Cherry Time!

At this time of year it's always interesting to see who (or what) can get to the cherries first!
We have had a few days away and not thought that there would be any cherries ripening yet. But when we walked up to check the moth trap a couple of mornings ago the birds were already feasting on the slightly under ripe cherries.

And this is the problem- the birds take them before they are ripe so picking them early means they don't ripen at all, the tree is now too big to net so it's a bit of face off!

So, over a period of a couple of days we have picked all the ripe cherries we could safely reach, leaving the others to the birds. We still rescued about 11lbs and faced the delicious task of deciding how to consume them!
Our go to recipe is always a clafoutis, a firm favourite now whenever there are cherries to be had but a more recent recipe is a delicious cake passed on from daughter Rebecca from the cookbook "Honey and Co" by Itamar Srulovich.

Cherry, Pistachio and Coconut Cake

100g sugar, plus 20g for the topping
90g light brown sugar
180g ground almonds
30g ground pistachios
45g desiccated coconut
50g self raising flour
a pinch of salt
1 tsp ground mahleb
150g melted butter
3 eggs
300g cherries
50g roughly chopped pistachios for the topping

Heat the oven to 170 degrees (fan oven).

I use an 8 inch square cake tin with a loose bottom for this but the recipe suggests a 22cm round tin.

Mahleb is the ground up kernel of a cherry and not that easy to get hold of but I used a mixture of almond extract and vanilla extract which apparently gives an acceptable alternative.

Mix all the dry ingredients in a large bowl, pour over the melted butter and mix in the eggs and extracts. Pour the mixture into the cake tin and  smooth the top.

Remove the stones from the cherries- we have a handy gadget to do this but you can just cut them and use your fingers, as there can be a fair bit of juice it's good to do this over the cake batter so the juice goes into the mix.

Put the cherries on top of the cake mix and sprinkle with the sugar and chopped pistachios.

Bake for about 40 minutes, turning it after about 20 minutes. check the mixture is golden and firm to the touch and allow to cool in the tin before removing from the tin.
I have frozen the cake in slices and it seems fine after thawing.

A delicious cake, very easy to make, that has become a favourite with us!

Shetland Bumblebee

Recently we were lucky enough to spend a week on the Shetland Isles. We had been before about 12 years ago and had a great time. This time it was slightly later in the year but we still hoped to see the birds and wildlife that the islands are famous for.
Having become more conscious of the impact farming, especially grazing has had on the countryside it made a real impact on me that the landscape in these islands is completely shaped by the sheep that are found almost everywhere. The result of this is very little diversity in the way of wildflowers and so the resulting insect life, in particular bumble bees. The nature in Shetland website lists only 4 species found today in the islands and although the weather is probably a factor to limit the number of species, sightings of any pollinators were few and far between.
Nature in Shetland suggest the decline in bumblebees over the past decade may be due to agricultural practices, it is difficult to see how this can be reversed if agricultural practice does not change to improved enrich the range of plants allowed to regenerate.

Shetland Bumblebee

The "Shetland Bumblebee" occurs only in shetland and the Western Isles.

www.nature-shetland.co.uk/brc/bees.htm

There and Back Again! Drone layer or Laying Workers?

OK so it's been nearly 3 years since my last post but I have not been idle!
Mostly the absence has been because of technology issues and not being bothered to sort them out, but now hopefully they may be resolved and I'm going to give it another go!

Bee news- over the last 3 years I have been desensitised to bee stings and we started keeping bees again in the autumn of 2014, in a lovely new apiary at Cordwood thanks to the generosity of Jill, Rob, Judith and Roger.  We had a good year in 2015 with no swarms and collected some lovely, welcome honey.

This winter we successfully got 3 colonies through the winter, having sold one, we had 2 good colonies to start this year with.

Now, in June, we have artificially swarmed these and should have 2 colonies with last year's (blue) queens and 2 making new queens (white).

However, as usual the bees don't always do what they should and in one of the blue queen's hive we found this.....

This new frame has all drone brood - as well as being a real mess!

The only way this happens is if the queen becomes a drone layer- which means she cannot fertilise her eggs any more so they are all male (drones) or if for some reason the queen fails completely and the workers begin to develop their ovaries and lay eggs. If this happens the worker eggs are all unfertilised as well so will be drones!

It's a bit complicated and disappointing to find as it usually means the hive is not going to survive1

If the brood is still orderly and neat then the queen is usually to blame but in this case the brood is random and as one beekeeper friend commented a bit like "the craters of the moon". The culprit here is in all probability laying workers. As if to confirm it we also found brood in the supers (where the queen would not be) and multiple eggs in each cell.

Not very clear but some of these cells have 2 or more eggs!

The solution sounds a bit barbaric but otherwise the hive will just slowly die out.

The advice is to smoke the bees well, take the hive some distance away and having removed all trace of the origin hive on it's site, shake all the bees out.

Smoking the bees encourages them to fill up with honey, so when they fly back the bees in the nearest hive will let them as they are bearing gifts! Apparently laying workers can not fly because of their developed ovaries!

Well the bees were duly shaken out and let in the nearest hive with no fighting- this hive is very full now, so we shall see how it develops from now through the summer!