Goodbye, Queen of Sheba (again)

As I watered my garden this evening, I noticed the first peanuts popping through the soil. For some reason, I wasn't expecting the peanut part to come up, but there they were, with their little split skins, pushing to the light.

I still have my least favorite garlic in the ground, the Persian Star I planted as an afterthought. It's not bad garlic—actually quite tasty, almost sweet—but it had smaller cloves than the other hardnecks I planted, and the cloves did not want to separate from their heads, which made planting a challenge. I pull a few more bulbs every day, but they seem pathetically small to me, and although about half are wilting in the sixth leaf down from the top (the preferred method for guaranteeing they are ready, but not over ready), I think I'll leave them longer. I have nothing new to put in their beds, anyway, so I'm not in a hurry.

After I moved the sheep, I figured I should check on my bees. I haven't peeked at them since Monday, and I have enjoyed the 48 hour respite from the constant care they had apparently needed. All was ominously quiet, and so I wasn't terribly surprised when I looked underneath the Queen of Sheba hive to find absolutely no one home.

Feeling reckless, I opened the Queen Esther hive, too. A few bees yet live, and the queen cell had a dark spot, which makes me wonder if a new queen will soon emerge. Even should she be healthy at emergence, there are not enough bees to support her through the next six to nine weeks, until her babies would hatch. There's a strange mix of excitement and sorrow: the queen is coming! The queen is doomed.

I packed away my bee veil for the year. I took my waterproof clothes (slightly shredded by the beehives' metal roofs, drat!) and returned them to their proper drawer.

The end of my bee adventure, at least for this year. I confess I felt a rising elation as the afternoon wore on: I don't have to feed these bees this fall. I don't have to worry about whether they will starve over the winter. I don't need to figure out how to retrofit their hive with a mouse guard or a bottom insulating board, so they'll be warm in winter (which would be especially a challenge with living bees still ensconced.

I would like to know why the Queen of Sheba departed. I probably should have left her alone on Monday, rather than trying, for the second day in a row, to donate more comb, or to make sure she was laying appropriately. I did notice a wasp fly in as I was closing the lid. Did a single wasp scare her away? Was she bitter that the easy sugar water feedings diminished? Or irritated that I opened the lid again?

Whatever her reason, she left her brood, some with abortive hatchings, with eyes and antennae sticking out, and no energy or support to come out the rest of the way.

I've spent a little more time than usual with our beautiful cows. Because we move them once or twice a day, they grow more tame all the time, and I can pat their backs and scratch their tale-tops.

I have wondered how to entice them to come to me. Most people use a little grain, but I have read that even a smidgen will destroy the Conjugated Linoleic Acid (CLA) for a month or more. And since CLA is the most potent cancer-fighting food (more than all the other famed antioxidants in the news these days: more than blueberries, acai, mangosteen, pomegranate; this according to a lecture by Jerry Brunetti), I am hyper-vigilant about keeping my cows from grain.

But without grain, how to entice them? I read the answer yesterday: molasses. I realized about a year ago that not all molasses comes in small jars for baking. Agricultural molasses comes in flakes, in 50 pound sacks. We have some, but I wasn't quite sure how to go about enticing a 1000 pound animal, nor what to do with the animal once I enticed it, so I will try that another day.

A final note, completely unrelated to anything on the farm. Really only for the females reading this. Ladies, if you are still using disposable feminine products, you should consider other options. I have heard from numerous women that once they stop the disposables, with their weird chemicals (on such a delicate part of the anatomy, too!), all monthly cramping stops, and even the flow diminishes. You can find sources online for cloth pads, and, my personal preference, the Diva cup. Save money, support the environment, and soothe your body. And enough about that.