Unexpected Queen Flight & the Deformed Chicken

One of my favorite times of any weekday is when Mark and I regroup in the kitchen and we’re winding down while we prepare dinner. During the week, I don’t often get to go on beeventures with Mark and I always feel like I am missing out on stuff. I try not to think about it most of the time and he’s really great about texting status updates and pictures to me and other family members. We are blessed that our families enjoy learning about what we are doing and they are constantly asking for updates. I use those updates for everyone on our social media outlets and I especially love it when Mark shares pictures, and sometimes videos, with us (lately my favorite it still the two fighting bulls out in a field). So here’s the story on our sweet little Ebert queen in the above shot. Mark casually told me this story while I was peeling shrimp or something like that and I couldn’t wait to tell y’all. Hopefully it’s as interesting to you as it was to us.

The twenty Ebert queens are tucked away in their queen bank and as Mark needs them, he can quickly and easily retrieve them from the back yard. There are currently about thirty newly divided hives back there along with the queen bank and the hives are grouped together based on when they were divided and when they need their queen introduced. The other day, Mark was introducing queens to two hives that he had not gotten to the day before. He opened up the plastic cage so that the queen could crawl out and onto the tops of the frames in that box. Well…this one decided for whatever reason, she needed to fly about for a bit. So Mark watched as she took flight and circled the hive in the area up above his head a few times. Now this part I don’t know that I would ever catch with my own eyes, but Mark caught sight of her a couple of times as she rounded so he stepped back about six feet and into the tree line in front of the hives. He watched as she landed at the entrance of the very hive he had opened. Then she calmly walked into her new home and new family. WOW! I guess she just didn’t want to be dumped there. That queenie was determined to make an entrance. She did it her own way. What a queen. He checked her two days later and the above picture is what he saw when he picked up one of the frames.

Here’s a shot of new divides in the back yard. I like seeing them lined up back there and I’ll miss them once they are ready for a permanent home.

Now I want to finish off with dinner, which on a market night is either leftovers or pizza or the buffet, whatever our energy levels happen to be. Tonight was actually leftovers we knew would be great because the jambalaya gets better with a few days on it. The okra was from Engel Farm at the Quarry market and I got it last Sunday. The chicken was an entire chicken that I got from Parker Creek Ranch who are at both Southtown and Quarry markets with us. I just love Travis and Mandy – really great young couple doing a great thing out there in D’Hanis (y’all look them up and try their beef, eggs and chickens – we have and it’s all been GREAT). The funny thing about the chicken is that Mandy called it “deformed” because though it was a very good chicken, it was missing one leg. I didn’t have time to ask for the back story on Deformed Chicken but I needed a small chicken since I wanted dark meat in my jambalaya so when she held it up to me, I thought I just had to have it – a small chicken with a story. That’s bound to make my jambalaya good. And it did. Thanks for the deformed chicken, Mandy. You are my favorite poultry vendor ever. See you tomorrow!

PS – The garlic toast was made with Cheddar Dill bread from Biga on the Banks, a wonderful restaurant on the SA River downtown. Their awesome pastry chef, Lila, is a vendor at the Pearl market. This was delish!

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