Bee-success!

Being first time beekeepers on our local Bee Club's "swarm list", N and I have been a little tetchy lately. The phone rings and we'll suddenly tense, wishing, hoping, praying that it is someone calling to tell us that an unwanted swarm awaits capture. Ready to drop everything, put on our bee-suits and go catch a swarm of homeless bees to occupy our brand new sparkling hive. As the season dragged on with no swarms on offer we'd been harbouring the dark thought that maybe we'd just have to wait until next year to get our bees. Bees swarm from spring through to early summer but this year, after a hot and dry January, the bees have not been forthcoming. And you can only get bees during swarming season: it was going to be a long wait if we missed out!
But then on Saturday, at around noon, we got our call. We were told there was not one but three swarms at a property not far from our place at the home of an experienced beekeeper. Things were dropped, bee suits donned and we high-tailed it down to the swarms!
According to our bee guru Howard, captured swarms will "take" to a hive (ie. set up shop) around 70% of the time, and we were lucky enough to be in that percentile. It is a truly incredible thing to watch bees take to a hive - once they've made up their mind they literally march right in. And its not as scary as you might think - bees who have swarmed have filled their bellies with honey before swarming so they're in a total post-lunch stupor and its pretty unlikely they'll try to sting you.
 A week of perfect weather later and our bees are still happy and still home. Hurrah!

Broadly speaking

A dinner harvest

We have broad beans. So many broad beans. Can you ever have enough, we thought, way back in Autumn when we planted out four large beds of Vicia faba? Broad bean pasta, broad bean dip, broad bean salad, broad bean felafel... the possibilities were endless, or so we thought. But, used to crappy inner-city Melbourne soil we weren't quite prepared for what would happen to the seeds we've saved faithfully for the last 5 years when we planted them in South Gippsland.
In short: they went mental. Our garden is now home to huge, towering bean stalks of jack-and-the-giant proportions. And of course, now they're fruiting. But as well as providing a bountiful (if tiring) source of food for us humans, the beans are providing much needed nectar and pollen for our bees and shelter for our chooks who have created little hidey-holes amongst them (without, amazingly, totally destroying them). Not only that but I have found an ingenious way to trick people (N) into eating lots of broad beans, and this is: pick them early (when pods are no longer than 12cm) and use the tiny beans as "peas".


Our hen, Bean, investigates her namesakes, while I misbehave with a bean.

Maude's Broad Bean Pasta

200g wholemeal pasta, cooked until al dente

1kg small (>12cm) broad beans in their pods

1 small onion, diced finely

1 tbsp butter

Handful of fresh greens (silverbeet, sorrel, spinach)

Lemon juice

Parmesan

Salt to taste

Cracked pepper

Olive oil

Method: lightly sautee onion in butter. Shell the beans, and add to the pan cooking for a minute longer. Add greens and sautee a further minute. Turn off the heat, squeeze through lemon juice, drizzle over olive oil, cracked pepper and salt to taste. Toss through pasta and serve with grated parmesan.