Fighting to Preserve Organic Standards

It’s a rare harvest day that our winemaker Paul Frey is not found in the wine cellar from dawn to the wee hours. But on Oct 26-28th, Paul traveled to Madison, WI to defend the USDA organic wine standard. He joined fellow organic winemaker Phil La Rocca of La Rocca Vineyards, along with Steve Frenkel of Organic Vintages, who distributes organic wines in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.  They each addressed the National Organic Standards Board to argue against a proposed amendment that would allow the addition of sulfites to organic wine for the first time. Paul Frey said, “The other attendees we spoke to expressed broad support in continuing the ban of sulfites in USDA organic wines. People who believe in the foundation of organics recognize that sulfites do not belong in organic foods and wines.”

Philip La Rocca said he went to Madison, “Because I thought it was important to not just fight against sulfur dioxide in organic wine, but also because we need to be careful that we don’t open the door to allowing other synthetics in organic production. Let’s keep organics pure.”

Steve Frenkel said, "I flew to Madison because I think it's very important to maintain truth in labeling. The consumer has a right to transparency in making choices about what they are drinking."

Signed petitions are being collected by the OCA, to be submitted to the AMS Administrator who oversees the USDA's National Organic Program. Please help safegard organic food standards.

Also, check out this article on the subject written on the Huffington Post.

Nov 16, 2010 at 3:42 PM Permalink

Tucked in for the winter

Last week Marie and I tucked our bees in for the winter. Our esteemed teacher from Sonoma County, Serge LaBasque, advises that these winter preparations be completed by Nov 5th. We removed empty boxes and reduced the number of frames in each box from 9 frames to 6 in addition to solid follower boards that form an inside wall about 3 inches from the outside wall. This results in improved circulation throughout the hive to combat the damp of our northern California winters.

Marie harvested 3 beautiful frames of honey from her strongest hive and donated two of them to my weak hive that is still rebuilding from their bear attack last spring. In spite of the rich diversity of bee fodder plants here on our Biodynamic® ranch, our other 4 Golden One Room hives had only enough honey for the bees to get through the winter. Other local beekeepers have also observed that it is not a big honey year. The rains of May and June slowed down the major honey flow.

As the days grow colder, the bees hunker down in a cluster in the heart of the hive and keep their queen and each other warm, only venturing outside if it’s a warm sunny day.

Honeybee sipping Frey organic Sauvignon Blanc grape juice during harvest season.

Nov 10, 2010 at 1:39 PM Permalink

Bear in Mind

Early in April, a dramatic example of the biodiversity of Frey Vineyards played out in my front yard. A bear paid a nocturnal visit to the beehives that are 20 yards from my house. Three of my four hives were knocked off their stands, opened up, and scattered in all directions. Everything you learned about bears and honey from Winnie the Pooh is true. But this bear not only devoured all the honey, he or she feasted on the unhatched bee brood, as well.

I was shocked at the devastation and also puzzled that it happened now, after 4 years of successful beekeeping in this location. Then I realized that my 16-year-old border collie, Chester, who died in December and neighbor Tamara Frey’s old dog, Madrona, who died last month had not only been good dogs, but were also apparently maintaining a bear-free zone around our houses. Googling the California black bear, I learned that bears are diurnal, but will adjust their schedules to the challenges of their surroundings: in this case, foraging at night to avoid the humans. (Note on the California State Flag above: it depicts a grizzly bear, which no longer roams the state. But its smaller cousin, the black bear, still thrives.)

Back at the scene of the crime, my son Johnny and I scooped up pathetic clusters of stranded bees and patched the hives together. A few days later, our new intern, Keith Gelber, who has had the privilege to work with the famous Biodynamic beekeeper, Gunther Hauk, showed me how to cut out sections of comb with newly laid eggs and unhatched brood from an undisturbed hive. We rubber-banded them onto frames and placed them in the bear-attacked hive. We also combined two colonies into one. Now, a few weeks later, one of the colonies is alive and well. The clever bees transformed a newly laid egg into a queen. If all goes as nature intends, she will soon hatch and fly off for her virgin mating flight. She’ll return well fertilized from the neighborhood drones and begin her egg-laying career -- laying an astonishing 1500 eggs per day.

The other hive gave up the ghost. Their population was probably too decimated to carry out all the tasks necessary for colony survival. I guess it’s time to get another dog.

Apr 27, 2010 at 1:41 PM Permalink

An Interview with Katrina & Jonathan Frey, by GIAIM

Check out this interview with Katrina & Jonathan Frey of Frey Organic Wines, produced by the great people at GIAIM – Healthy Green Living. The interview was recorded a few years ago.

Feb 26, 2010 at 4:58 PM Permalink

Life cycle of the honeybees

Honeybees gained national attention last month when Michelle Obama installed two hives in her organic White House garden. I’m excited about the stream of children and adults who will visit and become inspired to care for bees. About one-third of our human diet comes from insect-pollinated plants and the honeybee is responsible for 80 percent of that pollination.

Spring is the time of year to establish new colonies because it’s the season when the bees are expanding their populations. Wintertime colonies typically number about 10,000 individual bees, but now in springtime the queen bee in each hive is busy laying as many as 2,000 new eggs a day. By early summer a healthy hive will house 40,000-60,000 residents!

When a new bee is born it crawls out of its nest built within a tiny hexagon of pristine wax. Male bees are drones, named for the low humming noises they make, and are large and hairy with huge eyes. They are free to travel and visit other bee colonies, perhaps as ambassadors and communicators. During the warm late spring and summer days thousands of drones congregate with other neighborhood males high up in the sky just above the treetops in “drone zones.” This congregation of males from different colonies ensures genetic diversity for the queens who will soon appear. The drones wait patiently until they meet and mate with a queen bee during her virgin flight. After mating in the air, the drones die, hopefully ecstatic up to that point, and plunge to earth. The queen mates with about a dozen drones and goes home filled with a lifetime supply of sperm. The queen bee is by far the longest-lived member of the hive, living up to three years, much longer than the six weeks to three-month life span of the other bees. By the end of August, the drones’ work is done and they will die at 3 months of age and the queen will lay no more drone eggs until the next spring.

Throughout the brief but wondrous life of a female worker honeybee, thirteen different glands fire up and then recede to assist in the current task of the bee. When a female bee emerges from her shining cell of wax she quickly goes to work cleaning out used cells and readying them for new brood. She does this with juice from a specialized salivary gland. Her next task is to feed the baby bees (brood) with royal jelly, nutritious “milk” produced from yet another gland near their mouth. The brood is also fed with “bee bread,” a mix of pollen and honey. A circle of female bees constantly attends the queen, feeding her with royal jelly and assisting her with the all-important work of egg laying. In other parts of the hive, bees are busy creating new comb from tiny drops of wax secreted from their wax glands. The comb will soon be filled with pollen and nectar that slowly evaporates and ages into exquisite honey. Next, the versatile worker bees become guards, and start to use their bee sting venom glands.

After about a month of housework, the female bees graduate and go outside into the sunlight for the first time. They emerge as part of a great cloud of comrades, turn around and face their hive, and staying within a few feet of their home, fly in lazy lemniscates (figure eights.) They are orienting by memorizing the outline of the horizon behind their home. Now they can begin their foraging career. During one sunny warm day a bee will visit hundreds of individual flowers, gathering nectar and pollen to bring back to the hive and at the same time performing the invaluable work of pollination, spreading pollen dust from flower to flower. After a few weeks of foraging, a honeybee will finally fly her delicate wings to tatters and will die at about 6 weeks of age.

On a 45-minute foraging flight, a bee visits 200-300 flowers of the same plant species. Honeybees are known to be “faithful to flowers”, because they will continue to visit only the same kinds of flowers as long as they are blooming. This consistency is what makes honeybees such desirable pollinators compared to other native bees and insects that tend to flit from species to species. Honeybees fill their crops (honey pouches) with nectar equaling half of their body weight. Honeybees from a typical hive visit around 225,000 flowers per day. The bees make an average of 1,600 round trips and will travel up to three miles from the hive in order to produce one ounce of honey. To make one pound of honey, honeybees must visit some 2 million flowers and fly about 55,000 miles.

The next time you spread a delicious nutritious spoonful of honey on your toast, take a minute to marvel upon the complexity within each drop of honey.

“Honey is something so valuable that it is impossible to put a price on it.”
Rudolf Steiner

May 4, 2009 at 1:50 PM Permalink

Organic Leeks in Wine Sauce

Katrina Frey's Leeks in Wine Sauce is appropriate this time of year when the leeks are in full allium! Begin your Spring cooking expedition by pouring for yourself and friends a glass of one of the Frey dry organic red wines, and save about 2 cups for the following recipe:

Leeks in Wine Sauce

Take 6 medium sized leeks from your Spring or Fall garden, or organic food store
Slice them all lengthwise, and clean them really well (all the folds)
Then slice them into 5 inch pieces and they're ready
Heat about 5-6 tbsp olive oil in a deep cast iron skillet
Add the leeks and stir them on medium heat until they have all wilted
Pour two cups wine (we recommend the Frey Natural Red, although any of the reds would work well) over the mixture
And add water as necessary to submerge the leeks in liquid
Mix in 2 tbsp tamari or 1 1/2 tsp salt
Cover the mixture, turn to low heat, and let stew for about 35 minutes (or until very tender), checking every 10 or so minutes to make sure they aren't sticking
Enjoy your vegan meal as an entrée or as a delectable side dish

May 1, 2009 at 1:45 PM Permalink

Welcome to the Frey Vineyards Bee Blog!

I know I’m a novice beekeeper, but I suspect the awe and mystery I experience as I open a hive will last for the rest of my life. Last Saturday Marie and I inspected our five hives. It was only the end of January, but we’d had a month of extremely unusual weather – no rain and daytime temperatures in the 60’s and 70’s. Typically, our bees would be tucked inside their homes, waiting out storms and cold and munching on their stores of honey. But it was spring outside! Lots of bees were out and about and hauling in loads of four different shades of brightly colored pollen. The mustard cover crops in our biodynamic vineyard are flowering, as well as hedgerows of manzanita, willow and winter honeysuckle (Lonicera fragrantissima).

Katrina and Daniel Frey in bee suits, holding up a honeycomb swarming with bees.

After opening the boxes we found to our wonder bustling activity – freshly laid worker and drone brood and lots of stored pollen, filling every available space in the hive. They had eaten very little of their honey since the end of October when the hives were shrunk down for winter because it had been warm enough for them to be out gathering nectar and making new honey. So we added frames and even a super (an additional box) to one hive and wished them well.

Feb 6, 2009 at 1:52 PM Permalink