along the inner cover lid, (that is the piece with the oblong cut out hole in it), and removed the comb they had built. You can see how that comb fit right into the slot where I had left the branch and not put in frames. After removing that comb I then put in enough frames to complete the hive. This is how pretty and pure their comb looks that I removed
I then reopened the new swarm’s hive to complete putting in it’s full amount of frames
So, last weeks hive looks good and strong and has settled right in and is storing pollen and nectar and this new swarm looks very strong so fingers crossed it likes its new home too and starts building up quickly. The old pink hive is very, very strong and so I think that I might be making my first split from it soon!
To top of the day Michelle and I took a 2 1/4 mile walk around Lakeland so now I am off to get cleaned up and finally try out my new cream! :)
Honey and Herbal Hugs to all who visit Comfrey Cottages xxx
I got a phone call the other morning that made my heart sing! A man in town had a bee swarm in his yard and was asking me to come fetch it! Free bees! It is hard to see it well in this picture, but that dark spot is a the swarm!
Luckily my son Tommy was home, so he came and helped me:) And took this picture of me
Swarms are extremely gentle. They keep balled up around their queen, while scout bees fly off looking for a new home. Later, I went back to where I got this swarm and found a cluster of scouts who had returned to where there swarm had been. Imagine if you had told your family you would go off in search of a new home and when you returned, they were gone! So sad to even think about so….
I went and retrieved them and reunited them with their family:) You see the queen’s scent was still there, and they would have just stayed right there until they died! I thought these little sacred lived deserved being cared for and brought to their family:)
I have a friend named Jim, who is in my beekeeping group. He bought a package of bees and I went to help him hive them. Package are one way you can buy bees. They come in a screen box, which has a sugar water can inserted in it to keep the bees fed while in transit. The queen is in a tiny screen box inside this package. One end of her cage is plugged with a candy, that the bees will eat and eventually release her.
Jim had his beehive all put together and ready. We just removed some of the center frames and then poured the bees in, after removing the sugar feed you can see in the center of the top of the bee cage. It looks like a can of veggies or something..
This is the queen cell, Jim is holding. He used the hive tool corner to break up the candy plug just a little bit more. We hung this cell between some frames and soon the workers will have ate out the plug and released the queen
The bees that didn’t pour/shake out were left sitting right outside the entrance. It wasn’t long until they marched out and joined the rest of the hive.
We got the veg garden tilled this weekend
We garden at my nephew Scott and his wife Dawn’s house. Scott was so patient teaching Grandson’s Evan and Breven how to run the tiller
Gerald and I went to the Civic Center in Peoria to see Red Green this weekend. Visit the link if you are unfamiliar with this comedian. Gerald has been a great fan of his for years so he had a great time:)
We had one bummer this week though. We found a woodpecker in our yard that had a broken wing. We kind of guess it was probably hit by a hawk. We were going to try and heal and rehabilitate it to re-release it.. but it passed away within an hour of us finding it:( Must have been hurt worse than we could tell, although Gerald didn’t hold out good hopes for a full recovery to its wing to begin with..
On an up note…. Gerald gave Dylan his very first duck call. Dylan is always wanting me to drive Papa’s truck, as Gerald has duck calls hanging from the rearview mirror. Well, now he has his own:)
Dylan had some sort of tubing that he was forever using to try and holler at the geese in the fields on the way to school in the morning. So cute, he will roll his window down and just start blowing and blowing this homemade thing trying to get their attention. When I told Gerald, he thought it was time he had a real one:) Quite the big little man now!
We went to the river this week, and I got some of the herb gardening done, but I should save those things for another post as this one has got quite long!
Herbal and Honey Hugs to all of you who visit Comfrey Cottages xxx
And look to the right. I found an European Ginger plant at a garden club sale. Anyone want to tell me about the care, growing and uses of this plant, I would appreciate it:)
I made Michelle’s cake in the shape of a daisy, her favorite flower
Last night my husband Gerald brought me home flowers from a Catalpa tree! Aren’t they gorgeous? And heavenly scented! How sweet he is!
When I got the call to retrieve this swarm, I went to the bee house to get my equipment together and I had noticed that the 2nd swarm I caught, hive looked very quiet, so I suited up and checked and sure enough, they had left! Guess they weren’t happy at Comfrey Cottages! lol! Worked out fine though, as I just hived this one in their box. Hopefully they will like it here. The first swarm is still industrious and seems quite settled, and Eric says the third swarm we hived seems happy at his house. Gotta run now. Someone called about another swarm while I was creating this post!
