boissonsaumiel

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bumbled be thy bees

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Thinking of that poignant xkcd about the bee whose exists is only known through the flower that mimicked it, and the flower itself is now also going extinct.

“The only memory of the bee is a painting made by a dying flower.”

Thinking about how it’s actually a little less poignant when you consider that perhaps the reason that bee went extinct in the first place is it was too busy “pollinating”the sexy mimic flower to have actual sex.

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Iridescent Bee Mugs // Celtic Carrot

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@fuckyeahchinesefashion @rainyside while there are companies that manufacture artificial honeycomb, the purpose isn't to trick customers into buying fake honey. The purpose is actually to increase the production of real honey. The idea is that if bees are provided with pre-made combs, the colony can spend less time and energy being comb architects and more time producing honey.

The bees are still gathering nectar from real flowers and regurgitating it into the comb, so the resulting honey still contains real pollen and real bee digestive enzymes. The difference is that the bees didn't build the storage container the honey ends up in.

Here's a company that makes artificial honeycomb. As you can see, they're marketing them to beekeepers to use in their apiaries:

OP cuts open honeycombs for stress relief (people in the comments are arguing it's probably not real honeycombs. A beekeeper blogger said the comb looks way too perfect, too even in color and texture, totally man-made.)

[boissonsaumiel]

OP cuts open honeycombs for stress relief (people in the comments are arguing it's probably not real honeycombs. A beekeeper blogger said the comb looks way too perfect, too even in color and texture, totally man-made.)

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The flower meads are a go!

Finally found a use for those old crystal geyser gallon jugs I never threw away. I do actually have rubber stoppers that fit in these (size 7.5) so I will be putting in airlocks (and adding a bit more water) later, when fermentation starts to slow down around day 4 or 5. I always do open fermentation for the first few days to avoid having to use a blowoff tube.

Using Lalvin k1v1116 yeast. The honey brand is Raw Rex. They have a booth at a local Farmer's Market.

Planning a new botanical mead!

I’m also doing a pineappleweed blossom one.

I’ll be using the cotton flower honey I bought a few months ago.

[boissonsaumiel]

Planning a new botanical mead!

I’m also doing a pineappleweed blossom one.

I’ll be using the cotton flower honey I bought a few months ago.

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wiggles my ass at you bug style

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Bee and Honeycomb windows.

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I got a new job in December and used my shiny new paychecks to buy, among other things, 21lbs honey, 5lb glutinous black rice and a very nice 7L K&K Keramik fermentation crock (advertised as a sauerkraut crock, but I intend to use it to make rice wine). I also got more Fermaid-O yeast nutrients, argon wine preserver, and osmanthus blossoms for flavoring.

I'm currently brewing two 1gal batches of coriander blossom honey mead, one traditional, one with hōjicha tea. I have enough honey to make another 2gal carrot blossom honey mead, 2gal cotton blossom honey and 2 gal high elevation Sierra Wildflower honey, which is my favorite wildflower honey and finally came back in stock for the first time in nearly a year. I believe the wildfires last year negatively impacted the supply.

I don't intend to buy honey again for another year and a half at least. Good thing it doesn't spoil.

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Dad keeps sharing random facts about bees

To treat common mites, beekeepers coat their bees in powdered sugar. This kills the mites but doesn’t hurt the bees, and they will clean it off anyway. It does, however, make them look like tiny bee ghosts until they groom themselves.

Skunks are natural predators of bees. They will grab a mouthful of bees and suck the juices out before spitting out the bees’ carcasses. To keep the skunks from doing this, beekeepers will build their hives high enough that the skunks have to reach their front paws up to get to the hives. This way, their bellies are exposed and the bees are able to fight back and sting them. Either way, bees die. 

Bees are curious, and they may follow you around for a while just to see what you’re doing. Most bees will trail you for a yard or two, but one breed will stalk you for up to half a mile.

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Someone: how have you been doing?

Me, hanging on by a thread:

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Tasted my mangrove honey pu'er tea mead that I started in late August today. It's at that stage where it's pleasant but lacks the complexity that comes with aging. It's also petillent so I am letting the other half of the glass I poured sit and go flat before drinking the rest of it to get a clearer idea of what it tastes like.

I want to say the pu-er added something almost fruity to the flavor profile.

The unflavored mangrove mead I started in early July has a mildly savory/salty flavor profile that I was warned it might have. I'm not sure I like it dry at least at this point in aging, but it is very nice when mildly sweetened with a bit of maple syrup.

I think I'm going to order some carrot blossom and coriander blossom honey next.

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Ayoo just to preempt the inevitable dumb takes we’re about to start seeing;

I am PRO-WOOL

I am PRO-LEATHER

I am PRO-BEES

Fuck the idea of replacing durable, sustainable animal products with cheap, flimsy plastic that doesn’t bio-degrade. Agave nectar and other artificial sweeteners are expensive, labor-intensive, and destroy the environment to be farmed.

Do not buy into pernicious marketing campaigns pushed by dickhead organizations trying to stay relevant, like PETA.

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This is a water-seal stoneware crock. The design is ancient.

It is, essentially, a large ceramic vessel that you put vegetables and sometimes brine into. To prevent spoilage, you place those ceramic weights on top of whatever food is in the crock, and that keeps them weighted down, below the level of the water. Because fermentation creates gases, most crocks have a "water groove" in them. The lid sits in the groove, which allows air to escape but not come in. Because fermentation creates gas, the interior of the crock is positive-pressure, and because the gas created is almost entirely carbon dioxide, it's a low-oxygen environment that additionally helps prevent spoilage.

And all this would be pointless without lactobacillus, the bacteria that chomp down on the vegetables you put into the crock. They're anaerobic, which means totally fine without oxygen, and they produce an environment that's inhospitable to most other organisms. The main things they produce are CO2, which means no oxygen for other bacteria, and lactic acid, which makes the fermented thing sour and also decreases the pH low enough that many other bacteria cannot survive. They tolerate high levels of salt, which kill yet more competitor bacteria. It ends up being a really really good way to keep food from going off.

Our ancestors figured this out thousands of years ago without knowing what bacteria were. This general ceramic design has been in use around the world in virtually every place that had ceramics, salt, and too much cabbage or cucumbers that was going to rot if they didn't do something about it. It's thousands of years old, so old that it gets hard to interpret the evidence of the ceramics.

And I have crocks like this in my kitchen, where I make my own ferments, and I always think about how beautiful and elegant it all is, and how this was probably invented hundreds of times as people converged on something that Just Works.

(I do have pH testing strips though.)