Chapter 723 Chapter 728: Queen Bee
"The price of aged mugwort is several times that of fresh mugwort. If you have a place to store it, you can keep it for two more years. In May, you can cut more and store it at home," said Wang Zhen, suddenly remembering something.
"The provincial capital is preparing to collect mugwort to distill and extract essential oil. They only accept mugwort that has been dried in the shade three days before and four days after the Dragon Boat Festival. They will not accept it at other times. The price is not bad, 50 cents per pound for the stalks.
I am worried that if I give it to someone else, they might send me the wormwood cut at other times. In this case, less essential oil will be extracted during distillation and the quality will be poor. You have a large area here, so try to collect more fresh grass during this time period, dry it in the shade and send it to me. "
The ancients discovered that the time period 3 days before and 4 days after the Dragon Boat Festival belongs to pure yang energy, which is also the time when mugwort is most nutritious and has the best medicinal properties.
Because it is harvested too early, it has not grown yet and the fragrance is not strong enough; if it is harvested too late, after the Dragon Boat Festival, the weather will be getting hotter and hotter, which will also cause some of the nutrients in the mugwort to be lost.
"Wow~ this price is really good!"
Zhou Huaian calculated that three pounds of fresh mugwort can usually be used to dry one pound of dried mugwort. If the price is ten cents per pound, there must be a lot of people cutting mugwort to sell, because mugwort is much heavier than other herbs.
When the time comes, let my eldest brother and his men tell the secretaries of several villages that if the price of rich cattle is one dime per pound, they will charge 8 cents per pound after deducting the diesel money. We are just afraid that several yards will not have enough space to dry them.
As for Secretary Xu and Uncle Datian, just give them some profit and let them collect the cattle and give them away.
In a flash, he had thought of the acquisition plan, and was waiting for the Dragon Boat Festival so that his family could make a small profit and everyone could also make some money to supplement the family expenses.
"Yes, we should be able to make a small profit in a few days. I plan to ask my mother-in-law to help with the harvest." Wang Zhen said, "Brother-in-law, I think you can use the empty space in the forest to grow mugwort.
After the Dragon Boat Festival harvest, you can harvest twice more at the end of the year. You can dry them in the shade and store them for sale, or you can send fresh goods to me. "
Zhou Huaian thought it was a good idea. "It's not difficult to grow mugwort. It's everywhere by the river and in the woods. It's cheap and rotten. Just dig up some roots and plant them back home. But you usually only charge 3 or 4 cents per pound for fresh products with stems. It's not worth it."
Zhou Yiding also became interested after hearing this, "Youngest brother, 3 or 4 cents per pound is also good, and we can harvest two crops after the Dragon Boat Festival! It's more profitable than growing potatoes and sweet potatoes."
"That's true!" Zhou Huaian thought that when sweet potatoes were on the market, they were only sold for two or three cents per pound, so it was indeed worthwhile to grow mugwort.
While the three were talking, the little bees in the hive had already flown out, one by one, and landed on a big tree about thirty or forty meters away from the cliff.
Standing in front of the cliff, you can see large black balls formed by thousands of little bees, and their angry "buzzing" sounds keep drilling into your ears.
Zhou Yiding saw that the little bees had almost fled, so he picked up the medicine hoe and dug the old bear's skull out of the hole. He ran to the ditch with the medicine hoe and threw it to the other side, "Go!"
The skull flew out and landed in the grass with a "puff", startling a group of birds in the tree.
After he left, Zhou Huaian, who had been waiting there wearing a bee hat, placed the beehive at the entrance of the cave. He put on gloves and approached the entrance. He used a flashlight to check the honey combs inside, and they were intact.
Thinking of the old bear yesterday, he gloated and said, "You should be thankful that we freed you early, otherwise you would have become the first old bear in history to tie itself up and starve to death."
Wang Zhen, who was standing nearby wearing a bee hat, smiled and joked, "Brother-in-law, you should ask it to send you a banner that says "helping others is a pleasure."
"We are higher animals, so we need to be kind." Zhou Huaian said with a smile, "We have already eaten its meat and sold its gallbladder and kneecap for money, so we don't need it to bother making silk banners. We need to be kind."
Wang Zhen asked with amusement after hearing this: "How much honey is in it, my good friend?"
Zhou Huaian looked at the honey combs hanging in the cave like soldiers in formation, "It's not a wasted trip, it's a great board!" He said, moving aside, "Let me show you."
Wang Zhen leaned over to take a look. The cave looked a bit like a wine jar with a small mouth and a big belly. The honeycombs inside gave off a sweet fragrance with a hint of herbal flavor. There were also some guard bees still staying on the hive, stubbornly guarding the nest.
He asked curiously, "When was the last time you cut honey combs?"
"When we found this hive two years ago, the little bees had just moved in and we had only harvested a little over a kilogram of new honey. In a blink of an eye, it's been more than two years, almost three years."
As Zhou Huaian spoke, he reached out to cut the honey comb. Zhou Yiding, who had rushed back, handed the honey bucket to Wang Zhen. Zhou Yiding took the honey comb he handed over, took out a knife and cut a small piece of the honey comb for Wang Zhen. "Look, that's all capped honey. Take a bite, it's so sweet that it makes you choke."
Wang Zhen took it and put it in his mouth. It was instantly sweet to his heart and lungs. "Very good, mellow taste, fragrant and sweet."
Zhou Yiding cut another piece and handed it to him. Wang Zhen shook his head and said, "One piece is enough. If you eat more, you will get sick of it." Then he pointed at his nose and said, "Honeycomb that is more than three years old is also a kind of medicinal material.
You can try this for your rhinitis. Keep some honey combs at home, break off a small piece of honey combs or honey wax and chew it slowly. Over time, the nasal congestion, loss of smell, runny nose, etc. caused by rhinitis will be improved. "
"It turns out there are such benefits!" Zhou Yiding immediately broke off a piece and put it in his mouth, chewing it slowly. "It's too sweet. After the honey is filtered out, I will save some beeswax to eat."
Wang Zhen smiled and nodded, "Beeswax is better, it's not that sweet."
"Ding Ding cat, take this." Zhou Huaian handed over a bunch of pollen combs. Because the two of them planned to take back this nest of wild bees, he cut out all the pollen combs and brood combs and put them together in a bee bait bucket to take back.
Zhou Yiding saw that there were already six or seven honey combs in the bucket, "Youngest, you haven't cut the queen cells yet?"
"There are still six or seven more, maybe among these at the back." Zhou Huaian said as he handed out another one.
After cutting nine capped honeycombs in a row, Zhou Huaian started again and saw a nipple-shaped honeycomb at the bottom edge of the honeycomb he was holding. The queen bee lived in this honeycomb.
The bee honeycomb is made up of thousands of cells built by bees with beeswax. Worker bees store honey and pollen in the cells of the honeycomb.
The comb that stores honey is called a honey comb, the one that reproduces offspring is called a brood comb, and the one that stores pollen is called a pollen comb. Often, one comb contains both brood combs, honey combs, and pollen combs.
Honey is often stored in the upper corners of the honeycomb, followed by the pink circle, and the brood circle in the lower middle.
There are three kinds of bees in a beehive.
First, the queen bee is the only female bee in the entire bee colony that can lay eggs normally. All the drones and worker bees in the hive, including the new queen bee, develop from her eggs.
The queen bee is cultivated from the fertilized eggs living in the queen cell built by the worker bees, but there are not just one fertilized egg in the queen cell, but ten or eight. However, there can only be one queen bee in a hive.
In this process, it depends on who grows faster.
The queen bee that emerges first will order the killing of the queen bees that have not yet emerged. If two queen bees emerge at the same time, a battle of kings will take place and one of them must die.
The second is the drone, which does not participate in labor but only mates with the queen bee and dies soon after mating. They are the most selfless contributors in the entire bee colony.
The third is the worker bee. The worker bee’s job is to build nests, collect food, feed larvae, clean the nest chambers and regulate the dryness and wetness inside the nest.
Zhou Huaian carefully cut off the honeycomb that housed the queen bee, then carefully carried it out of the cave, handed it to Zhou Yiding, and said, "Dingding cat, this is the queen cell, put it in the beehive."
"Okay!" Zhou Yiding took it with both hands and put it into the bee trap. "We have cut all the queen cells. How many are left?"
"There are four more."
After finding the queen cell, Zhou Huaian sped up and quickly cut off the remaining honeycombs. He then put the honey combs, brood combs and pollen combs into the honey bucket and bee bait bucket respectively.
This time, the little bees' nest was destroyed, but this cave is backed by a mountain and can shelter from wind and rain. It is simply a perfect place for wild bees to build their nests. It won't be long before other little bees will come here to build their nests.
Zhou Huaian took off his beekeeper hat and gloves, "Let's go to the ditch to look at the Eucommia tree and wait for the little bees to come back."
Wang Zhen turned his head and looked at the bee cluster hanging on the big tree over there. "Will they live in the bee trap when they come back?"
Zhou Huaian nodded, "Yes, the queen bee is in the bee trap. When we extinguish the moxa sticks, they will naturally come back and enter the bee trap to look for the queen bee."
After he placed the bee-luring barrel against the cliff, Zhou Yiding also covered the honey barrel full of honey combs with a lid. The three of them walked towards the ditch with guns and dogs.
As Wang Zhen walked along the way, he discovered that there were smilax glabra and honeysuckle growing on the edge of the forest, and rhubarb, snow primrose, and selfheal growing on the ground. When he walked to the edge of the ditch, he also found saxifrage. The plants with green stems had grown to half a person's height.
People call this kind of weed "Amaranth". It is a local variety and also a high-quality wild vegetable. The young shoots that sprout at this time taste good.
There is also an alien species of Phytolacca with purple-red stems, its scientific name is Phytolacca verticalis. This species of Phytolacca is highly poisonous and must not be eaten.
Different places call it big amaranth, jianzhongxiao, wild ginseng, golden seven Niang, wild radish, and rouge grass according to its appearance.
The tubers of Shanglu are fleshy, thick and usually conical. They can be used as medicine after being dried. The white and fleshy ones are best. They have the effects of treating edema, dispersing nodules, and facilitating urination and defecation.
The red root is highly toxic and is only used externally to treat carbuncle, swelling and sore. It can also be used as veterinary medicine and pesticide.
Zhou Huaian pointed at the Drynaria fortunei and Olive tree growing on the rocks by the ditch and said, "Look, they are growing better here than the ones I planted on the rocks in the forest."
"They like shady and moist places. There are no ditches in the forest behind the mountain, and the trees are not dense enough, so they are a little worse."
Wang Zhen looked over from the ditch and saw that the bushes on the opposite side were covered with chicken shit vine, snake retreat grass, Gynostemma pentaphyllum, and Polygonum multiflorum.
I feel that there is a natural herb garden next to the old forest. You can find a kind of herb every few steps. I don’t know how rich the variety of herbs in the deep forest is.
(End of this chapter)
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com