Waiting Egg-spectantly: Giving a Broody Eggs to Hatch

Cotton, dedicated mama-to-be. (That's Thelma squeezed in next to her.)

Our little hen Cotton has been broody for months. She wants so badly to raise some babies that she spends all her time earnestly (and fruitlessly) setting on unfertilized eggs.

Cotton is the hen who came to us as a chick and insisted on being raised by Oreo, the other Bantam hen. I don't think she's produced an egg in long time. Every time she gets broody I take her off the nest and take her eggs, and she comes back to her empty nest and looks forlorn. It makes me feel bad for her.

Nothing seems to break her of her mama-urges. So I asked my sister-in-law, who has a nice country flock, for some fertilized eggs. Her rooster is none other than Cluck Norris, the rooster that started life at our house as a pullet named Cadbury. Until we heard him crow and sent him off to live in the country where he could crow and crow and tend his own little harem.

So we took five eggs, marked them so we could tell them apart from the eggs our hens produced, and slipped them under Cotton on February 1. If we were serious about raising chicks, we'd have candled them to see if they were fertile, but instead, we took a sort of "if it happens, it happens" approach. I'm doubtful, but it feels good to leave Cotton some eggs to tend.

Cotton is a devoted broody, and she is almost always there on the nest. She'll take a break each day for water and food, but hurries right back. So when I saw her wandering around in the chicken yard one fine 60-degree day last week, I expected she wouldn't be out there long. A little while later, I looked out and she was still out there.

I thought maybe she'd forgotten about being broody. Sort of felt disappointed in her. I thought, "Well, we tried." But I figured it was a good time to go out and at least gather the new, fresh eggs without having to reach beneath her for a change.

I opened the nesting box door from behind, and laughed. Facing me were two fluffy chicken behinds. Cotton was, quite logically, taking a break from her hatching duties while two other hens were laying eggs and at the same time keeping the potential hatchers warm.

Hazel and Thelma  (seen from behind) share egg-sitting duties. 

Time and again, my chickens remind me that they know what they are doing. Why I think I'd make a better chicken than my own chickens I don't know. We've got T-minus five days to hatch, if they are viable eggs. In spite of my doubts, I'm determined to let nature have the upper hand here.

The story behind our O'Keefe & Merritt stove

Our new old O'Keefe & Merritt stove, circa 1956

When we first bought our 1905-era home, I remember seeing pictures of renovated kitchens that featured vintage stoves. I had checked out the cost of newly-built vintage stoves and knew that was well out of reach budget-wise. But a couple of years ago, as we began to talk about renovating our small kitchen, I came across a listing on Craigslist for an O’Keefe & Merritt gas stove, and it was less than the cost of a new stove. It was in-use and worked well, albeit crusted with old grease. And for $200, it seemed doable, compared to a fully refurbished O’Keefe & Merritt stove which can run more than $1,000.

To make a long story short, we brought it home with plans to restore it. I began to look up parts on eBay, read old-stove-repair sites online, Googled pictures of O’Keefe & Merritt stoves (for reassurance and inspiration) and daydreamed about how it would look in our old house.

It sat there in the garage for two summers, waiting for its makeover. As we started to renovate our kitchen, I became more serious about trying to find parts for it. Prices had, I discovered, gone up a bit. At one point the original knobs had been taken off our old stove and replaced with '70s era black and stainless knobs. One vintage knob on eBay ran about $40. That meant an investment of $200 just for knobs.

Discouraged, I looked on Craigslist again, thinking maybe someone had one I could use for parts. There was a photo of an old stove that was behind stacks of boxes. I knew it was an O’Keefe & Merritt with all its knobs intact, but it appeared to be incomplete and dismantled. It was listed for $75.

By the end of the day, we were the proud owners of our second O’Keefe & Merritt stove. This one was circa 1956. What surprised us was that it was in better shape than our first one. All the porcelain was beautiful. It sported a chrome top that lifted like the hood of a muscle car, and the griddle-in-the-middle was in beautiful shape. On top of all that, we found that the box of parts that came with it contained extra parts—which, we reasoned, we’d sell on eBay to recoup our expenses.

It was placed in the garage next to stove #1. Then, a few weeks later, as if sensing its impending retirement, our 13-year-old electric range burned out the oven element on Thanksgiving day. That hurried the process along a bit. I began to clean stove #2, removing the glaze of years from burners and grills, degreasing, scraping, gently separating hardened burned-on grunge. When I finished, most of the stove looked pristine. Two of the burners will eventually need new porcelain.

K hooked it up and texted me a photo at work. “It works!” We were smitten. It beamed stoutly. We beamed. We took our photos next to the two quiches we made with it.  It's gratifying to think that it escaped the landfill, and we marveled at how solidly it was built and crafted.

On Christmas Day, we put it to the test, using the warming oven to let the rolls rise while the ham baked. The kitchen heated up. I could not help wondering how many Christmas dinners it had made, and imagined it was pleased to be back at work on a holiday meal. I look forward to using it for bread baking, canning, and yogurt making.

I am still smiling every time I clean it up, polish it, start the teakettle or fire up the griddle. It is worth every bit of elbow grease it took to burnish it back to its mid-century beauty.

Meanwhile, stove #1 awaits. Do we restore and sell it whole? Or sell it piece by piece? It needs more work than stove #2 did, and will require a greater investment to re-porcelain parts and get it to the level of restoration it needs. We know its story is not yet complete, and whether pieced out to bring its kin back to life, or refinished as a whole, we are confident that someday it will also be cooking with gas.

Seed Sources to Consider

If you're like me, you may be starting to think about seeds -- what you'll plant, where and when you'll plant it and where you'll buy your seed, if you aren't using seeds you've saved. I've always been concerned with organic seed, but having a hive of honeybees tunes your awareness to good seed.

I've made a list (with links) of some of the seed and plant sources that have signed the "Safe Seed Pledge," and plan to support these companies with my orders. Those in italics are companies I've ordered from in the past. I'm hoping to try a few more this year
.

Adaptive Seeds* - Northwest

All Good Things Organic (SW) - California

Amishland Seeds - Pennsylvania

Annie’s Heirloom Seeds – Michigan

The Ark Institute* - Pennsylvania

Backyard Beans and Grains Project - Northwest

Baker Creek Seed Co. - Missouri

Beauty Beyond Belief (BBB Seeds) - Colorado

Botanical Interests*-- Colorado

Bountiful Gardens - California

Crispy Farms – Florida

Diane’s Flower Seeds (she has veggies now, too) - Utah

Farm Direct Seed (Hobb’s Family Farm) - Colorado

Gourmet Seed - California

Grow Organic - California

Heirloom Seeds* - Pennsylvania

Heirloom Solutions - Illinois

High Mowing Seeds – Vermont

Horizon Herbs* - Oregon

Humbleseeds – Michigan

Growing Crazy Acres – Florida

Ed Hume Seeds – Northwest

J.L Hudson – California

Kitchen Garden Seeds - Connecticut

Lake Valley Seeds – Colorado

Landreth Seeds* - New York

The Living Seed Company* - California

Livingston Seeds* -- Ohio

Moonlight Micro Farm – Florida

Natural Gardening Company – California

New Hope Seed Company – Tennessee

Nichol’s Garden Nursery – Oregon

Organica Seed* -- Massachusetts

Prairie Road Garden – North Dakota

Renee’s Garden – California

Restoration Seeds – Oregon

Sand Hill Preservation Center (heritage breed poultry, too) – Iowa

Seeds Trust – Idaho

Siskiyou Seeds (NW) – Oregon

Southern Exposure* - Virginia

Sow True (SE)* - North Carolina

Sustainable Seed Co* - California

Tomato Fest – California

Trees of Antiquity – Heirloom Fruit trees – California

Turtle Tree Seed – New York

Underwood Garden Seeds* (Terroir Seeds) - Arizona

Uprising Seeds* -- Washington

Victory Seeds* - Oregon

Vermont Wildflower Farm – Vermont

White Harvest Seed – Missouri

Wild Garden Seeds* - Oregon

Wildseed Farms – Texas – Wildflowers

Wood Prairie Farm * - Maine

Balanced Below the Hive

One of our bees, at work on a sunflower.

I’m still seeing pollen enter the hive—a good sign. The bees have been cleaning up the sugar water relatively quickly. I’ll add more tonight, but I’m hoping that I’ll see more comb being drawn out on frames when we open the hive on Sunday.

Wanting to see into the hive without disturbing the hive, I get on the ground and stretch out flat on my back with my head resting beneath the hive. I glance across the yard, hoping my neighbor doesn’t see me, as she might be alarmed to see me prone on the ground by my beehive. But an overgrowth of tomato plants and zinnias rise between us and I'm glad she can't see me and wonder about her strange neighbor. 

Looking up from beneath the hive.

Because hive boxes have no top or bottom, and the frames hang inside like files in a cabinet, you can see into the hive from beneath. First, you see a screened “bottom board” that allows for ventilation but keeps critters out of the hive. Just about a half inch above the screen, you can see the bottom edges of the frames.

I settle in, my legs stretched out and ankles crossed. My awareness of the outside world shrinks to just the space between my eyes and the hive, which is about a foot above my gaze. I can see what looks like discarded larvae on the screen as housekeeping bees occasionally pulled it toward the hive opening. Bees walk back and forth, up into the frames, over the wax, and busily doing what bees do. From the bottom, it still doesn’t look like they are building on the new frames, though could be that I just can’t see their progress since they start at the top of a frame and build comb down.

From my vantage point beneath the hive, I feel a settling sense of peace. How strange to feel so relaxed and peaceful with a large number of stinging insects suspended above me.

We are often separated from wildness in a way that lessens our lives as humans. In an interview with writer David Kupfer, poet Terry Tempest Williams said of the often distanced relationship between humans and wildlife:

“We become disconnected, we lose our center point of gravity, that stillness that allows us to listen to life on a deeper level and to meet each other in a fully authentic and present way.”

And perhaps that is what I find there, beneath the bees—a center point of gravity. I regain my footing in the hum of the bees. I’m an observer, and these small winged beings encourage stillness in their presence.

I don’t spend as much time beneath the hive as I would like to. I need to water the garden and check on the hens. Dinner is yet to be made, and there is always work to be done. Reluctantly, I leave bee-viewing for the night, but I do so feeling greater equilibrium, as if the hum of bees has calibrated the balance in my bones.

Queen Cups & Cells

Small supercedure queen cup at center; capped honey above.

Sunday afternoon, as we noted bees visiting the borage and roses and thyme, we suited up for a visit to the hive. I readied our tools and supplies on a small table next to the hive so they’d be close at hand:

• ·      A hive tool, which is sort of like a combo scraper, pry tool, hook and handy earwig squasher-head-chopper-offer.
• ·      A bee brush, to help gently move the bees so they don’t get squashed.
• ·      Smoker, lit and ready, with holly wood shavings smoldering inside. I don’t really like to smoke the hive, but I like to have it handy just in case.
• ·      Phone, so I can take a photo
• ·      Notebook/pen, to make notes about each frame and what’s happening in the hive. This helps with comparisons from week to week. 

We lift off the copper-topped lid, then gently remove a flat board called an inner cover. It keeps the bees from gluing the top lid down, and is easier to pry off if they do glue it down (they like to button things up tightly with a waxy glue called propolis).

Beneath the lid, looking straight down into the hive box, the first thing you see are eight slats of wood, which are the top bars of the frames that hold the comb, brood, foundation, and honey. Bees clammer over and around the bars as we peer at them. Everyone looks busy, and this time we locate the queen relatively easily, at work on frame 4 just about in the center of the hive.

She was just in the process of laying an egg, and our interruption caused her to pull out of the cell too early. We watch her, circled by attendants, as she moves to another cell.

When we lift frame 5, we see capped honey reserves just below the bar, then empty cells. But what catches our eye first is a “bump” over the cells—sort of like an open wax bubble. It is almost centered in the frame, an opening facing downward—instantly recognizable, even for us newbies, as a queen cup.

Bees are amazing creatures, and if they sense any problems with the queen, they’ll begin to build what are called “supercedure” queen cells. If a queen is missing, they may build an emergency queen cell, and if they are preparing to swarm because overcrowding in the hive, they’ll build swarm cells.

Swarm cells tend to be along the bottoms of the frames. And we know our hive is not even close to over-crowded. Since we just noted that Her Royal Highness is alive and well, we can assume it’s not an emergency cell.

So what does a supercedure cell mean? From what I’ve learned, it depends. In a fully operational, established colony it may mean that the queen is aging or not producing sufficiently, and in the natural order of things she is to be replaced. In a newly established colony, it might be that the queen isn’t up to speed in her new home, and the workers are hedging their bets—kind of a just-in-case scenario. One article I read suggested clipping off the queen cell in that case.

A queen has a life expectancy of about three to four years. She leaves the hive by herself only once in her life, on a mating flight, then returns to the hive to lay as many as 200,000 eggs in a year (totally puts our hens to shame, eh?). The only other time a queen would leave the hive is if the hive splits in a swarm—the old queen, surrounded by workers and drones, departs to establish a new colony, leaving her old home in the care of a new queen.

Typically, two to three new queens may be raised simultaneously by the workers. One will emerge first. The others will make a distinct sound as they emerge, which allows the first queen hatched the opportunity to find and kill them before they emerge. If she kills the others before they fully emerge, she can do so with far less risk of injury to herself. Otherwise, queen-to-queen combat could result in both queens dying and the colony suddenly becoming queenless.

In our case, since there is only one small cup started, we’re leaving the bees to take care of things. A fully developed queen cell is enclosed, and shaped a little like a small peanut, hanging vertically to the frame. We’ll see how things look when we pull the frames out next week. But for now, we put the frames back together, carefully move a few bees away from the lid so we can close it without crunching anyone beneath it. A pollen-laden worker is returning from foraging, and we leave them to get on with their steady work of gathering and building.