Images of Spring...

 

How not to hive a swarm...

For the second time since I started keeping bees, I had a swarm. I got the phone call at 5.30 one night and later we went over to see what they were up to. Not a lot as it happens; they were sat on a post, as quiet as could be.

So I scraped them into a carboard box, propped open one corner with a stick and left them to it.

The next afternoon I went to house them in a proper hive, collected the box:

But they had other ideas, as you can see. After buzzing around the plots in a cloud for what seemed like ages, they finally settled on the same post they were on originally.

So I waited until the evening, then went back. This time they were clustered more on the fence than the post. I got what I could off the post / fence, scraping and brushing them into the box before transferring them into the new hive.  

Another day later, back again. This time there was no sign of them on the post, and unfortunately no bees in the box. I obviously didn't get the queen. Thankfully, the hive they came from has a queen cell, so all is not yet lost. Another lesson learned, some more experience to add to that already gained.

The daggy end of the stick...

It was a glorious morning this Sunday, the motorway was full of people off to clog the highways and byeways of the Lake District, and arriving at the farm at 7.30 is lovely. Quiet apart from the song of birds, the occasional passing car, the bleat of sheep or goats. The sun shone and it was so pleasant to walk through the fields, marvelling at the wood anemones, pausing to pick some wild garlic / ramsom leaves. They made lovely soup the day after and are excellent mixed with mayonnaise and used as a dressing for potatoes.

I put the collected leaves in a bucket and was in a world of my own when, out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of Fozzie charging down the field at me. Naturally, I shit a brick, as you would when a 100kg ram is making straight for you. Thankfully it wasn't me he was after, but to see if there was anything in the bucket. One sniff of the ramsoms and he was off again, uninterested. I was much more alert after that.

After milking we put the Dorpers through the foot bath, something that we now do every week (when they don't undo the gate and let themselves out as they did this week) and it seems to be keeping their feet nice and healthy. Then we rounded up some of the ewes running with the ram. They were due for fluke drenching and, while we had them in the shed, we crutched a couple of dirty ones.

Crutching, dagging, call it what you will, it is one of the dirtiest jobs I've done so far. Basically, dagging is removing the dangleberries from a sheep's rear end, the accumulated dung that, due to scour or illness, sticks, like the proverbial to a blanket, and has to be cut off. Now, I am all for learning new skills and techniques and if I want sheep I have to do this, so I didn't complain when I was given the dagging shears and told to get on with it. But what a job. Thick, black lumps of dried muck stuck to the fleece. Cutting it out was a slow process, but essential if the sheep isn't to be the target of flies which, attracted by the smell, lay eggs and then on hatching, the maggots burrow into the wool and skin of the animal.

So could it get worse? Hacking at dried cack? Well it got worse when the largest lump turned out to be warm and slimy on one side; it got worse when the ewe decided the shears were too close to her bum and started flicking her tail; and it got, finally, worse, when she decided that now would be a good time to add further dung to the stuff already there. Textbook.

Ten minutes of cutting and trimming, though, did the job and she must have been relieved to get rid of the extra weight. Too much information?   

 Later that afternoon we went to do my favourite job of the year: planting the potatoes. This year we have earlies Annabelle, and maincrop Sante. I think Sante are what we had last year, but a memory lapse and poor bag marking means I don't actually know what we've almost finished eating. I'll be better this year, I made a note in my book.