Chapter 50 Digging for Wine
Mu Xi thought about it and said, "I don't recommend it. If we don't take good care of it after catching it, it will be useless. But we can wait for it to swarm."
When bees swarm, a group of bees will move out when there is no more room to live in one place.
After the scout bees find a suitable place, the old queen bee of the original hive will give way to the new queen bee, and then lead a group of bees to the new place to build a hive.
The moving bees will also take away some moving expenses - each bee will have some honey in its mouth.
"But swarming isn't something that happens in the spring, and it's already past now."
"Just think about how much honey I brought back. This is only half." Mu Xi finished eating the last dumpling and brought in the stainless steel basin of honey from the yard.
"With this number, the tree hole is already overloaded. The bees usually swarm once more in September or October. Our bee trap bucket is placed near the nectar source, and maybe we can lure them in."
Zhao Yeqing thought it made sense. A business with no capital investment would not lose money no matter what.
Looking at the golden honey in the basin, she couldn't help but want to taste it.
Use a spoon to scoop up a piece of honeycomb honey and make sure there are no bees on it before putting it into your mouth.
Golden honey fills every cell of beeswax, and the honey will be squeezed out when you bite it. The pure natural honey has a rich floral fragrance, which is completely different from the one in the supermarket.
This kind of honey almost does not flow and is very thick. The flowing ones in supermarkets are either adulterated or watery honey.
Some unscrupulous merchants feed bees with white sugar, and the honey they produce is extremely sweet.
Zhao Yeqing noticed that the color of the honeycomb honey varied from top to bottom.
She was a little surprised, "Is this medium honey?"
Mu Xi also reached out, broke off a piece and threw it into his mouth, then nodded.
Chinese honey is also commonly known as wild honey, and its output is very rare.
The Chinese honey bee is a kind of bee in China that collects nectar from a variety of flowers. Pure local honey has a small yield, a high price and is in short supply. Most of the honey on the market is Italian honey, a foreign imported variety that has a large yield and a moderate price. They like to collect nectar from a single large area.
If there are bees collecting nectar from small flowers on the roadside, they are most likely Chinese bees.
Italian bees like to collect nectar from large areas of rapeseed and acacia flowers, and they don't care about isolated small flowers.
The honeycomb honey that Mu Xi harvested had different shades of color on the top and bottom. Generally speaking, it was wild honey collected from various flowers.
She scooped another big piece and put it in her mouth. The honey bee was sweet and rich but not choking at all, which made her squint her eyes in satisfaction.
"Oh!" She suddenly remembered that the peach gum milk stew she had made was still there.
I got two bowls from the kitchen, put two large spoonfuls in each and put two ice cubes in them.
It’s a pity that she added rock sugar in advance, otherwise it would be great with honey.
After the peach gum is cooked, you can no longer taste the gelatinous texture. It is not as sticky as white fungus, but is refreshing and chewy like jelly.
Peach gum is not only found on peach trees, but plum trees and apricot trees also secrete a sap similar to peach gum, collectively known as peach gum, also called peach blossom tears.
When I was a child, I didn’t know that this was edible. Later, after working for a few years, I found that this thing has actually become a beauty supplement for women.
I feel like I missed out on a billion when I was a kid.
When the bowl of peach gum was empty, she looked at the large pot of honey at her feet and thought it was time to get some peach wine and dried peaches.
What does it mean to have your fill while still eyeing the pot? This person is exactly like that.
Mu Xi had been out working all day today and came back injured. Zhao Yeqing happily took over the task of washing the dishes.
Mu Xi was sitting on the sofa dividing the honeycomb.
Zhao Yeqing loves to chew honeycomb. He chews out all the honey inside and then spits out the beeswax.
Mu Xi used a sealed box to pack out two large pieces of honeycomb honey, and then squeezed out the remaining honey.
Put the honeycomb honey on the strainer and squeeze it, and use a small bowl to catch it underneath. The golden honey is squeezed out and flows through the strainer into the bowl.
The filter screen contains a mixture of white, yellow and black beeswax impurities.
I squeezed it by hand without a honey shaker, so the honey I squeezed out was turbid and not as clear.
The beeswax residue on the filter is also collected and can be used.
All the honey was squeezed out, filling three large jars.
It was the first time for Zhao Yeqing to eat honey made at home. In the past, he would buy it from others in the village, and the taste was a little different from the honey made at home.
When asked what was different, she couldn't say, but it was just different.
Three bottles of honey were neatly placed in the cupboard.
After she ate the fifth mouthful of honeycomb honey that night, Mu Xi ordered her not to eat any more and sent her to bed.
-
The first thing Zhao Yeqing does when he wakes up in the morning is to make a cup of honey water.
After drinking, she noticed that the coat Mu Xi wore last night was still on the bench. He hadn't had time to wash it, so she reached out to take it and wash it for him.
Mu Xi, who just walked in, saw this and slapped the hand that was stretched out to take the clothes.
"No, I'll do it. When you get stung, I, who's out collecting honey, will have to coax you again."
Zhao Yeqing was speechless. What kind of person was he in his mind?
She went into the kitchen and fried two traditional Zhao family egg pancakes, and also made a cup of honey water for Mu Xi and placed it on the table.
She ate her portion of pancake slowly before telling the man washing clothes in the yard that there was breakfast on the table.
Just a little grudge.
Zhao Yeqing went out of the yard and, as usual, watered the paddy fields and the two vegetable gardens.
Watching the sun rise, I went home to make the dried peaches and peach wine that I had planned yesterday.
Peel all the peaches and cut them into pieces, leaving a plate of fresh ones to eat as fruit, and soak the remaining half in wine and the other half as dried fruit.
The pulp for making dried fruit needs to be pickled in sugar for two hours.
When pickling the pulp, soak it in wine first.
She went to the tool room to get a shovel and asked Mu Xi, "Where did my grandfather bury the wine?"
Mu Xi also took a shovel and led the way to the corner behind the Mu family's house. He poked the ground with the shovel and said, "That's it."
The two men each hit something and soon felt they hit something. They didn't use much force and stopped as soon as the impact occurred, so the wine jar was not broken.
Five jars of wine were dug out from the corner.
"Five altars? As expected of my grandfather, he is really good at hiding things."
Mu Xi shook his head. "I don't know either. I didn't see that much at the time."
"That means I hid it several times secretly. I have to tell grandma about this."
Zhao Yeqing couldn't help laughing when he thought about the scene in the other world where his grandfather was being pulled by his grandmother's ears.
The wine jars are all very old-fashioned earthenware jars.
Some appear darker in color and some appear lighter.
The time span is quite large.
At first glance, Zhao Yeqing saw that each jar of wine had a label, which should be the year.
There were three jars that looked similar, and Zhao Yeqing compared the labels.
On August 12, 3021, an old friend gave me three jars of good wine.
The three altars all have the same date, and Mu Xi confirmed that this was what he saw that year.
There was another jar that was relatively new. She could see the label clearly and the writing was a little crooked.
On December 13, 3025, his beloved wife passed away.
In just a moment, Zhao Yeqing's tears fell.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
