Yesterday, harvesting our first honey from La Ciotat, I saw a swarm of hornets in one of our abandoned hives. (Listen to Jean-Marc read in French, below.)
Today's Word: le frelon
: hornet, Vespa
Click here to listen to Jean-Marc's sentence:
Hier, en récoltant notre premier miel de La Ciotat, j'ai vu un essaim de frelons dans une de nos ruches abandonnée.
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A DAY IN A FRENCH LIFE by Kristi Espinasse
This morning I noticed giant wasps flying head-on into the bay window in our living room. Ce sont des kamikazes! I said to Jean-Marc, who was busy warming honeycombs on the stovetop, helping the miel to drip into the pan below. My husband had salvaged the honey from his abandoned ruches in our backyard.
Les frelons asiatique–invading killer hornets (they eat honey bees!) must've smelled something cooking and were desperately trying to reach the honey. We had shut the sliding glass doors moments before, after two hornets dashed inside. Our son Max, who was getting ready for work, grabbed a pair of chaussures began to shoo the wasps away, before swatting them dead.
Whether shoes or spatulas (Mom's preferred method, she regularly kills the giant frelons who live outside her studio, at the side of our house. Jules has watched the hornets gradually kill the bees who live here), it is important to eradicate the bee predators, who made it into the country accidentally (hidden in Chinese pottery destined for the Lot, in southwest France).
Jean-Marc was in for a surprise when he finally opened up one of his hives and found un essaim, or hornet's nest inside! It was time to dismantle the little bee houses, once and for all. As unfortunate as this was, the bees left behind a farewell present: about one liter of golden miel!
Jean-Marc gathered the honeycombs and brought them into the house. Using all our pans he began extracting the honey, using a system he came up with back when he began beekeeping back in 2012. Oh, no! I thought, This is going to be messy! I leave you with a colorful story from when we lived on the vineyard in Saint Cécile-les-Vignes. Enjoy and thank you for reading!
The Control Freak & The Honey Harvest
This is not how I imagined it to be, waking up on what might have been a relaxing samedi. My plan was to stroll into the newly clean and orderly kitchen, make a cup of coffee in the calcaire-free coffee maker, and enjoy the morning ritual from this side of smudge-free windows. The coffee… the view… what more could a reformed slacker wish or do?
So much for four weeks of spring cleaning! And the house had been coming together so nicely… My eyes locked onto the offender, my stubble-faced soul mate. There he stood at the kitchen table, surrounded by every pot and pan in our nicked and handles-bent collection. Even the oven's roasting pan had been brought out…
All in the name of honey!
One of those sticky frames pulled from the ruche.
It appeared to be bottling time. After three years of misses, Jean-Marc now had a hit! The amateur beekeeper had finally struck liquid gold!
"Honey…"
"Oui!" he answered, oblivious to the mess. Jean-Marc continued to hum along to a favorite song. As he hummed he scraped the sides of the sticky wooden cadres. For this, he used our biggest kitchen knife which was now encrusted with beeswax!
Le gâteau de miel! There seemed to be more of it than the honey… and whether more or less both conspired to make one great sticky mess! The shambles continued all the way over to the kitchen sink, where a host of jam, pickle, and tomato jars were draining. But were they sterile enough to hold honey? My eyes returned to the suspicious surfaces and to the floor… where golden droplets glistened in the morning sun.
I wasn't the only one staring goggle-eyed at the sticky drops of honey across the kitchen floor: Smokey and Braise, who stood outside, noses-flattened against the kitchen window, were already drawing up a Whose-is-Whose proprietorial map. I could almost hear Braise:
"Son, I'll take the sticky sector beneath the table. You get to lick up the floor by the sink."
"Oh no you don't!" This plan, real or imagined, would not see the light of day… not if I had it my way! I felt the remnants of a stubborn will… as it welled up from within me….
I looked over at the honey maker. Presently he was licking his fingers!
"But you can't do this that way!" I cried. There had to be a more orderly and sterile system for bottling honey!
"Laisse-moi faire!" Jean-Marc was calm, but firm in his suggestion.
"But I…"
"Let me handle this!" he repeated.
I looked over at Braise and Smokey, who by now were drooling beneath their window-smashed noses.
"Laisse-le faire! Laisse-le faire!" The dogs seemed to urge, all the while their eyes shined… as brightly as those glistening honey-drops which fell glop-glop-glop spot after spot.
***
The next morning I dragged my feet into the kitchen. On the stove were two great casseroles. I lifted the lids…
Just as Jean-Marc had promised, the sticky process had worked itself out, thanks to a little heat! There, in the pan, was a perfect waxen disk. Below it, pure honey!
As I stared at the miracle of miel—and the perfect order that had arisen from chaos—the words from the song that Jean-Marc had hummed the day before came to mind. As I hummed, I thought about the control freak inside of me and how, in order to break free, one might chance to be wild—wild as honey….
You can go there if you please
Wild honey
And if you go there, go with me
Wild honeyYou can do just what you please
Wild honey
Yeah, just blowing in the breeze
Wild honey
Wild, wild, wild…
"Mon Coeur"/"My Love" Do you see the big heart in the center?….
Here is that honeycomb-turned-"lid" that I found in the pan, on top of the pure honey.
FRENCH VOCABULARY
le samedi = Saturday
calcaire = chalky, hard water deposit
la ruche = bee hive
oui = yes
le cadre = frame
la cire = wax
le gâteau de miel = honeycomb
laisse-moi faire = let me handle this
laisse-le faire = let him handle this
le miel = honey
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Photo of Jean-Marc holding his first pot of 2019 honey was taken this morning, here in our garden in La Ciotat. The honey is delicious and the picture of our last sunflower of the season, is a good souvenir.
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Hi Kristi,
Love this! I just snipped my last two small sunflowers and zinnias before the freeze! We didn’t harvest honey this year but in the past, my husband has an extractor and brings it into the kitchen where he spins it. I have to leave the kitchen because it is quite the mess! haha
Hi Kristi,
Sorry to hear of the onslaught from Asiatic hornets devastating your bees – it sounds horrible.
Thank you for teaching me two new word today, one French (Frelon) and the other English (gattered) – I “Googled” gattered to learn more of its meaning and derivation, but learned only that it is used to describe someone who is worse for drink – I trust this wasn’t a description of Jean-Marc at the time!
You can make a few candles out of that wax and a small round to run quilting thread through to keep it from knotting. 🙂
Hi, Ian. Well that was a happy accident (and a typo. I meant gathered, and not gattered). So thank YOU for teaching me a new word. 🙂
Your story has made me hungry for breakfast. Wild honey is the BEST.
Kristin –
quite an interesting spelling. “a pair of chaussures began to shoe them away” I am assuming you meant “shoo” them away! I love it!
Thanks,David. Something seemed off when I wrote that, but I could not figure it out. Shoo indeed! Off to update the post.
We don’t have honey but thousands of honey bees in our old orchard. We lifted the old apple trees and they sprung to life two years ago…that brought the bees. However, we don’t have hives because of the bears but nothing rmains un pollinated in our large gardewns and we have an abundance of new and old apples in our orchards.
OH my! I’m so sorry that the frelons asiatiques have arrived…be very careful in removing them, they are very dangerous when they attack. They have started to invade our neighbourhood outside Paris. Our Mairie offers the service of locating and destroying the nest because of the threat to bees and man, perhaps your Mairie does as well?
Our dear Kristi,
Your words and descriptions today wrapped me in smiles!
And admiration for your wisdom!
It is a real challenge to keep your mouth shut when one’s husband is at work on a project,oblivious to all messes and looks of dismay from his spouse!!Sigh.
The honey looks delicious,though, and is just a wonderful gift from your bees!
Hornets are far from my list of favorites.As a kid I was attacked by a bunch of them and ended up in the emergency.
Please be careful!!
Love
Natalia xo
kristie, i think that disc in your photo is beeswax rather than honeycomb- both excellent by-products of honey gathering! i am very sorry to hear about the wasps – we are beekeepers and have to deal with european wasps..meanwhile, enjoy your honey! pascale in tasmania
Bonjour, Kristi,
The photo of your wild honey is tantalizing! I put honey on my oatmeal and absolutely love soft honey nougat with almonds.
I have noticed that lately you seem to misspell English words. I’ve followed your blog for quite a few years and take the spelling errors as a sign that you have developed into a native French-speaking bonne femme. Félicitations!
Kristi…
You are not going to believe this. We are on the same wave length or bee flight. Yesterday I was looking through my e-mails and I have a section “called french words” . It is where I put probably100 or more of your blogs to save for the story or the words. At random, I chose one. It was this one about the honey! Can you imagine my surprise when I opened today’s and this is what I saw. Sorry to hear of the hornets taking over so many hives.
Thanks for the gorgeous pictures (in this and many other posts).
One of the things I like about FWAD is that the posts capture so many anecdotes from daily life, which are usually quite interesting. I think La Famille Espinasse is often engaged in interesting activities.
Are you not going to do any more beekeeping because of the hornets?
Thanks, Marianne! We had a lot of activities going on when we lived at those two vineyards, and it is good to realize that even here, living in town, there is still much to do and see and learn in and from our garden (or yard, as we called it back home). Yes, I believe Jean-Marc will find a way to continue beekeeping.
What you have there was a perfect example of what is called a “malaprop”. Look it up if you are not familiar with that term. Well done! You could have convinced me that you did it on purpose…
Hi Kristi,
Loved your story, as always, but wanted to ask you what are those lovely (look like glass) green irregular shaped containers/vases in the background of your garden. They look quite delightful as garden ornaments!
Thanks!
Lindsay
I think that “laisse-le/la-faire” is an ingredient to a comfortable marriage. My mother who would have been 101 this year used to say, “Don’t worry about it. It all comes out in the wash…” My husband’s mania for a while was brewing beer. We kept a batch of the fermenting product in our daughter’s bedroom, since it was the warmest room in the house. I wonder what her friends parents said, when they explained that their 15 year old friend had beer brewing in her bedroom!
Thanks, Lindsay, They are called bonbonnes, and they formerly held wine (not our own). I love them, too.