Bees and Beans

Just got back from "working" the bees and my goodness, am I excited - We have honey!! This year I am only tending to one hive. At the most we've had three, but two didn't make it through the summer last year. I suspect it was from my lais a faire management style. When it comes to bees I prefer to leave them alone as much as possible. There's a fine line between over management - this is when you spend too much time going into the hive for inspections, it disrupts the groove of the hive and it sets the bees back. Kind of like when your at work and a friend comes to visit you on your lunch hour and your having such a good time you take more than an hour for lunch and when you get back it takes a while to get your head back into what you were working on when you left the office, so you check your email, your favorite website, make a few calls and ahh, now your settled back in to your work - with just a little productivity lost, but over and over again it adds up! And then there's the other side of the fine line, under management. I've found myself on this side of the line when it comes to bees more often than I would like to admit. Under Management is when you completely ignore them and let mother nature take it's course, I mean they're bees after all, they've been managing fine without us since the beginning of bee time. O.K., so it's not that simple. Domesticated bees need a little tending to, there are several factors that can destroy a hive and some of them are wax moths (been there), mites, fungal diseases or an old queen. The latter happened to my hives last year. Instead of requeening (purchasing another queen from a reputable dealer) - yes, i'm afraid queen bees do get pimped out - I relied on mother nature to do her thing, but she didn't. The queen died without an heir to the throne and without a queen eggs can't be laid and the colony dies out.



I don't know how I completely digress, this is not what I was going to write about. I guess i'm just happy the bees are happy. So anyway, now i'm ready to harvest the honey - Steve, if your reading this HELP!!


O.K. I know what you're thinking - When am I going to hear about some vegetables??!!!


I just get caught up in the lives of the bugs on the farm, believe me I could go on and on about it!


So from bees to beans we go!


By this time CSA members you've had the opportunity to try at least two or three of the different bean varieties we are offering this year.


The three seen most often are three different varieties offered as a tricolor mix. They are the traditional green bean, snap, no explanation needed there, a yellow wax bean, a snap or string bean that is a variation of the green bean, And a purple bean called Royal Burgundy, ditto on the variation of the green bean.


Another divine bean is the purple and green noodle beans. This is a favorite among many of the CSA members. It is also known as the asparagus bean, because it has the flavor of asparagus, not because it does weird things to your pee.


One of Fertile Crescent Farms favorites is the haricot vert, also known as the french green bean. This bean is very similar to a regular green bean, but is cultivated to be a bit more slender and sweeter to the taste.

The last two to be mentioned are the Italian Roma beans. This is a long, wide, flat bean. We are growing two different varieties of these. The smaller of the two is a bush bean and the larger is a pole bean. The pole beans are called Marvel of Venice, a yellow Roma and the Northeaster, a green Roma. The pole Roma bean is just coming in now and I hope everyone gets the opportunity to try them this season.


For the next two weeks everyone in the CSA will be receiving tomatoes, potatoes, onions, garlic, noodle beans, roma beans, basil and carrots.