The Wicked Hen

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The Wicked Hen

A Personal Blog and Hand Crafted Products

08/04/2025

Everyone has them… loads of “coffee” mugs in your cupboard. I actually have mugs that match my dishware, but I don’t use them. These are my 5 favorite mugs I use. Each seems to serve a different purpose. The CSULB and the “Talk is Cheap” mugs are my hot cocoa mugs. The owls are my hot tea mugs, and the red bird is either hot water, or pancake mixing 😆. No matter how many coffee cups pass through my cupboards, these ones always remain and the rest get donated.

Tell me… what’s in your cupboard and do you have a favorite and why?!

04/12/2025

Ignoring the spotty brood pattern, check out this girl’s pollen pants!! 💜 It was crazy vibrant purple to the naked eye. Purple pollen comes from a plant known as common mallow. It’s a very common w**d around us, I’ve even seen it in our dirt yard.

Pollen pockets on a bees legs are actually known as corbiculae (singular corbicula). They are concave spots on their lower hind legs that have little hairs that help to hold the collected pollen they pack into it.

This latest inspection, the girls are bringing in both purple and white pollen (I’m going to assume white is from basil based on our zone and season).

The foraging worker bee collects pollen from flowers and brings it back to the hive where another worker bee will take it and pack it down into a cell in the hive. Pollen is used to mix together with nectar (which is then called bee bread) which is then used to feed the larval stages of the bee life cycle.

12/09/2024

Didn’t get much inventory prepped for the holidays. Time seems to get away from me more often than I’d like to admit. There’s still time to receive your order before Christmas, but the window is soon closing. Merry Christmas!

09/03/2024

Finally found the time to tinker with a long overdue project. I’ve always wanted to display my knives with easy access, and since I have individually purchased knives based on what I use, I don’t have a knife block for them. They have sadly been neglected and tossed into a drawer for far too long.

Woods used includes hard maple, mahogany, padauk, walnut, and wenge.

A small voice inside my head does ask me if I’ve made knife access too easy for a serial killer psychopath that may come through my house…. But that’s likely just from my obsession of watching too many true crime type of shows. 🔪☠️😆

07/30/2024

Have I ever mentioned the mess that tends to follow a beekeeper’s life? 😆 I am always playing the “one step behind my bees” game and decided perhaps I can finally get a leg ahead and put together more gear before I actually need it next spring. Needless to say, my garage has turned into chaos. At least it smells good, fresh wood and beeswax with a slight twist of honey. 🐝

07/25/2024

The new school season is coming up fast, don’t forget to pick up some personalized pencils. Names and sayings can be changed or customized. You get 5 Ticonderoga pencils for $5 (not including shipping)

07/18/2024

While the actual numbers are all over the place, did you know that a high percentage of store bought honey is a modified version of real honey? Many are filtered using ultra-fine filters and requires pasteurizing (high heat) to filter. Once they heat up honey they kill those healthy enzymes that makes honey so beneficial, then they run it through ultra-fine filters which removes the beneficial pollen and propolis. They do this so it has a longer shelf life in liquid form and looks pretty to the consumer because it flows smoothly. 🤦🏼‍♀️

Let’s not forget the honey that is cut with corn syrup, water, cane sugars, and lesser quality imported honey (take a real honey and add a “honey” from China). The FDA did a study on imported honey in 2022 and out of 144 samples, they found 14 (10%) with adulteration. That means the honey was cut (not real) and their label didn’t reflect that. 😳 The labels still said 100% honey. Let’s hope our honey in America is more honest?!

Last but not least, let’s discuss what real honey is. Real honey is nectar that has come from flowers that bees have collected and brought back to the hive. When they put the nectar into cells of their hive they add beneficial enzymes and bacteria (yes, regurgitated bee “vomit”). This may also include pollen and propolis from the hive. They then proceed to fan the nectar and dehydrate it to below 17% water content, where it is now considered honey. This is when I come along and collect the honey. 😉

A few ways to tell if your honey is fake honey:
- place a drop of honey on your finger, real honey stays put, fake honey will spread out
- put a bit of honey in water. Real honey will sink to the bottom, fake honey will dissapate
- if you’ve had your honey for quite a while, it crystallizes over time
- dip a matchstick into honey and light it. Real honey will light, fake honey cut with water will not
- put some honey on a spoon and invert it, real honey will do its best to hold on to the spoon, fake honey will slip off

If you’ve made it this far, congrats! Support a local beekeeper and buy your honey from them. That way you know where your honey came from and what’s in it! 🐝🍯

💛

06/19/2024

Checked in on the girls 🐝 today and it appears we are in a dearth (that means they can’t find enough nectar and pollen to sustain babies through the season). I have to say, knowing which plants are in bloom, seasonal changes, etc has got to be the hardest part of beekeeping. Mixing up a 1:1 sugar water solution to supplement through summer, which means it’s time for the honey supers to come off the hives I’m about to feed. 3rd year in and still not a ton of honey 🤦🏼‍♀️. Check out this amazing pot I found while thrifting. It’s absolutely PERFECT for mixing up my solutions. 😍

02/24/2024

Bring on Spring!! Fresh cut flowers to adorn the table. 💛

02/07/2024

Waste not. Picked the few final lemons from the tree for fresh lemonade. Dehydrating the rind for some homemade lemon powder and pulp is in the freezer until I get around to baking. 💛🍋

11/27/2023

I really do love being a tiny part of such a special occasion for folks!

Finished up a few final custom orders before I go in for hand surgery this Thursday and am out of commission until February. Happy Holidays all! ❤️

11/21/2023

Prepping a Thanksgiving feast… for the bees. 😆😆

A colony collects nectar and stores it as honey to feed themselves and their babies. Their honey reserve may ebb and flow with the season just as blooms in our gardens do. If a keeper takes too much of their excess honey stores, or the bees don’t produce enough through the season, a hive can starve to death over winter. To help get them through winter, many beekeepers provide what are known as candy boards. Basically, it’s a sugar water mixture that dries to make a giant sugar cube.

I left the majority of their honey stores, but one colony still feels a bit light (you can lift up the back edge of the boxes and feel a weight). Better safe than sorry, I’ll provide both hives with candy boards to assist them through winter as needed. Here’s hoping my girls make it through the next few months. 🤞🏻💛🐝

Happy Thanksgiving all!

Address

PO Box 1172
Taft, CA
93268

Website

http://www.thewickedhen.com/

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