Gulls and honey

 It’s a dreary, drizzly day in Northern Illinois. I’ve been working on some exciting inside tasks, such as paying bills. I had a technological breakthrough when I figured out how to print photos on my new printer. Other than that, it’s been a low-key day, a good day to sit at my desk and drink tea. To that end, I made tea with perennial Roman chamomile. I planted both annual and perennial chamomile last year. The perennial did not bloom at the first summer. It has time. The annual chamomile’s flowers made a sweet, hay-like tea, which I enjoy. It reminds me of late summer, which is nice in the winter. The perennial tea, however, is truly vile. It tastes like turpentine on the front and becomes quite bitter on the back. Perhaps it has hidden health qualities. Isn’t that what they say about stuff that tastes nasty?

For years, I have wanted to get a picture of gulls during plowing. I have often seen them as I’ve been driving, and even if I could find a place to pull over, I wouldn’t have my good camera with me. I am trying to break myself of the habit of calling these birds “seagulls”. Serious birders are quick to tell you there’s no such thing. No, these are herring gulls, very far indeed from any herring that’s not salted or pickled. According to Sibley, we are in their winter range. And they are here by the hundreds.

Finally, the farmer across the road plowed when I was home to watch. The gulls are such a hoot! They must be after worms or grubs. They line the newly-plowed rows, flying up as the tractor approaches and landing behind as it moves forward. It’s quite a spectacle.

Gulls fly up in front of the tractor and down behind it

The farmer’s behavior mystifies me. Plowing puts the field at risk for topsoil erosion from rain or wind. I suppose once upon a time, farmers could count on the ground freezing solid and being covered by snow from November to spring. Not anymore. In addition, I often see farmers, like this one, spreading pelleted fertilizer or, worse, anhydrous ammonia in the fall. Anhydrous ammonia is highly leachable. Peg says that if the soil has a lot of clay it might hold onto some of it until spring, but still—seems like a colossal waste of money, not to mention a source of nitrogen runoff to the waterways. I expect the farmer thinks he’ll be that much further ahead come spring.

Terry and I have moved the beehive to its winter location, where it will hopefully stay cold enough to keep the bees balled up in their energy-saving configuration in the hive. We snuck out one of the frames to harvest a tiny bit of honey. I took a bee class two years ago, and from what I learned there, we are doing everything wrong. We should have harvested the honey in August and fed the bees in September so they could replace it. Instead, we pulled a frame last week and haven’t fed them at all. Terry and I are like Edison and Tesla. Tesla was all for book-learning, and Edison preferred to fly by the seat of his pants. Yet Terry does have some bee experience, having worked briefly as a bee inspector in North Dakota many years ago. So, Edison-like, we just keep trying things to see if they work. If the hive lives through the winter, that will be good. If not, we buy more bees (which is not a trivial expense).

Anyway, here’s the frame as it came into the house.

A frame partially full of honey

I used a chef knife to cut off the top of the cells and flipped it over onto a half-sheet pan. First I tried Terry’s method of heating it in the oven. It’s tricky, though, because it has to be warm enough to get the honey flowing, but not so hot that the wax melts. Terry suggested 100°F. My oven cannot be set lower than 170°. I turned the oven on and off, but had little success and drawing out any honey. Finally, I put foil on top of a heating pad and plopped the frame down on that.

The fuller side is flipped down on top of the foil on top of a heating pad

A significant issue was that the heating pad turned itself off every 40 minutes. I heated it up off and on most of the day, turning it on again when I remembered. Periodically, I scraped the honey into a strainer to remove the wax bits.

Filtering the honey

The waxy bits that got caught in the strainer

In summary, it was all a giant sticky mess that yielded a bit less than six ounces of honey. Plus this morning, I cut myself cleaning the wax off my chef knife. I think I’ll file for worker’s comp. It is exceptionally excellent honey, however. I look forward to having enough to rent a centrifuge and spin it out. Perhaps next year.

Not quite 6 precious ounces of honey