97. To date, this has been my most difficult blog to write...

I have got some terrible news from the smallholding.

The bees have not survived the Winter.

I am doing my bee course (weekly evening classes) at the moment and the tutor mentioned that a colony of bees (about 10 000 go through the Winter) will need about 20kg of honey to survive. I knew that my bees did not have that much, and so yesterday I went down to give them some emergency feed but found no sign of life.

All the bees were half in, half out of the comb cells  which apparently is the classic sign of starvation. I feel awful. Really awful - 10 000 deaths on my conscience.


Phoning Ian, the owner of the bees, I reflected rather morbidly that it was lucky that I had been trained in giving death messages. He was quite sanguine, and said it happened to all beekeepers at some point. He went on to tell me that a fox had just killed his 14 chickens.

This did not exactly make me feel better but emphasised that a smallholding is about life and death.

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