28. The bees...and John Terry...

The beekeeper has been to visit, and together we inspected the hive. Good, and surprising news - the bees have survived the Farlands Winter (the hive was probably warmer, and certainly had less condensation than our house). There are about 30 000 of them, they are 'Queen-right' ie she survived and looks healthy. No obvious disease. The concern, however, is that she is not laying (it takes about three weeks from egg to new worker bee, so if this situation persist then we will not have an increasing population which is essential at this time of year). So, we fed them a fondant (like a malleable slab of Kendal Mint Cake), and will re-inspect them in a week or so.

Meanwhile I have built a two-hive bee platform (in a slightly sunnier place). And I am moving the hive in stages towards it. Paradoxically, despite their oft-reported intelligence, bees get lost if they are moved more than three feet or so. So, the rule is move them '3 feet or 3 miles'. Other distances have to be achieved by moving them in stages, or by moving them 3 miles and then back to less than 3 miles.


Sarah and I are completing our own hive which will also go on the platform; to be ready for any swarm that our beekeeper is called out to deal with.

And John Terry? Well, a cottage window has been replaced and I have been painting it - quite a nice job, especially in the sun.
Except that my preparation had unknowingly given me that idiot John Terry staring straight at me. I did not have much to say to him...the odd donkey noise.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

285. Been thinking about my last blog . . .

Image
. . . even if no-one else has. One of the implications of much of an apple's goodness (minerals and vitamins) being in its seeds is that to benefit they have to be eaten. And not just eaten but chewed up as apple seeds tend simply to be passed. I then remembered something about apple pips containing cyanide. I began to look into all this . . . There are hundreds and hundreds of web snippets on the benefits of eating apples, an apple a day keeps the doctor away and all that. But quite difficult to shore it up with trusted sources. A medium-sized apple weighs 150g - 200g and contains half that number of calories. 80% is water, 10% is carbohydrate, 0.5% protein and 4% minerals and vitamins. Half the minerals and vitamins and fibre are in the peel and the core. Apple pips contain amygdalin which can release cyanide when coming contact with digestive enzymes. According to the http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/contact-us/about-us/  (Cambridge University group) a...
Read more

319. We've got a dog!

Image
I know, I know . . . but I've kind of always wanted one . . . . . . from when I was very young, before I joined the Job, when I was thinking about joining the Job. I had a dream (I must have been 13 or 14, and I had lots of posters of dogs on my bedroom walls) about becoming a bearded-batchelor police dog-handler. In my dream I called the dog Wolfram . And guess what? We've called our dog  Wolfram ! He's so cute. He is, of course, an Alsatian and a good guard-dog. Which will be good because this is a big place and Sarah's away a lot. (The door-bell went off in the middle of the night last week, no-one there, turned out it was half-pressed in, but it didn't half freak me out.) Anyway, Wolfram is a new type of dog. Specially bred for people like me. He's a veggie. Eats like a horse of course, but and this is the point, he eats just like a horse. CRUCIALLY, he shits like a horse too. So, no smelly piles all around the garden but just the sweet...
Read more

73. Stuck for something to read?

Try a William Boyd novel. They hook you from the start, have interesting and original plots and are not overly long. What's more there are lots of them, and relatively easy to find in second-hand bookshops. Perfect for a holiday read, if you are stuck on a difficult novel or just want something a bit different. His books sometimes feel like he has written them with the aid of a special book-kaleidoscope: twist it again, 10 bizarre plot-lines fall out and Boyd glues them together in 300 pages. Try one!
Read more