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Green Beans Anyone? 

November 29, 2015

Bishop Beans, Beekeeping, Healthy Lifestyle, Strawberries , , Leave a comment

A few days ago I wrote about enjoying late November strawberries. Today, November 29th, I cruised through the the garden and snacked on the only ripe strawberry as I picked a handful of green beans, a pole bean variety that I planted in early fall. They keep blossoming and they keep producing! 

  
In another two days, barring a freeze – not likely- I will have enough to share with my wife… Although, She would rather have Del Monte canned green beans but I will continue to expose her to fresh green beans. Don’t tell her, but I sneak a handful every now and then into the canned green beans….. I do have to overcook  them to disguise them! 

I will have to plant more beets. It seems like every time the seedlings have emerged, still fragile, we get a heavy rain and they get pounded flat! 

  
Poor little guy! They should look more like this! 

  
Replanting tomorrow. Not a bad approach, staggered planting a will spread the harvest out a little more through the spring and early summer. 

PS- the sugar snap peas are about a month away from producing. 

Honey. 

  
This was the remaining comb honey still taking up space in the freezer. We sold about half of the harvest leaving me 9 squares to squeeze. Too bad I waited so long. Between the low honey temperature and the fact that our house is mid 60’s in temperature….. The honey flows very slowly. 

  Dump a square in the pan and mash up with a potato masher. Hands work well but I decided to take a less messy approach……my bride tells me that my less messy approach is still messy! I am guessing almost 4 pounds of honey will be captured. 
  
Sitting in the sieve and waiting and waiting and waiting. It will be at least an overnight weight and if push comes to shove I could crank up the central heat to 70 or more! 

TTFN 

Bishop

All photos from my iPhone

Sunrise – Good for the Soul

November 24, 2015

Bishop Healthy Lifestyle, Philosophical , , , 1 Comment

Spent the early morning down on the dock near  our house….Stunning sunrise. This morning was my good for the soul effort! I do feel better. Took my camera and  decided  to use one of the photos to grace the header on my blog.  Hope you enjoy the images.

Small resized image of a stitched together image of several photos.

Small resized image of a stitched together image of several photos.

Another shot a little earlier as the sun was coming up.

Another shot a little earlier as the sun was coming up.

I love mornings like these!

I love mornings like these!

TTFN

Bishop

“Aunt Toni’s Excellent Banana Bread”

November 20, 2015

Bishop bananas, Dessert, Healthy Lifestyle, Humor, Recipe , 1 Comment

What do you do when 8 or 10 of your homegrown bananas ripen all at once? everyone knows that it is Banana Bread time. My wife dug out the recipe for “Aunt Toni’s Excellent Banana Bread” for me to use…..problem is, it is not my sister Toni’s recipe, it is our sister Denise’s recipe….how did it get named for Toni…..That is a bit of a story.

July 19th, 2012 was my sister Denise’s 60th birthday. Toni….the other sister, requested that friends and family send Denise birthday wishes along with a favorite recipe….Denise is an awesome cook so the recipes would  be well received. The flyer and recipe that Toni sent out explains the “misnamed” recipe.

Toni’s recipe sent to Denise read;

” This is a recipe of a food gift that Denise and I have made for years to give to family and friends. A few years ago Denise’s son Sean asked me for my banana bread recipe and he has continued the tradition.  Recently he was telling Denise about my “Excellent Banana Bread Recipe”. She wanted to set the record straight that the recipe came from her. We had a good laugh, because the recipe named had changed to “Aunt Toni’s Excellent Banana Bread”.

“Aunt Toni’s Excellent Banana Bread”

3-4 ripe bananas

1 cup sugar

1 egg

1 1/2 cup flour

1/4 cup melted butter

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

1/2 cup  chopped nuts – optional

Mash bananas and add sugar. Stir in the other ingredients. Pour into a greased loaf pan. Bake one hour in a preheated oven at 325 F. Cool on  a rack then cover with plastic wrap…….if it survives that long! Makes one large loaf or two small loaves.

Ripe bananas ready to mash. In the center, the seed area of the endocarp, the flesh has a bit of a golden color.

Ripe bananas ready to mash. In the center, the seed area of the endocarp, the flesh has a bit of a golden color.

Mixing with the sugar after mashing. The golden center flesh is still visible.

Mixing with the sugar after mashing. The golden center flesh is still visible.

Ready to pour into the greased loaf pan.

Ready to pour into the greased loaf pan.

Final product....this variety of banana is very creamy -it still is evident in the finished bread....Yum

Final product….this variety of banana is very creamy -it still is evident in the finished bread….Yum

After I made the bread I contacted both sisters so we could laugh again…

TTFN

Bishop

Cool Weather and Bananas 

November 12, 2015

Bishop bananas, Beekeeping, Gardening, Healthy Lifestyle , Leave a comment

The weather has finally cooled enough that I had to cut the stalk. When I inspected the bananas this morning I noticed that the ripening process has sped up. Our friends and neighbors will receive some treats.  

  

 The bunch includes a cluster that never matured. I hope next year I will manage to get both varieties to produce. 

I hope to finish up the bee rescue today. I have developed a more simple option that could have been completed on the original rescue day. Rookie mistake and hindsight is always 20/20! 

Breaking news- part two of the bee rescue has been postponed until tomorrow. Details following the fishing report. 

TTFN

Bishop

 

My First Hive Rescue

November 10, 2015

Bishop Beekeeping, Healthy Lifestyle, honey, Optimism Leave a comment

Out of the blue…. Sorta – Troy, an acquaintance who is hosting one of my empty top bar hives called last night with a lead on some bees. This morning I made connection with Don at a large machine shop off of Highway 59 about 25 minutes from the house. Seems that over the weekend a large trunk sized branch broke off and fell to the ground. The piece in the ground was packed full of bees. The tree snapped at a knot that appears to have been the access hole to the hollow tree, an obvious weak spot. 

The piece on the ground housed the upper portion of the hive colony. The bees were calm and thickly packed into the cavity and comb in that half. The photo below is after three days on the ground and may have been cleaned up some during that time. 

  
While waiting for the chain saw Don fired up the man lift and we were able to get a better view of the top stub of the cavity…. not a real good look but not bad. On Thursday I will go back and we will hang a hive body with some drawn comb near the opening. We will have better access on Thursday so I can look into the cavity directly. Based on my limited knowledge it looks like the tree snapped off below the main portion of the cavity. My fingers are crossed that we have the queen and some brood. 

I made an uneducated guess and cut the trunk about 30 inches above the break….. looks like I guessed good. There was a small opening but the cut was above the cavity. I loaded the cut segment on my carry rack, wrapped it in plastic and headed off to Kingwood. The chainsaw cut end came unwrapped in the drive. At every stop I could see a few more bees escape. Oh well. 

I arrived at Troy’s house to unload and the bees were humming – a good sound, the sound of a buzzing hive…. makes me more confident that I have the queen and attendants. 

  
I stopped by my house to rewrap the log before heading off. 

  We created a necked down outlet pointing directly to an opening in my top bar hive. We sprinkled a dash of lemon grass oil at the entrance to entice the little buggers over. My top bar has three bars of drawn comb to help the transition. Fingers crossed! I will install a feeder as additional enticement. 
My wife commented that it looks like Christmas came early……. I was like the little kid that couldn’t wait……. Yes, I was excited! 

An interesting note, Don at the machine shop was anxious to find someone to rescue the bees, not kill them.  He is aware of the plight of bees and has noticed fewer and fewer on his 2 acres of land. One of the workers at the shop, Rick, has 7 acres up near Clevland, 25 minutes north of my home and had the same concerns. I was concerned when I pulled into the machine shop as a Pest Control truck pulled up when I did. My heart sank. Turns out he wasn’t  there for the bees but wanted my contact info for future opportunities to rescue bees. My faith in mankind is elevated. These good old boys deeply care about the environment. I love it. 
TTFN

Bishop

14.68 Inches in 12 Days

November 2, 2015

Bishop bananas, Beans, Gardening, Healthy Lifestyle, Tomato Growing , , , Leave a comment

It is actually a little more impressive than that. It was pretty much all concentrated during the past two weekends! The garden is very soggy. The beet seedlings have been beat down but I think they will survive.

I took a cruise through the garden around 7:45 this morning after meeting my daughter at the gym….. She ran a 5 mile race in the rain yesterday morning, I drank coffee and tried to stay dry.  The green bean vines are healthy and green but not much to pick. I snacked on the few pods ready to pick while checking things out – they were sweet, if that makes sense for green bean pods!

There are stil over 20 full sized green bananas hanging on the plant, waiting to be cut off and ripened inside. The miniature, teeny, tiny Matt’s Wild Cherry tomatoes are still setting and producing. I brought in a handful to have with my morning eggs.

Cherry tomatoes and a few ripened bananas. Time to cut a few more! Very sweet and very tiny.

Cherry tomatoes and a few ripened bananas. Time to cut a few more bananas today! Very sweet and very tiny tomatoes and sweet and creamy bananas!

TTFN

Bishop

Coconut, Honey, Beeswax Lipbalm

October 22, 2015

Bishop Beekeeping, Healthy Lifestyle, honey , , 2 Comments

Someone asked me a few weeks ago, “What do you do with all the beeswax from your honey extraction?”

Good question. I have saved almost all of it. I have tried to segregate the lighter cappings wax  from the more yellow comb wax. With my stock of wax decided to try my hand at making lip balm – move over Burt’s   Bees, Bishop’s Bees is moving in. 

I don’t intend to “bee” a threat to his business. Next spring I will have table at some “Farmers Markets” in the area to sell my raw local honey and to have some value added products to sell. Hopefully to draw some more folks in. The lip balm may be one of a few products.  I have plans for honey straws, more creamed honey of several flavors and possibly some honey wine vinegar. 

I made batch 1 of the lip balm today. This is a test batch. I weighed out 1 ounce of light beeswax, 2 ounces of organic coconut oil and 1/2 tsp of honey. All melted together and then divided into some small tins and a couple of tubes. All went pretty well. The only issue was the reluctance of the honey to blend into the melted oils and wax. More research to do. 

I intend to hand these few out, gather feedback and adjust going forward. 

  
Coconut oil to start with.

  
A look at some of the differences in color of beeswax. 

  
A few of the first batch samples. 

I will get some feedback and modify the recipe going forward. I am wanting to find a way to bring the flavor and aroma of honey out a little more for batch # 2. 
TTFN

Bishop

Going Bananas in the Garden

October 19, 2015

Bishop bananas, Beans, Beekeeping, Fall, Gardening, Healthy Lifestyle, honey, Strawberries, Tomato Growing , , , , , 6 Comments

The surprise success with plantings this year has been the banana “plant”….. Not really a tree but most folks refer to them as trees. This was the second year after panting the first corms. I was given one that should have produced “Manzano” bananas but has yet to fruit. The other was a mystery….If Marcelino’s father told me I must have not understood or heard. The unknown variety has produced a very nice large bunch and along the way I learned a lot about the growth habits of bananas. An internet search leads me to believe that the bananas  are “Pera”.

Once the plant matures a stem growing inside the pseudostem (trunk for lack of a better term) emerges from the top. As it curls downward it has what looks like a purplish heart looking bulb, an “inflorescence”. Looks like tightly wrapped paired leaves.

Female flowers beginning to expand.

Female flowers beginning to expand.

“A stem develops which grows up inside the pseudostem, carrying the immature inflorescence until eventually it emerges at the top. Each pseudostem normally produces a single inflorescence, also known as the “banana heart”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana#CITEREFStoverSimmonds1987.

It was interesting watching the top two leaves open up and expose the flowers. The first that are exposed are the female flowers that develop into fruit. Each time the purple leaves open it exposes another tier of flower bracts. As the bananas fill in, maybe 8 to as many as 20 tiers the heart now begins to produce male flowers that appear to be useless….once they appear, they dry up and drop off. At first I thought I had a problem but learned that was normal.

My hanging banana storage in the garden.

My hanging banana storage in the garden.

Once the banana has plumped up nicely and doesn’t seem to be enlarging I have been whacking off three or four at a time and allowing them to ripen indoors. They will stay nicely on the plant until the weather turns cold. After that I will cut the entire stalk and hang it in the garage to ripen slowly.

Several ripe ones with the most recently cut.

Several ripe ones with the most recently cut.

.Indoor hanging storage

Indoor hanging storage

Gardening activities have included building up a raised bed by adding more compost and mounding it up for planting strawberries. The cucumbers are done but the dang asparagus keeps sending up new shoots, not many but enough to snack on while weeding. The Matt’s Wild Cherry tomato plant has begun producing again….they are small but tasty….pea sized to a little less than cherry sized. My Poblano pepper plant is churning out tons of dark green peppers.

The beginnings of my fall strawberry planting's. I will ad at least 50 more plants.

The beginnings of my fall strawberry planting’s. I will ad at least 50 more plants.

Teeny tiny Matt's Wild Cherry tomatoes.

Teeny tiny Matt’s Wild Cherry tomatoes.

Hmmm - the beginning of some green beans....they better hurry - the air is cooling.

Hmmm – the beginning of some green beans….they better hurry – the air is cooling.

My bees are now residing elsewhere but I am making more local contacts that are willing to host hives for me. I have a home for the top bar hives about 5 minutes from my house – Yee Haw. The productive Langstroth is too far away but it is in a good home. I am aiming for 10-12 hives next year and possibly 20 the year following. The new Texas regulations allow me to sell at Farmers Markets now….as long as I do not exceed 2500 pounds per year….that is a lot of honey!

This will give you an idea how big the slabs of comb are. This one had an ear on the left hand side broke off.

This will give you an idea how big the slabs of comb are. This one had an ear on the left hand side broke off.

Side note; I bottled the Honey Blonde Ale a   few nights ago…..made with MY honey. It will be awesome! The color was perfect, a hint of honey flavor but not too sweet.

 

TTFN

Bishop

I am Legal Now

October 9, 2015

Bishop Beekeeping, Healthy Lifestyle, honey, Top Bar Hive , , 2 Comments

Actually, I have been legal for a long, long time! As of September 1st of this year I can legally sell honey at Farmers Markets as long as I meet the State of Texas’ labeling requirements. The key change for small producers, those selling under 2,500 pounds per year, requires a label indicating that the honey was not bottled in a facility inspected by the Texas Department of State Health Services. 

  
This is an example label added to the bottom of a jar. I snapped this iPhone photo at the Liberty County Beekeepers meeting this week. This little law change has many small producers breathing easier. To sell retail or wholesale, honey must be bottled in a licensed and inspected honey house/facility. That cost is beyond the means of hobby producers. Many small producers were technically breaking the law prior to September 1st. Small producers could always sell direct to the customer. A caveat, the honey must have been sold by the producer or immediate family member. That was how is I peddled my honey. 

My haul from the northern hive was small but very tasty. Most of the honey was bottled in 3/4 pound plastic Queenline bottles. I made a little larger bottle as payment to the hive’s host.  About 13.5 pounds total for this trip. The hive is now in winter mode and the honey remaining is for the bees. 

  
I just love the feel of the bottle getting heavy as it fills, the wonderful aroma that escapes and catching the sweet drops on my finger as the valve closes. I do lick my fingers and then rewash before proceeding! Yes I do! 

 
The honey bear actually holds the same weight as the white topped bottles. 

I have the catalogs out, dreaming about next spring and deciding how big my hobby will become. At a minimum I will have my existing Langstroth and two top bar hives. Let me amend that, I am building two “half” top bar hives this weekend. I can use them as Nucs or if arrangements can be made, as a rescue hive for cutouts or for capturing swarms. 

TTFN

Bishop

Country Honey

October 8, 2015

Bishop Beekeeping, Healthy Lifestyle, Pest Control, Travel , , , 1 Comment

If you have been following along you will remember that my sweet neighbor filed  a complaint with the HOA about my bees. Some BS about the bees posing a threat. After 18 months in my backyard they suddenly posed a threat. Under protest and a deadline I moved the hive too far away but the location is very nice. The woman hosting the hive is a sweetheart, wants bees and takes good care of them. 

A couple of days ago my wife and I drove north to knock off two tasks. One, meet out son who attends Texas A&M University and two, me running over to the ranch and checking on the bees. My wife did some grocery shopping for Joe while I borrowed his truck to head over to the ranch. 

The hive seems to like it’s new home.  It is in a small fenced area to keep the cattle out and has enough sun under the big oak tree. There is a stock tank for water very close by. Looks like bee heaven. 

   
 
I think the site will look better next spring if I can add a few more hives. Two or three here and maybe another two or three across the road on a friends ranch.  I am hoping 6 hives in the area will help make the trips a little more profitable. I pulled the top super from the hive in preparation for winter, shuffled some frames and refreshed the hive beetle traps. The observed numbers of beetles was significantly lower on this trip – I like that! 

Yesterday I extracted honey pulling about 12 pounds or so from the frames. The honey is dark and rich tasting. I will send a couple of jars up to Johnnie at the ranch as payment for hosting and keeping the feeder full. The hive looks well set to make it through the winter. 

Next trip up I will add a resrictor to keep the mice out and slip a thin board under the hive to cut down on the cold air that can enter through the screened bottom board. 

TTFN

Bishop

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