Learning the hard way...

I've been keeping bees for over two years now and am part-way through my second full season. I do enjoy working my way through the hive, trying to guess what they're going to do next, trying (and usually failing) to see the queen, checking for stores brood and varroa.

I get more confident with every hive inspection and I find I am now thinking ahead more to try and ensure I am not caught out when I get to the hive as it is a half hour drive away from the house and forgetting a vital piece of equipment is a real pain and means a second journey.

Although i am far from being an expert, I do know a little and a colleague from work, who got his first colony last year asked me to go along and check his bees over as he was worried after the long winter. So one Sunday we went up and had a look. I should've been alerted by the pitch of the buzzing that came from the hive but I assumed they were calm bees like my own. They aren't.

We only got part-way through the brood before I decided they were too agitated to carry on, although by then we had seen the queen and made sure she was laying. We put the hive back together and I had moved away and taken off my veil when I wandered back over to help put the woodpecker guard on. That's when I got stung twice on the side of my head. Not content with that, they also stung Agnieszka on the leg and, as we left, I saw several come straight out of the hive to try again.

So for three or four days I've been walking lop-sided and staring out of one eye like some kind of cyclops. We laughed about it at the end but I'm not sure we'll be rushing back to have a second look; if we do, I won't be taking the veil off!

Kwiecień plecień...

Kwiecień plecień,
Bo przeplata,
Trochę zimy,
Trochę lata.

Easter was early this year and both of us have noted how we’re still in winter coats, with the heating on at night, despite it being light now until nearly half past seven. From a planting point of view, everything seems to be late. The garlic and onions that went in before Christmas have survived, for the most part, but the spring cabbage have wilted and will have to be removed to make way for more onions. The leeks were doing ok although some rotted in the soil, and they’ve now all been lifted, blanched and frozen so there’ll be a bit of soup to be had yet.

Onions and garlic (above, on the right) and potatoes (below, first earlies

on the right with the maincrop due to go where the black plastic is)

In a sunny window I managed to plant up some more autumn fruiting raspberries as well as three blackcurrant bushes. These bushes need a lot of room and we thought a lot about taking up the space but I think we can work round it by using small patches in different parts of the plot.

Sunday saw me having to feed the bees. The winter has been so long that they've had no chance to forage and have used up almost all their stores so I gave them a bit of sugar syrup to keep them going. There were a lot more under the lid than I thought there'd be, which made going in without a veil a bit of a silly idea, especially with my new 'summer haircut'.

We also decided to break up some of the pallets and make fences to keep in the lilies and some other bulbs whose name I have forgotten, sparaxis maybe? The trellis was salvaged from the long grass and the honeysuckle that did so badly last summer seems to be going from strength to strength, as do the foxgloves at the opposite end. The plan is to add some cosmos, sweet peas and maybe some ribes to give lots of colour, feed for the bees and also make a windbreak. We both enjoy going there to dig and potter so it makes for a nice relaxing morning, if only the roar from the motorway could be replaced with birdsong!