The Patch update - 2 years on

It's been nearly two years now since we started work on the Patch - our 600m2 Landshare garden at Jill's and Mike's. I thought it was time for an update on what we're growing this summer.

The central part of the garden is 8 beds of annual veggies, grown on organic principles. We only have hand watering, so the beds need to be moisture-retentive and well mulched. The perimeter is much more permaculture based, full of diverse perennials, and will continue to evolve and grow in richness and diversity year on year.

Pumpkin bed

The pumpkins (var Anna Swartz) are growing strongly in a deep mulch of seagrass over home-made compost (mostly carpet weed from the Patch with grass mowings and horse manure).

Three Sisters bed

The Three Sisters are maize, a cucurbit and a climbing bean. Growing these crops together is a Native American method of preserving soil fertility and getting three useful crops from one patch of ground.

This year I'm experimenting with growing the maize in 1.5 metre cylinders of rabbit fencing. This provides support for the tall plants on windy days and also a framework for the cucurbits (lemon cucumber and rockmelon) to scramble over.

I've chosen small, less vigorous cucurbits: big bruisers like pumpkin and zucchini tend to go berserk and crowd out the other 'sisters'.

Potato bed

We grew Desiree and Dutch Cream under a deep mulch of pea straw. We're harvesting good crops from this bed. With the weather being so dry (only 50 mm rain since the start of November) we have been able to leave the potatoes in the ground and just harvest what we need. If it ever rains properly again (!), I'll need to dig up the rest pronto before they start to sprout.

Root veg bed

root veg bed in late spring

In this bed we mostly sowed Globe beetroot, Hollow Crown parsnips and a few carrots. There was also a row of long-keeping brown onions - root veg and onions make good companions as they feed from different depths in the soil, are both light feeders and the leafy tops of the root crops provide good shade for the bare soil (I don't mulch onions these days, to avoid problems with onion rot). The beetroot have been huge and sweet enough to eat raw.

Globe beetroot

Onion and carrot bed

You can never have too many carrots. Ours were a French heirloom variety St Valery, deep orange in colour, sweet and often 30 cm long. Yummo!

St Valery carrot

We also harvested a great crop of Early Creamgold long-keeping onions and Barletta salad onions and four varieties of garlic. Half of this bed is now growing Listada di Gandia eggplants and orange capsicums.

Early Creamgold onions

Part of our garlic harvest

I've left a few carrots and onions in the ground to flower. The ladybirds, hoverflies and bees love them and they look great too.

Carrot and onion flowers in the early morning light

Amaranth and cape gooseberry bed

Amaranth produces copious amounts of grain-like seed. The plants grow to two metres and are quite drought tolerant. The flavour is a little like quinoa but the seeds are much smaller. Apparently you can pop them as a breakfast cereal. I must try this.

Amaranth

Cape gooseberries are juicy, vaguely citrus flavoured sweet berries in their own little papery 'Chinese lantern' protective hulls. They're an undemanding crop and the fruit keeps well.

Watermelon bed

This year we're growing Moon and Stars watermelons. So far I've only found a couple of tiny melons, but they tend to hide away under the foliage until they're improbably huge. Last year we ended up with four monster melons with sweet, juicy, dark red flesh.

This bed also has climbing beans but they seem to have been hit by some kind of virus. The leaves are distorted and the affected plants have not flowered. Must get to the bottom of this problem but I frankly haven't had time to investigate further.

Tomato bed

This bed is producing quantities of Tommy Toe, Periforme and Amish Paste tomatoes. Those Amish sure do know a thing or two about tomatoes!

Tomato bed in late December, showing sturdy bamboo frame (2 metres tall)

Permanent plantings

We have perennials all round the perimeter of the annual beds. On the west there's the comfrey bed, which also has globe artichokes, goji and chokeberries, lemon verbena, Queen Anne's Lace, lavender, rosemary and a few tree onions. There are also some borage plants, which I'm hoping will self-seed everywhere, and a couple of echiums. Our Warré beehive is also in this bed and the bees seem pretty happy there.

Bee hive amid the artichokes

On the east is the lucerne bed, which we plan to increase to 60 m2 in the autumn, to provide nitrogen-rich mulch to the annual beds and great long-lasting summer forage to the bees. The lucerne receives only natural rainfall (precious little of that this summer) but keeps going strong through the hot weather. The weeds just can't compete. There's a tricky, sandy patch where even the lucerne hasn't taken, where I'm planning to try the drought-tolerant (and strangely named) barrel medic, a legume related to lucerne but allegedly even tougher.

On the south side there are a few flood- and drought-battered lavender bushes and a fig tree. This area needs improvement and a few creative ideas.

On the north side is our wattle windbreak which is starting to bush up now after a tough start in life. There will also be coastal rosemary and saltbush in the windbreak, and in the lee of that there will be a Hügelkultur mound which will hopefully be home to acid-lovers like blueberries and strawberries next year. A swale should help to hydrate this area and should become home to some of the frogs and lizards which are plentiful in the garden.

I just need the hot, dry weather to break so that digging a 12-metre long, metre-wide and half-metre deep swale by hand is less of a daunting prospect!

An unexpected bee bonanza

I got back from Germany on Tuesday evening - and on Wednesday morning I was straight up the Patch despite that fuzzy jetlagged feeling in my brain. I was walking past Jill's and Mike's garage at about 7 a.m., thinking about all the gardening chores I needed to catch up with, when I heard a familiar buzzing sound. Bees!! In the garage?? Yep.

As I got closer I could see that there was a largish swarm of bees clustered on the side of an old desk and spilling onto the floor. There were also quite a few bees flying around in the garage.

I then found Jill in the garden. it turned out she was unaware of the swarm of bees in her garage and they probably hadn't been there the day before, or possibly even at 5.30 that morning when Mike went off to work - using the car which had been parked in the garage that was now full of bees. It was a warm morning after a warm, humid night. Tuesday had been up to 31 C and Wednesday was forecast to be around 34 C with possible rain later.

The bees appeared to be trying to get into the desk. I assumed that there would be a lot of them already inside it. The situation was complicated by there being a whole lot of stuff on the desk - a table, a couple of sheets and some tools and other objects.

A brief phone conversation with Susan ensued and we agreed that we would come back with our bee kit later that morning to have a good look at the swarm and probably try to catch it and use it to start a second hive, up at the Patch (our first hive being back home in our own garden).

We had enough spare components to make up a second hive, as our original intention was always to have two hives. We hadn't expected a second swarm to come our way quite this easily, though!

At 11.30 we turned up with our bee suits and all our kit in the car, got suited up and set about tackling the swarm. The plan was to sweep up the bees as gently as possible using our bee brush and a dustpan.

I taped together two hive boxes with a temporary plywood floor. This formed a 40-litre container I could use as to collect the bees in. When turned up the other way (i.e. entrance at the bottom) and placed on a hive base it would be the core of the new hive. Eight frames with wax 'starter strips' were place inside the hive along with a pheromone lure to encourage the bees to stay. A 40-litre cavity that smells of wax and bee pheromone is the ultimate des res for a swarm of bees looking for a home.

We lit our smoker and gave the area a few puffs, but we were relying more on a spray bottle of water to keep the swarm calm. Very moderate use of smoke and fairly frequent misting with a fine spray of water worked very well.

Well, those bees were everywhere. On the leg of the table, on the side of the desk, hanging from the sheet and - what I think was the main part of the swarm - hanging from a piece of timber on the garage wall. I cleared all the things off the desk, working slowly and carefully so as not to agitate the bees, then just proceeded methodically with sweeping the bees up and tipping them into the upside-down hive. When I was eventually able to open the drawer of the desk, I found about 50 bees inside. I guess this was where they were all heading, but there was only a narrow gap and it was taking them a long time to get in. The drawer would have been about 20-30 litres capacity. A bit small for a good-sized swarm of bees.

Eventually we had most of the bees in the hive. I hadn't seen the queen but I thought she was most likely in the big ball of bees hanging from the wall of the garage. I then put a hive base on top of the hive, taped it in place and turned the hive the right way up.

The bees seemed quite calm and not aggressive throughout the whole process, which took nearly 90 minutes. A few of them buzzed around my head or banged into the veil, but there was no attempt to sting me. They seemed to take to their new home immediately.

Important note: bee swarms are usually not aggressive, however you should never interfere with one if you don't have appropriate training and equipment. If you anger the bees by mishandling them, you can expect to be badly stung.

We then left the bees to their own devices for the afternoon. Our hope was that the rest of the bees would find their way into the hive, which we left in the garage next to where the swarm had been. During the afternoon I selected a site for the hive in the Patch, then levelled the ground for four concrete blocks to make a hive stand.

When we returned at dusk the bees seemed settled, with just a few hanging around the hive entrance. We waited until they were all inside, then taped up the entrance. We also put the quilt* and roof on the hive at this stage, as we didn't want to open it again out in the cool evening air.

I then carried the hive 150 metres up the garden to the Patch. It was pitch dark and not at all easy to see where I was going, despite Susan's flashlight, as I was encumbered by my bee suit and a hive in front of my face! Also two hive boxes plus quilt and roof got quite heavy quite quickly. Anyway we got there without mishap and installed the hive in its site, untaped the entrance and beat a retreat.

I went back this afternoon to check out the situation and was pleased to see the bees busily foraging. Looks like the operation was a success and we have a second beehive!

* Quilt – a box full of woodshavings to control humidity in the hive. This is one of the important features of a Warré hive which distinguishes it from the Langstroth hives used by commercial beekeepers. Other key features are the characteristic pitched roof (regulates the temperature) and smaller boxes (more bee-friendly and easier to manage). The most important difference however is the low-intervention management method which focuses on the bees' needs – not on maximising the honey yield. Warré is in my view a far easier, more enjoyable and environmentally friendly method for the backyard beekeeper.

Bee Day!

Earlier this year Susan and I attended a Warré beekeeping course in Sydney run by second-generation professional apiarist Tim Malfroy. It seems like a long way to go for a weekend course, but I had read about the Warré beekeeping method and wanted to learn more. It was worth the trip.

I have since become convinced that this is an ideal method for backyard apiarists in Australia, and it would be highly beneficial to bees and beekeepers alike if it became more widely practised. (Yes, I do tend to get evangelical when talking about Warré.)

Two days ago the great day arrived and a swarm moved into our hive. A big, vigorous swarm it is too. The power of a swarm of bees is a remarkable thing. I don't think I'll ever forget the way the air vibrated with that all-pervading hum, as a massive cloud of bees came barrelling up the road and parked itself over our front garden. I felt that we had summoned a force of nature. I actually felt a little scared at what we had unleashed.

You should be able to view the video on my flickr page here. It really doesn't do the experience justice!

It was particularly satisfying because we had done everything ourselves – learned about bee biology and behaviour and hive management, built the hive according to Émile Warré's design (slightly modified for Australian conditions), set out the bait hive and attracted the bees.

It has been quite a journey so far, and our life with bees has only just begun; there is so much to learn.

Here are a few photos we've taken along the way.

Tim Malfroy's course, April 2012. Because Warré is a low-intervention beekeeping method, most of the course is classroom based, but one of Tim's students kindly allowed the 20 of us to visit her backyard apiary. Here Tim is demonstrating the use of the smoker and opening the hive. The bees remained wonderfully calm throughout. In previous classes Tim has encouraged participants to gently stroke the bees! (Don't do that at home, folks!)

Hive building. The dimensions of a Warré hive are carefully attuned to the bees' requirements. The aim is to provide them with the best home (other than a hollow tree!) that we can, so that we have a healthy, happy, unaggressive colony. I decided to build my own hive from Warré's specifications, adapted by Tim Malfroy for Australian conditions. The joinery is basic but needs to be quite accurate, built to a 1-2 mm tolerance. Inaccuracies will result in ill-fitting frames, which the bees will stick to the sides of the hive box, making your hive illegal. (DPI inspectors are obliged to destroy hives that do not have removable frames.)

I built 8 Warré boxes initially, with four flat roofs and two pitched roofs, meaning that I could set up four 2-box bait hives and then convert them to two full-size Warré hives. The pitched roofs don't just look pretty, they allow maximum thermal insulation for the hive, enabling the bees to control the hive's internal climate.

Bait hives. When bees swarm they send out scouts to check out the surrounding area for nest sites. Bees will nest pretty much anywhere that offers them shelter, but they actually rank the available sites according to suitability and reach consensus on the best one! This is a remarkable example of collective intelligence and has been thoroughly researched and documented by Thomas D Seeley, one of the world's eminent bee biologists, in his book Honeybee Democracy.

As it happens (and of course this is not coincidence but design) a two-box Warré hive is the optimum size, shape and configuration for a bee colony. That makes it easier to attract a swarm. This is a great way of getting a genetically diverse, strong colony - and taking a feral swarm out of the environment, which might otherwise nest in someone's roof or wall.

The bait hives need to be in an elevated position and contain some beeswax. We also used a pheromone lure to attract the bees - but only an attractive site can persuade them to stay, this is not a mechanical process.

The next stage was to transfer the occupied bait hive to its permanent position. At night and as it happened, in the rain. I don't recommend standing on a slippery stepladder in the dark clutching a box of 10,000 or so bees, but it was the only way to get them down. You only have a day or two to move the hive, otherwise the bees will imprint on their location and always go back there, not to the hive if you move it elsewhere.

The next day our bees were busy getting used to their new surroundings and sending out foragers. By the afternoon we were seeing bees returning with pollen, indicating that the queen was already laying eggs in the newly built comb.

Today we are going to move the hive on to its permanent base and add the quilt (a box of woodshavings above the hive to control humidity) and the pitched roof, which fits over the quilt and prevents rain from entering.

By around Christmas our colony should occupy three or four boxes, so it will look like this.

More on Warré beekeeping from my friends Kirsten and Nick at Milkwood Farm, NSW.