Maayan & I visit the hive

Maayan at the hive

After I took Maayan kicking and screaming (not really) to the hive, she really had a great time. We approached the hive, got the smoker going and started warning the bees that we had arrived. I find using the smoker easier now that I empty the contents every time I start and build a small fire in it before I add the leaves. I have a plastic bag with pine needles and eucalyptus leaves which I use for the fire/smoke. It has a nice smell and even when I get home I can smell the smoke on my hands and clothes and when it doesn’t remind me of Laphroig or Lagavulin single malt scotch (flashback to the Berman Scotch Club with Pinchas), it reminds me of the hive and honey.

The hive is doing great, lots of new brood and fair amount of honey. I did not go through the hive, frame by frame, but did manage to pull frames on either end, the second to last frames and a centre frame that came with the nuc and is very heavy.

New and old Langstroth frames

 It was a real chore getting it out. I first use a “J” hive tool and pull the edge of the frame up. Then I take the other hive tool and use it block the edge of the frame from slipping back into the hive. Then I take the hive tool and pry at the other end of the frame. With two side loosened and a few inches over the top of the other frames, I use my fingers to pull the frame straight up. Sometimes I wonder if I should invest in a frame grip, a small device that allows you to pull the frame up from the centre of the frame.

Fresh comb

I found the frame on the far side to be built up with comb. The base foundation that I saw a week ago is almost all covered by comb at this point. When I replaced the frame I actually put in  last slot, allowing the bees to start working on it before they get to the frame that already has a fair amount of comb. Take a look at the photo of the darkened frame. It weighs a lot more than the other frames because it came from the nuc and it is loaded with good stuff.

By this point Maayan joined me and quickly overcame her fear of bees. In a matter of minutes she started playing with one of the bees at the edge of a frame, using the hive tool I had given her to hold. I had visions of a squashed bee, sending out signals to her sister bees to attack us, so I suggested to Maayan that she be a little more gentle with the bee. I put the frames back in their hive, notices some small ants on the bottom board as well as some fine dark droppings. Is this the dreaded Varroa mites leaving their mark? Next time, when Alison comes with me, I will remove more frames and photograph the bottom of the hive.  I put the feeder back on and gave them another gallon of sugar water, placed the crown board on and said goodbye  to our noisy friends.

Chicken eggs in an incubator

We then headed over to Sue and Harry’s. Sue had emailed  me to tell me that two chicks had hatched and the girls could come see them. Maayan insisted on removing her bee suit, having already proved to anyone watching that she was a big girl and not afraid of bees. She is a little fashion expert and I think that now that she was not doing the bee thing on the farm, she should switch back to her elegant city clothes, suitable for visiting newborn chicks.

There were a whole lot of eggs sitting in plastic incubator. Sue explained that two had already hatched they were in a box with a hanging light bulb to keep them warm. They were adorable and Sue allowed Maayan (fearless at this point) to hold the chicks.

Maayan holding a chick on a moshav near Rehovot, Israel

The girls in their new bee suits

They love the idea of being junior beekeepers and rushed home from school to try their new suits on. Maayan, realizing that this white armor was meant to protect her from harm, quickly lost interest in visiting the bees. In fact, she complained that the wrist elastic was too tight and started to cry. We understood the theatrics, reasoned with her and told her that she did not have a choice, she was going to visit the bees but she did not have to stand very close. Zoe had a violin lesson so she wasn’t able to go. Maayan wimpered all the way to the car but when we arrived she was enthusiastic, came close and even started playing with a bee or two with the hive tool. I had to tell her to be a little more gentle. She lost all fear (not good) and is really looking forward to going back again.

Kids’ bee suits arrived

We ordered extra small bee suits for the girls so they will be able to
join in on the beekeeping. We received a notice from the post office
that the suits arrived yesterday. Alison will pick them up and hopefully
we will be able to let them have their first visit to the hive (up
close) this evening.

Stay tuned for pictures…

Effect of Propolis on Fat Accumulation/Lipid Metabolism?

Propolis in a Beehive

Propolis is a resinous mixture that honey bees collect from tree buds, sap flows, or other botanical sources. It is used as a sealant for unwanted open spaces in the hive. Propolis is used for small gaps (approximately 6.35 millimeters (0.3 in) or less), while larger spaces are usually filled with beeswax. Its color varies depending on its botanical source, the most common being dark brown. Propolis is sticky at and above room temperature. At lower temperatures it becomes hard and very brittle.

For centuries, beekeepers assumed that bees sealed the beehive with propolis to protect the colony from the elements, such as rain and cold winter drafts. However, 20th century research has revealed that bees not only survive, but also thrive, with increased ventilation during the winter months throughout most temperate regions of the world.

Propolis is now believed to:

• Reinforce the structural stability of the hive
• Reduce vibration
• Make the hive more defensible by sealing alternate entrances
• Prevent diseases and parasites from entering the hive
• Prevent putrefaction within the hive. Bees usually carry waste out of and away from the hive. However if a small lizard or mouse, for example, found its way into the hive and died there, bees may be unable to carry it out through the hive entrance. In that case, they would attempt instead to seal the carcass in propolis, essentially mummifying it and making it odorless and harmless.

An interesting study has just been published in the Journal of Food Science on the beneficial effect of propolis on fat accummulation and lipid metabolism in rats.

You can read an abstract below and follow the link to the article.

The Beneficial Effect of Propolis on Fat Accumulation and Lipid Metabolism in Rats Fed a High-Fat Diet

Comments Requested

This photo is one of the new frames from our colony. The five frames from the nuc were added to our empty hive five days earlier.

Can someone tell me if the bottom cells are brood or uncapped honey? I know the top whiteish cells are capped honey. The bees seem to be drawing out the comb at an excellent pace. I wonder how soon I should be adding a super and if I need to add it for the brood or honey and if I should use a queen excluder.

Any advice would be appreciated!

A new frame after five days

New bee report – Beekeeping in Israel

Stevy with a Smoker

Today is Friday, Israel’s Sunday and a perfect day to visit our new hive. We dropped the kids off at school and drove over to the moshav near Rehovot to check on our first hive. We installed the hive this past Sunday and gave them almost a gallon of sugar/water syrup. The bee breeder told us to return in two weeks and give them another gallon. We took two litres of sugar syrup just in case the bees needed a top-off. This was just a quick trip because Alison has some work to do today so she did not suit up but took some great pictures with my camera.

Bees send out signals in two ways – dance and scent. The dance, is a way of telling fellow bees where the good nectar is and where it can be found. Some people use their hands when they talk, bees do a dance. The other way of communicating, the scent, is the one beekeepers have to be careful of if they don’t want to get stung.

Adding Fuel to a Bee Smoker

If the guard bees at the entrance to the hive think that the hive is being threatened, they release pheromones that alert the other bees to go into protect mode. Even if you are wearing a bee suit, you can be stung if the bees are determined enough. Besides, you don’t want to piss off these little guys, you are there to help them make their honey. Just remember the saying ” If a bee comes to your house, give her beer, you might visit her house one day.”

The way beekeepers disarm the guard bees is to send some smoke into the hive. The smoke does two things, it masks the pheromones that are released by the guard bees and also sends a signal to the bees that their tree that houses their hive might be on fire. The bees react by slurping up some honey into their honey tummies in case there really is a fire and they have to escape to a new hive with their precious honey. Their system is one of survival and they know that they need the honey for tomorrow. Alison and I have asked each other on occasion what we would take if we had to quickly leave our apartment. It wouldn’t be food. The bee smoker is one of the most important tools that a beekeeper uses and we are still getting used to making it work for us. The key is to use the right fuel and adding enough to last your entire session with the bees. You don’t want to turn to the smoker and find that the fire went out because you put too much wood in it. We, being bee newbies, bought a package of smoker pellets.

Stevy with a Bee Smoker and Hive Tools

They are not viable for a commercial operation but for hobby farmers like us, they seemed perfect They look like they are extruded from the same type of machine that makes rabbit food and perhaps rabbit food would have been a more effective fuel for our smoker than the pellets. We gave up earlier in the week with the pellets and switched to eucalyptus leaves, twigs and paper. I have heard of some beekeepers who make a little package of fuel for the smoker and insert it, wrapped in a sheet of newspaper, into a cardboard toilet paper tube. It makes one simple solution to looking for the right leaves and twigs.

I got the smoker really smoking this morning and gave the entrance a healthy dose of smoke. You are supposed to wait at least 30 seconds to get those little bees diving into to their stores of honey. Once they do, they are like couch potatoes sitting and drinking beer, eating pizza and watching TV.

When they are full of honey they are not likely to sting anyone unless you REALLY piss them off. Stepping on members of the family will do that so the key is being gentle and watching where you step.

Next, I took off the roof and checked the crown board underneath. The crown board is like a ceiling to the hive. Bees will glue anything thay can with wax and propolis. If you don’t use a crown board (andmany beekeepers don’t) you stand the chance of having to pry off the roof with your hive tool (2nd most important tool). The crown board also acts as a layer below the roof and provides insulation, both in the summer and the winter. The crown board sits either on the hive or on top of a feeder if you have one installed. We do have a feeder for this new colony and it was totally empty. The bees had polished off a gallon of sugar syrup. I took off the feeder (they reach it via a slot in the feeder) and finally saw the 10 frames.

A Frame with New Foundation

I was able to tell which frames were part of the nucleus not only from the fact that the wood had gone brown, but from the bulging sides of the original frames. They were packed with comb, indicating that there may not have been the correct spacing in the nuc when the bees built the comb. I started by pulling the frame closest to me and saw that they had already started building the comb.

The next frame I pulled had fresh comb filled with drops of glistening honey. The bees take the nectar from the field with their mouths and store it in their honey sacs in their bodies. Their saliva contains enzymes that help change the nectar into honey. The honey is still full of water (80%) and needs to be reduced to about 14-18%. The bees do that by flapping their little wings. Their “air conditioning” also keeps the hive cool in the summer.

A Frame with lots of Bees

We were very happy with the progress, the bees seemed to have a good temperament and they were drawing out the comb at a good pace. Alison and I decided t o return in a week with a super and a queen excluder. This will allow the bees to build a 2nd story without having the queen lay eggs in the area we ant reserved for honey.

Inspecting a Frame

For those that have never experienced it, opening a full bee hive is a real thrill, especially when you hear the loud sound of thousands of bees buzzing around. Although I felt very safe, having followed all the instructions, smoked the bees and wore a complete bee suit, I was not comfortable when a bee landed in front of my eye. I was unsure if the bee was on the outside of the veil or on the inside. I assumed it was on the outside and if it was on the inside, this was not a great time to stop and figure it out. I put the frames back in, poured another two litres of sugar syrup into the feeder and said goodbye to our first colony.

An Open Bee Hive

We Got Bees

We drove up with our empty hive to the queen-maker on a nearby moshav. He had a nucleus of bees that we had ordered and would transfer five frames containing the queen, brood and bees into our hive. We were all prepared with our newly painted hive, clean white bee suits and smoker ready to fire up. He saw the girls and informed us that he could not in good conscience sell us the bees because even though we had sealed the hive, the hive could pop open if we were involved in an accident. I was happy that our bee breeder would pass up a sale for the good of our kids.

We quickly arranged for a babysitter and returned, fully dressed in our bee suits.

A normal hive in Israel consists of 10 frames in a box. The hive system is designed to be a box without a floor and without a roof/lid. The hive sits on a wooden floor with a small opening that allows the bees to come and go as they please. When the colony starts to grow, the roof is removed and another bottomless, roofless hive is put on top, also containing 10 frames. The roof is then put on top of the 2nd story.

The frames inside the hive are designed to fill the inside of the hive, leaving the bees the exact amount of space they need to make their comb. To help them start their task, each frame has a sheet of beeswax stuck to wires that are strung across the frame. The wax is has a very delicate impression of a cell pattern. The bees recognize this pattern and use this “foundation” to start their own comb.

Alison with a Smoker

When the bees have increased their brood and you are ready to add another layer, you can insert a queen excluder board containing a wire mesh or screen that has openings that are large enough to allow the worker bees to travel back and forth between the two sections but prevents the queen, who is larger, from laying eggs in the upper section. This allows you to have a section that can be accessed by the regular worker bees who will create comb and use it to store their honey but will be off limits to the queen and her eggs.

Living in Rehovot means living close to nature. I walk to work every morning passing through some city streets till I reach the edge of the city. From there I walk through a field where the site of horses, camels andherds of sheep are not uncommon. We had to find a place to put our new hives so a few weeks ago I started contacting people I know who live on moshavim in the area. Two years ago I did an internship at Comverse in Tel Aviv and worked with Sue, who lives on Beit Gamliel, a moshav about 5-7 kilometres away from Rehovot. She and her husband Harry have been planting lots of exotic fruits as well as the standard Israeli crops of pomegranate, grapes and vegetables.

Harry & Sue

Their son is also starting to grow bees and they were kind enough to let us place a hive in their fields. More about beekeeping in Israel later….

That’s not what a hive looks like

Early forms of honey collecting entailed the destruction of the entire colony when the honey was harvested. The wild hive was crudely broken into, using smoke to suppress the bees, the honeycombs were torn out and smashed up — along with the eggs, larvae and honey they contained. The liquid honey from the destroyed brood nest was crudely strained through a sieve or basket. This was destructive and unhygienic, but for hunter-gatherer societies this did not matter, since the honey was generally consumed immediately and there were always more wild colonies to exploit. However, in settled societies, the destruction of the bee colony meant the loss of a valuable resource; this drawback persisted until the 19th Century, which made beekeeping both inefficient and something of a “stop and start” activity. There could be no continuity of production and no possibility of selective breeding, since each bee colony was destroyed at harvest time, along with its precious queen. During the medieval period abbeys and monasteries were centers of beekeeping, since beeswax was highly prized for candles and fermented honey was used to make alcoholic mead in areas of Europe where vines would not grow.

Lorenzo Langstroth (1810-1895)

The 19th Century saw a revolution in beekeeping practice through the invention and perfection of the movable comb hive by Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth, a descendant of Yorkshire farmers who emigrated to the United States. Langstroth was the first person to make practical use of Huber’s earlier discovery that there was a specific spatial measurement between the wax combs, later called “the bee space”, which bees would not block with wax, but kept as a free passage. Having determined this “bee space” (between 5 and 8 mm, or 1/4 to 3/8″), Langstroth then designed a series of wooden frames within a rectangular hive box, carefully maintaining the correct space between successive frames, and found that the bees would build parallel honeycombs in the box without bonding them to each other or to the hive walls. This enables the beekeeper to slide any frame out of the hive for inspection, without harming the bees or the comb, protecting the eggs, larvae and pupae contained within the cells. It also meant that combs containing honey could be gently removed and the honey extracted without destroying the comb. The emptied honey combs could then be returned to the bees intact for refilling. Langstroth’s classic book, The Hive and Honey-bee, published in 1853, described his rediscovery of the bee space and the development of his patent movable comb hive.

The invention of the movable-comb-hive fostered the growth of commercial honey production on a large scale in both Europe and the USA.

From Wikipedia

From the Wizard of Oz

During Pesach we took a trip to the Negev and visited the ancient Nabatean city of Mamshit. We toured the ruins there and enjoyed the beautiful desert vistas. On the way home we decided to visit another national park, Beit Guvrin, but did not manage to get there before they closed.

Right across the highway from the site was a field filled with thousands and thousands of bright red poppies.

Bees arrive tonight

After months of studying and preparation we are finally ready to start our first hive.

Why bees?

Over the past few months I have been thinking about how different life is in Israel compared to our lives in Canada. Besides the constant pressure of not knowing when a war might break out or if there will be yet another hafsakat chashmal (power outage), life is just not the same.

Life in Canada was great. Canadians on the whole are wonderful people and Canadian society was pretty pluralistic. Toronto especially was an amazing city, teaming with immigrants from around the world, each adding a special flavour to the city.

Despite the pleasant lives we led in Canada, we found that we were not closely in touch with things around us. We followed the news and knew what was going on across the world and down the street but we had slowly become disconnected with life. Waking up in the summertime in our air conditioned home, getting into our air conditioned car and driving to the air conditioned mall where we bought fruits and vegetables that were in season somewhere – but not here. As I kid I remember being excited when my mother came home from the grocery store with green grapes. Yay, they were in season! Or sometimes we were treated to kiwis that came from far away and were a special treat. Its not that we were underprivileged kids, we weren’t, its just that the world was a bigger place then and we were more sensitive to the specialness of nature.

It wasn’t just foods that excited us, one day our family doctor called my parents and said that we HAD to go out and buy the current issue of Life magazine. It contained photos by Lennart Nielsson of a human fetus. Today, we are inundated with images blaring at us from TV sets, computers and illuminated signs on the highway.

Life is not like that here in Israel. Other than certain vegetables such as garlic apples, If the food isn’t in season you are not likely to find it in the stores. It is true that with cable TV, the Internet and Israeli’s penchant for travelling abroad, the country is becoming more westernized and less Israeli. This country may lose its unique character but it will not happen overnight. Many things are slow to change in Israel. This place is filled with people from so many countries, each hanging on to his culture but all learning Hebrew with foreign accents.

 When I think of all the people who make up this country and the difficulties in getting along with each other, I am reminded of a picture I will always keep in my mind of a day I experienced soon after making aliyah. When the windows are open and the noise from the cars on the street is not too deafening, you can hear an Arab man driving down the street calling out “alte zachen” old things… He is form of a recycle person who drives around, using the Yiddish to reach out to people to sell their old fridges, stoves, sofas, heaters or whatever is old and can find another life someplace. We are so used to seeing Arabs calling out in Yiddish and think nothing of it now. Later that day we went to wedding in Jerusalem where we heard a chassidic fiddler with a long beard and black jacket play an Irish jig. More than one person attending the wedding was familiar enough with the music to actually get up an dance a jig.

 Life in Canada was quite stratified and although Canadians are probably less provincial than the average resident of New York City, we didn’t exactly live in a blended society. Attending shul in Israel, I might be sitting next to a nuclear physicist from the Weizmann Institute or a soldier. My walk to work every morning takes me through a field where I often see a flock of sheep with a Bedouin shepherd and a stone’s through away is a particle accelerator on the grounds of the Weizmann Institute. Daily life here is closer to real life. Yes, there is air conditioning and the occasional imported vegetable but there is no such expression such as “raining on your parade” because if it rains, you are happy for the country.

About a month ago I decided to investigate the field of bees and honey. The little bugs are pretty amazing and produced the next best thing to maple syrup, which we really miss. I started reading about the nectar and realized that I had no idea of what was in bloom and when. We are so detached from the cycle of life that we depend on yet we seem to know who starred in what movie, and who is getting Botox treatments.

We needed to get our connection back to the land.

Tu B’Shvat

Yesterday was Tu B’shvat (new year for trees) and it was almost like it was the first time experiencing the holiday for us. We received notes from the gan last week asking us to get some dried fruit and send it to school with the girls. We were to dress the kids in Shabbat clothing and send them to school with a particular fruit that they enjoy. The kids sang traditional songs (Ha shkadia porachat…Tu B’shvat higia, chag hailanot…) and had a great time. There were many organized trips to plant trees in the forests and organized fruit picking for the poor. In some ways it is an Israeli “earth day” that brings people to show appreciation for the land that was given to us. Alison and I are feeling very appreciative of the land that has accepted us.

Last night while we were eating dinner Noa stopped and said to us: “Do you know how to say what happened?” She then went on to answer her own question with: “Ma Kara?” with this adorable Israeli accent. I thought “where is the video camera” (we don’t have one) since this was her first Hebrew sentence. We are amazed at how fast she is learning new words. Now, when she says Shma when she goes to sleep, she says it with an Israeli accent. I doubt that I will ever be able to sound as good as she does and it only took her 6 weeks.

This evening we went to gan for a “Family Night.” It seems to be following the excitement of Tu B’shavat and incorporated more dried fruits and goodies for the kids. The dried fruit is imported but it is the idea that counts…

Update

It has been a long time since our last posting. We have had a war and three kidnapped soldiers and life goes on. It really doesn’t just go on. Everyone knows the war ended and we don’t have our chayalim back. We wait and we hope that someone is making a deal or that they will find out where they are hidden and go rescue them. We wait and time passes and life goes on.

The girls are now pretty much fluent in Hebrew. Maayan knows words in Hebrew which she does not know in English. Noa is learning to read in Hebrew and English. A few weeks ago Alison took Noa to a store in order to translate for her.
Why is it that they pick up the language so quickly and we will struggle for years? You should hear their cute Israeli accents. It will come to the point very soon where we will have to make sure the girls only speak English at home to preserve the language skills they have.

Our Trip Down South

This last weekend, we went to the Arava, a valley that runs between Jordan and Israel from the Dead Sea down to the Red Sea. The valley is part of the Negev Desert, which in general is Israel’s Wild West. At times, I certainly felt that we weren’t even in Israel anymore. For starters, it’s very deserted in the Negev, as I guess most deserts are.

On the way to the Arava, we visited a Bedouin market in Beer Sheva, where Stevy was warned not to photograph or else risk having his camera broken. (He managed to sneak in a few shots, though.) He later wondered if the reason was because there were women in the market, most covered from head to toe.

In a corner section of the market, men — mostly Bedouin, some Jewish — sat playing backgammon and cards. Table after table was filled with men drinking mud coffee, playing games, and smoking cigarettes. (The younger men sat in cafe-like enclaves smoking hukkahs / water pipes). Zoe, Maayan and I were the only females in that part of the market, and I sensed that we’d broken some unspoken code by being there. A nice female shopkeeper warned Stevy more than once that we should be careful about the girls in the market. She never articulated what could happen to our curious 3- and 5-year-olds, but it was unnerving to be forewarned.

After Beer Sheva, we continued down past Dimona, where Israel’s non-existent nuclear reactor is. It’s surrounded by miles and miles of fence-off land with lots of warnings about not trespassing.

The sight we beheld as we crested the top of the mountains before entering the Arava was amazing. We drove, often alone for miles, unto our first destination, Kibbutz Lotan.

Kibbutz Lotan uses alternative building techniques to construct homes and public-use buildings. The kibbutz members give workshops on building techniques, and Stevy got to watch them in action for a while.

The homes there that used this mud-and-straw-homemade stucco were quite beautiful, decorated with glass and ceramic pieces. The girls enjoyed the donkeys roaming through a field of date-palm trees. (Lotan supports itself, in part, by growing dates.) When we were out in the fields, we were only about 200 meters from the Jordanian border. We probably could have walked right over. At night, we could see lights of a village rounding a slope of the Edom mountains in Jordan. The people of that village probably could have walked right over.

We had a flat tire when we woke up Friday morning, so we got the tire changed with the help of a man from the area around the Kinneret / Sea of Galilee. He was at the Kibbutz to learn alternative building principles. We headed off to have the hole fixed at a nearby kibbutz, where we learned that we really needed 2 new tires. The girls enjoyed visiting the camels and cows on the kibbutz. The camels enjoyed my hair.

With new tires on the rear of the car, we headed back north though the Negev to the Maktesh Rimon, “Israel’s Grand Canyon”. We had arranged to stay over Shabbat at the SPNI field school in Mizpe Rimon. The field school is one of several run by the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel. (I’d like to visit the others, too.)

All day Saturday, we pretty much had the whole place to ourselves. We began to know what it would feel like to be the last people on earth. That’s the amazing thing that the desert can do to you.

Purim

Purim in Yatzitz is over and we are exhausted. Ruth is right, Purim really is a big deal in Israel. Last night we went to hear Megillah reading at the shul in Yatzitz. Scratchy followed us to shul which is about 7 houses away from where we live but started chasing a horse that was on the sidewalk nearby. He chases horses just like he chases cars. The shul in Yatzitz is very pretty and we are starting to get to know some of the regulars there. Their services are according to Nusach Sefaradim and we are slowly getting used to the differences. Noa and Maayan have adjusted and found the “candy man” almost immediately. Noa has even picked up some of the Sefardi customs from Gan.

This morning we went to a parade in Mazkeret Batya. What a blast! Hundreds of kids dressed up and walking down the main street with their parents. We noticed that the most common costumes for boys was police officer and for girls was bride. Our two girls wore Chinese outfits from Value Village. The parade was made up of bands, clowns, acrobats and all the kids and parents. Everyone walked together and participated in it, not like the parades we are used to where people watch other people perform for them. Some parents were very creative and come up with beautiful costumes, some very elaborate.

Afterwards we took a sherut to Rehovot and passed yet another parade. Not wanting to miss it we jumped off the mini-bus and walked around a while longer.

We then walked to the train station at the north end of Rehovot (the girls have become excellent walkers) and arrived just in time for a train to Zichron Yaakov. Zichron Yaakov is a kind of sister city to Mazkeret Batya. Both were founded around the same time and have that quaint European feeling. Zichron Yaakov means “in memory of Yaakov” (Baron Rothschild’s father) and Mazkeret Batya means “a memory of Batya” (Baron Rothschild’s mother). We were heading up north to visit our friends Ruth and Menachem and their 4 kids.

This was our second trip on the train in Israel. The first one was when we went to Tel Aviv a few days after we arrived. At that point we approached the entrance to the train station and Noa froze. All public facilities here have guards outside. You can’t walk in to a bank, restaurant, mall or bus/train station without going through security. They examine your bags and in some places, such as bus stations, will put your bags through x-ray machines similar to those used at airports. As we appraoched the train station door Noa saw that there was a guard there with a gun. She had never seen a gun before and her understanding of guns is that they are used by “bad guys”. We had some explaining to do and since then she has gotten quite used to seeing guards with guns and soldiers with M-16s strapped to their backs walking down the streets or shopping at the grocery store. As I write this I think that I have also gotten quite used to seeing firearms on a daily basis here. It is part of life in Israel. When we were in Canada we talked to the girls about what life would be like for them in Israel. When we explained to Noa that after high school she would be going in to the army for two years like most other graduates, she announced to us that she wanted to be a ballerina in the army! We have seen all kinds of soldiers since we arrived, some in pants, some in skirts but so far we have not seen any soldiers wearing camouflage tutus. But in Israel you never know….

As it happens we spent the hour and a half train ride sitting together with a female soldier. The girls used most of the 90 minutes to eat their ice cream cones (it was very warm today) and talking with Ella, our new chayelet friend (female soldier) about her work in the army. Noa got to ask Ella questions about her dog tags, green beret and uniform. Ella shared with us her news that she received a promotion today and was given three stripes to make her a sergeant. We all congratulated her and watched as she removed her two-striped patches from her coat to make way for her new rank. Noa, our five year old with excellent interview skills, subtlety asked Ella if she had a “special” friend. Ella told her that indeed she did and took out from her wallet two small snapshots of Assaf, her boyfriend taken “before” and “after” the army. Alison noted that there was quite a difference in the way he looked in the two pictures. Ella smiled and explained that Assaf “grew up” in the army.

It did not take looking at “before & after” pictures of Ella for us to realize that this young soldier, sitting across from us, probably no more than nineteen herself, has also grown up, probably way too quickly, like most Israeli kids that are garbed in green, given guns and taught to defend our tiny slice of the map.

To Ella, who became a sergeant today, Happy Purim and Mazel Tov!