Retirement Day 3

Today's Goals

1. No Alcohol

2. Fast Day

3. Move bees 3 feet

4. Make sugar water and feed bees

5. Finish flow hive build and prep for painting

6. Mow Lawn

7. Make Panna Cotta

8. Sun Time

9. Prep dinner (Cold Pork Pies, salad and potato salad)

10. Sort out work desk (stretch goal)

11. Book Costco Missoula Tyres

10 out of 11 isn't bad. Couldn't even face going near my desk yet. Too much anger and disappointment at being forced out of a job I know I could have been great at given the chance.

And, technically, I didn't fast for 24 hours; I only managed 21 but I made a strategic decision to move to One Meal A Day (OMAD) instead so that I could taste my homemade pork pie.

Bees

Florida/Collier County regulations specify that bee hives have to be inside a fenced area and one of my hives technically isn't. I want to move it to the same area as my other hive to a) comply with regulations, b) make my life easier and c) move them further away from Daren and the barn.

Problem is that you can't just up and move bees - little buzzers tend to be out flying during the day and, if I move the hive while they are all out, they won't be able to find the hive in its new position. Current wisdom is that you can move hives less than 3 feet or over 3 miles. If you are going to move them 3 miles you usually do it at night. Seal all the bees in the hive and move it. When they leave in the morning, they know they are in a completely different place and so reorient themselves. They then know where the hive is.

As I only need to move them about 50 feet I am opting for the "less than three feet" method of moving them a few feet each day. Takes longer but I should lose fewer bees that way. So I suited up and moved my hive three feet to the left.

Monday's hive inspection showed that the hives were doing great but that they would benefit from feeding so they could build up some comb ready for when nectar flow starts. I filled the feeding jars with 50:50 sugar solution and placed them on the hives.

You can see the burr comb that I removed from the frames yesterday on top of the hive. There was some nectar/honey in it so I left it for bees to empty. I'll remove it tomorrow.

Next step, while I had my bee suit on, was to mow the lawn. the bees can get upset sometimes when I mow close to the hive so better safe than sorry. With a three acre plot, there's a lot of grass to mow and I've neglected it recently due to work/time pressures. Today was an initial run round at 4 inches to get the worst of it. It still needs strimming and further tidying

Flow Hive

I was lucky enough to get a Flow Hive for my birthday last year. Unexpectedly, it turns up like a huge Lego model and needs building and I simply didn't have the time or the skills last year.

I started the process last year but admitted (temporary) defeat. Daren has spent the past two days rescuing my effort and it is now ready to go. Last thing remaining is to paint it; which I will do tomorrow.

River Cottage USA

One of the recipes at River Cottage that really surprised me by how simple it is, was Panna Cotta. Today I decided I was going to try making it at home. As I had fresh strawberries I chose a Basil and Strawberry flavour combination. I infused the panna cotta with fresh basil from the garden and made a strawberry puree/sauce to go with it. Didn't want to go for simply strawberries though so I thought I would try balsamic strawberries. Thanks to Google I found a recipe and decided to use that

• 1.5 cups chopped strawberries

• 0.25 cup balsamic vinegar

• Microwave for 6 minutes

• Puree

• Push through sieve to remove seeds

Unfortunately, you can't get double cream here and the fat content of Heavy Cream is lower than double cream so I should have used slightly more gelatine. They still held together when I turned them out but they slumped a little. Next time I will try using all heavy cream instead of half cream/half milk and the higher fat content may mean I get the perfect set. I'm wary of adding more gelatine as I don't want them to bounce.