John the brave beekeeper collects a swarm

Not many photos for this one I'm afraid. I am not a kamikaze blogger. Read on and all will make sense.
I spent last weekend in the Extremadura region of Spain. It was sort of my stag weekend, though there were considerably more birds involved than beer. If you know me by now, you'll realise that last sentence was not as damning as it may sound, for I enjoyed spectacular view of vultures, eagles, storks and my first ever European bustards.... yes, bustards.

That's nothing to do with this post though. I returned to the smallholding late on Monday and come Wednesday Sue was off on her headteachers conference. It is rapidly becoming an annual tradition that Sue goes off on conference and John has to become an emergency bee-keeper! And this year was no disappointment.

Our hives have been doing well this year and we have had our first significant honey harvest, 130lb so far.

But while I was away in Spain, Sue found 20 queen cells in the middle hive. This is a sure sign that something is amiss. Either the bees are not happy with their queen or they are doing so well that they are preparing to swarm and are laying the foundations of a new colony before they go.

So, left on my own, I was fully expecting to witness a mass departure of bees. They usually choose a warm, muggy afternoon to go and we've had our fair share of those these year. But as it happens, my emergency beekeeping duties stemmed from elsewhere when, on Thursday evening, there was a knock at the door from a local farmer informing me of a swarm of bees on the verge outside his house. For all I knew, they could even have come out of one of our hives earlier in the day.
I rushed around grabbing what I needed, squeezed into Sue's beekeeping suit and jumped in the car.

I arrived to find a dinner plate circle of bees huddled together on the tarmac. A small group had unfortunately been run over by a passing vehicle. They did not look like any of our bees, these ones being almost black. I scooped them up in my hands and into a box, making sure to get as many as possible. When bees swarm their soul aim is to huddle around the queen, so they do not go into attack mode. Allegedly, they've stuffed themselves so full of honey in preparation for their adventure that they are actually incapable of stinging. I kept my thick leather gloves firmly on, not wanting to test out this theory!
I got them home sealed tightly in their box in the back of the car, then set about hastily assembling a hive. All this while I was attempting to make my first ever pizza from scratch as a practise for the blokes baking group on Friday.

So, come about midnight, I finally got to sit down and tuck into my pizza, which was absolutely delicious.

Pizza. From scratch. Lish!

I set the alarm for 5.30am as I had a very busy day ahead of me. It would start with pouring the bees into their new hive and I wanted them to still be in sleepy mode when I did this. It's amazing how bees in a cluster behave just like a gloopy liquid. You do just literally pour them in then leave them to settle.
Then I had some sheep to collect, a horse manure collection to make and in the evening I was hosting the blokes baking group again.

Fast forward to today and there I am in the paddock with my new sheep (more on these in my next post) when a bee starts persistently buzzing me. I stayed perfectly still for a couple of minutes but the bee just seemed to be getting increasingly aggressive until it dived straight into my hair. Time to pull it out and leg it back into the house.
I guessed that Sue must have upset them and if they were this cross I would be spending a couple of hours safely inside (hence the break in my work to compose a couple of blog posts).

Sue waits patiently, but these bees
aren't giving up that easily.

It wasn't long before Sue appeared with two dozen bees angrily circling her head. She sat and waited, but these bees weren't giving up that easily. In the end she had to walk away and then make a run for the door and get in before the bees caught up.
She then explained why the bees today were quite so angry.

Sue had gone out to give some syrup feed to the colony of bees I had collected. However, unable to see a queen (that doesn't necessarily mean there wasn't one in there), She decided to take a tray of eggs from the middle hive. This would give the bees something to work on to start a new colony if indeed they were queenless. At the same time, it would keep the middle hive busy and maybe distract them from swarming.






Monster hive

But bees are full of surprises, for when Sue opened the middle hive she found it eggless, a sure sign that somehow they had lost their queen. This is where the tactic of destroying the queen cells to prevent swarming comes unstuck, for the bees had known better than Sue. Those queen cells were not being made as the foundations of a new colony, they were made to make a new queen.

So Sue decided to take two trays of eggs from the monster hive, one tray to put in each of the other hives. It was shortly after this that the monster bees took exception. They streamed out in a cloud of smoke and aimed straight for Sue's face!! Fortunately the veil did its job and protected her. SHe quickly put the lid on and beat a hasty retreat.

We both survived without getting stung.

Sue has now headed off to Holbeach for her dummy run on the hair and make-up for her wedding makeover. I am about to venture back outside to spend some time with my new sheep. I could be back inside sooner than I planned.

Nuked

So far it's been a very good year for the bees. The weather has been kind and the girls have been very busy. I'm hoping this is good news for the fruit trees.


Earlier in the year the bees actually made it out and about
while the almond blossom was still on the tree

Certainly the almond has fared very well and our harvest should increase from the total of three nuts which we have had in the last two years!

Almonds!!

One of the queens failed to come through the winter but the other two colonies are buzzing. Sue has already taken a little honey.



This is as close as I dare approach and this is early in the morning,
before most of the bees are active.

Unfortunately the girls are rather defensive. They used to be nice, peaceful bees, but a few changes of queen seem to have changed their nature. Especially on days when Sue has annoyed them by opening up the hives, it's not unusual for me to get harassed as I work in the veg plot. The important thing, as a honey bee repeatedly bashes against your head angrily, is not to panic. I have developed a technique of bravely freezing. If that doesn't make the bee lose interest, I run for it. A 50 yard dash normally does the trick

Anyway, about that colony which has no queen. There are just a handful of bees in there and without regeneration they won't last long. So on Sunday Sue set up a nucleus. This involves taking several frames from a more successful hive. Five frames does it, as long as there is plenty of brood and eggs, adult bees, honey and pollen. The frames are transferred to a nucleus (nuke) box and all the bees are locked inside for a few days, just long enough to settle in and treat the new place as home. In theory they should realise there's no queen and begin to make a new one. Hopefully, she'll be a quiet, well natured lady.

Some very angry buzzing
was coming from inside this box!!

Nuts about Almonds

The almond tree in blossom on a foggy morning

The first fruit tree to come into blossom each year is the almond. But the problem is that it usually manages to coincide with early spring cold and windy weather. The wind blows the blossom straight across the Fens and the cold keeps the bees from venturing out to pollenate the flowers.



Last year we got two almonds, which was double the year before. So this year I was ready with the rabbit's tail scavenged from one of Gerry's kills, ready to do the bee's job myself by tickling each flower with the soft fur.
We've now had a week of fine weather with blues skies, soaring temperatures and only the occasional breeze. The almond tree is looking magnificent. Better than that though, the bees have been out and about and it's good to see them returning to the hive, legs laden with pollen. And some of that pollen is coming from the almond tree!

So fingers crossed for the almonds this year. There could be home-made marzipan, bakewell tarts and Christmas nuts for 2014!

Getting the bees ready for winter

Winter is truly on its way now. I've not seen a swallow for over a week and their chattering has been replaced by the thin calls of flocks of redwings sounding lost as they come in off the North Sea. More harbingers of winter, a flock of 30 Pink-footed Geese honked noisily as they flew over late in the evening last Sunday. These won't settle in the fields here, but will remain closer to the coast. The fields do, however, hold small flocks of golden plovers and lapwings (peewits to some), occasionally panicked into the air by a prospecting peregrine. Skylarks chase each other overhead and winter flocks of goldfinches bounce around. Yes, the birds are telling me that winter approaches.

But potentially the best bird of the last week has, frustratingly, remained unidentified. For last night, on the way back from locking away the chickens, the silhouette of an owl broke the skyline. It was no barn owl, too large and too long-winged. It was certainly either a Short-eared or a Long-eared owl, both of which have been coming in over the North Sea in the past week. I'll be on the look out for the next few days. If it's a Short-eared, I'll probably see it hunting over the fields late one afternoon. But if it's a Long-eared, which would be a new bird for the farm, it will be much more strictly nocturnal.

All these signs of a change in the seasons mean that we need to start preparing. Winter won't wait for us.

Sue pretty much takes care of the bees these days, ably supported by Elaine, her bee buddy. I stand at a distance, taking the occasional photo and, once in a while, making a run for it when one of the guard bees finds me and starts battering me on the head.

We still have three colonies going, which is a great improvement on the one which came through last winter.
They withstood the wasp onslaught, helped by me finding the wasps nest - a tiny hole in the ground over in the goose paddock, but a hole through which a steady stream of striped assassins were emerging and flying straight over to the bee hives to battle and plunder.

Somehow, despite us taking very little honey from the bees this year, they managed to get very low on honey (maybe not helped by the wasps). To this end Sue has been feeding them with sugar syrup. The local shops must wonder what on earth is going on as Sue has been regularly emptying their shelves of sugar!

 

But they've been doing a grand job turning Sue's sweet offerings into winter stores, safely stowed away and enclosed in a myriad of hexagonal storage jars. Where they've stored it in the supers, Sue has been moving it down to the main brood box where they'll huddle together through the winter, so that it will be readily accessible during more difficult times ahead.

Last weekend our helpful expert, Elaine, visited to help Sue make a detailed inspection of the hives before they are closed down for the winter. What we had thought was the strongest hive, the original one in the middle, is in fact the weakest! Why? Because there is too much drone brood. Useless blokes!
The bees which are active and flying now are not those which will take the queen through the winter. No, it is the current brood which will have the job of keeping her warm and trying to survive the winter. So a hive full of drone brood is not much use.

Hopefully there'll be enough females born to carry the colony through. Bad news for the queen though, as in the spring she will need to be replaced.

For the meantime, Sue will move the frame feeders out of the brood section of the hives but continue to feed the bees using top feeders. This is so that she doesn't have to expose the bees to the cold when she tops up the food. It won't be long now until the bees huddle together, but with temperatures still remaining high for the time of year, we'll see the bees out and hunting at least this weekend and quite possibly for a while longer yet. Fortunately there's a lot of ivy climbing up the ash trees, which will be providing an important late season supply of forage for the bees.

So let's hope for a normal winter. Not too warm, not too wet, not too cold and not too long. Come to think of it, when's the last time we had a normal winter?

Our first honey - a very special day.

Honey!

I've not blogged about the bees for a while.

We are still novices to beekeeping and Sue has taken over the mantle of head beekeeper. We had our first bees while we still lived in South-East London. Surprisingly the patchwork of urban gardens there is actually a very good place to keep bees. We did rather well for a while, but our hive failed to come through its first winter and got robbed and finally killed off by robber bees from another colony.

We kept all the gear, sure that we would start up again one day. Last year, now in The Fens of South-East Lincolnshire, we embarked on our beekeeping career again. The first year was an interesting one - very hot early spring during which bee colonies everywhere quickly became strong, followed by half a year of rain. Everybody's bees were swarming all over the place, including ours.

It was a fast learning curve and, although we collected no honey, we did end the year with two healthy colonies of honey bees.

Early on in this year's spring, both hives looked OK, but spring never really warmed up and ended up being the coldest in 50 years. Unfortunately we lost one of the colonies, but the second was (and is) still looking very strong.

So strong, in fact, that they have started building queen cells again, a sure sign that the colony is filling up and planning on splitting. This is  the bees' way of spreading and sending out new colonies. But it is not great news for the beekeeper. Effectively you face losing half your bees (more if subsidiary swarms occur) and won't be able to take honey from them this year.

But it also creates the opportunity to anticipate the departure of half your bees and to set up a new colony. I won't go into the ins and outs of how to do this, but Sue has attempted to achieve it and we have our fingers crossed.

This is all very exciting (and slightly worrying) but even more exciting action came on Sunday when Sue decided there were enough supers of capped honey to try spinning some off.

The way a hive works is that at the bottom lives the queen and there she lays her eggs which develop and hatch. Other bees tend the larvae and the foragers go out everyday to collect pollen and nectar. In the cells around the brood they store this food in the form of honey.

Above this brood box the beekeeper places more frames of hexagonal foundation cells, which the bees build up into storage larders for more honey. But there is one very important difference with this part of the hive. For the queen is excluded from here, which means there are no eggs and no larvae. This honey is there for the taking!

Once the honey has reached the correct consistency, the bees cap it with a thin layer of wax.  So the first step is to scrape this off. We have a comb for this purpose, though a special knife can be used too.



Uncapping the honey.



This was amazing as the honey just started oozing out. Next the frames go into a spinner where centrifugal force sends the honey flying out of the cells and against the side walls, whereupon it trickles down to the bottom of the spinner. At this stage, there will be wax mixed in too.

I was  a bit enthusiastic with the spinning and one of the frames disintegrated a little bit. Not a total disaster, as the frames go back in with the bees to be cleaned and repaired by them.



Draining the honey from the spinner.





A tap at the bottom of the spinner allows the honey to be drained out through a double spinner. At this stage we could really see how our honey was going to turn out. Of course, we couldn't resist dipping our fingers in either.

The honey was surprisingly delicate and light. None of it seemed to have crystallised in the cells and we are hoping that the influence of oil seed rape is not too great, as this causes honey to set rock hard.

In all we got nine jars of honey. Some beekeepers don't get this much in their first few years, but with a bit of luck it will just be the start of a very successful honey year this year.

Now to go find some honey recipes.

Sue has a Bee Buddy

Sue inspects the hives with the help of her new bee buddy.



Saturday 29th September 2012

Sausages sold out!
Today we sold out of sausages, only two weeks after the two boys came back from the butchers.
It's making me think about how to get the next three chopped up. I'm thinking that if we've got lots of shoulder joints left, we could get this cut of meat made into sausages next time. If it's what the customers want...


Ram-ifications
I spent much of the day putting a top wire along the fence that was supposed to keep the sheep out of the veg garden. I didn't realise, when I let them in there briefly the other day, what the ram-ifications would be. They have clearly realised that the grass is greener and took great delight in hopping the fence several times today, leading me a right merry dance as they did so. But I don't mind too much, as I know that I'll have the last laugh. They are beginning to fatten up nicely now!!

A Bee Buddy
Event of the day was Sue getting a new bee buddy. I've not mentioned the bees for a while, and that's because we have both been feeling a little out of our depth. You can read as much as you like about keeping bees but nothing quite prepares you for actually being responsible for a colony. We had a little help along the way, when we had emergencies, such as the bees' determination to swarm in the early days. Without this help we would probably have lost our bees, whereas we may now actually have two successful hives.
You will all have heard about the problems our honey bees are going through at the moment. It's hard to pinpoint the reason for this, though I suspect its a combination of pretty obvious factors - much the same factors that have caused a fundamental reduction in levels of wildlife everywhere.
Anyway, responsible bee-keeping is the best friend our honey bees have right now. With this in mind, we dutifully joined the Peterborough branch of the BBKA (British Beekeepers Association) a few months back and heard little more for our thirty odd quid a year.

Back to feeling a little out of our depth.
Plenty of detailed bee information here. It's interesting, but probably only if you keep bees or are thinking about it.
This is a crucial time of year for the bees. They must accumulate enough stored honey to get them through the winter. Many will die of starvation, but enough must make it through to keep the colony going when things warm up next spring.
We nearly missed the time for treating the hives for varroa. This is supposed to be co-ordinated by the local associations so that all beekeepers hit the bug at the same time and in the same way. Unfortunately, nobody told us and it was quite fortuitous that we realised just in the nick of time. So a couple of weeks ago we gave the bees their first dose of Apiguard - a natural remedy. The bees collect the Thymol crystals to remove them from the hive. However, in the process they take them down through the hive to where the varroa mites are lurking. As long as maximum daytime temperatures remain over 15 degrees (hence the urgency!) it will kill a good percentage of the varroa mites. Timing is important as it must be given to the bees after the main flow of honey.

We also realised, just in time, that we should be feeding our bees with a sugar solution so that they could build up their stores. Again, without any experience we had no idea if they had enough honey. But in such a dull year, and with the colony splitting a couple of times, it was always likely that we would need to supplement their feed and resist the temptation to draw off any honey for ourselves.

But still we did not really know the state of our colonies. Should there be more at this time of year or were we OK? Were we too late with the food and varroa treatment. And if so, what should we do now. Did we need to reunite the two colonies? All these questions and more. The most important question - is there anything we are totally unaware of?

And so it was that Sue decided to contact the local  BBKA and seek assistance.
To be more precise, she requested to be assigned a bee buddy. We have never had a bee buddy before, but it really is the best way to learn and avoid disasters along the way. A bee buddy is an experienced local beekeeper who offers their time once in a while to look through your hives and explain what's happening and what steps to take.

The bees were very active today,
probably because they are being fed now.

And so, today, Sue met her bee buddy, actually the woman who looks after the hives at the farm where I get my straw and pig potatoes. Small world.

It was great to find out that both our colonies are doing well now. We need to keep on feeding till they stop taking the sugar solution, probably well into October, and Sue was given some fondant to give the bees around Christmas time, to help them get through the coldest days of winter.

Sue put the bees back up to brood-and-a-half. This seems to be the favoured way round here, not something we'd ever heard of in London. It just means that as well as a deep brood box, a super frame is used to give additional brood space. Otherwise the hive can get too crammed in summer, encouraging the overcrowded bees to seek alternative accommodation.

 

 

So, for the moment that's it. We feel much more secure abut keeping bees now that we have somebody to help us. It's a great weight off our minds.

 

Maybe one day we will be experienced enough to be somebody's bee buddy. You never know.

One more cute picture of Elvis and family!

The Tale of the Wild Pig.

Friday 10th August 2012

The rape field, as it appeared this morning.

The Tale of the Wild Pig.
Speak to any farmers around here and they'll tell the tale of the last occupants who took delivery of a group of weaners and on the first count were one down! Seven months later a pig, somewhat larger in stature, turned up in a nearby farmer's field. As far as I know, having looked after itself for all this time, it unfortunately could not be captured and had to be shot.

With this tale in mind, every time we move the pigs from the stables to their pen, there is a fear that they will overshoot and break through the rather flimsy chicken wire which we place to deter them going off into the meadow and out into the big, wide world.

So for the past few days, bit by bit, I've been constructing this...

I am very happy with my the result.
It will make moving the pigs much less stressful as, once I've completed one last bit of fencing, there'll be no way for them to effect an escape (famous last words!).
This will be tested out shortly, as Gerald is about to head off to stay with his owner having done his job here.

Good news from the bee hives
Meanwhile, some very good news on the bee front. Sue has been moving frames of brood from hive to hive, trying to keep up with the bees' insistence on swarming. The original queen (easy to spot with a white mark) seems to have departed, or to have been usurped. But finally we have young brood (eggs and larvae at various ages) in both hives. The bees have been out and about this week, so hopefully there will still be time for both colonies to build up enough strength to get through the winter. The rape is long over, but there are plenty of bean fields around and they are beginning to find the flowers in the veg garden and herb bed too.
This week there have been a good number of peacock butterflies around too, and while mowing a track through the meadow I came across a good number of grasshoppers. I sometimes wish I had a little more time to stop and admire them.

Again, apologies for the lack of bee pictures, but Snappy cam has finally returned from its adventures in Hong Kong where it went to be fixed (it has been there and back twice due to a paperwork glitch in customs) so next time we inspect the hives there will be piccies.

Not Another Swarm!!

Tuesday 17th July 2012
A dry, muggy day.

Just finished watering the greenhouse plants, carrying a tray of brassica seedlings to their new homes in the veg patch and there, on the pea wigwam, my first ever swarm of bees... My bees!

I ran back to the house to grab the camera, a box and my bee suit, stopping only to quickly open the lids on the hives to try to ascertain which one they'd come from, if they were indeed ours. Without any protective clothes, I made this a quick operation before a couple of angry bees started bothering me. It was quite clear they'd come from Hive 1, which was very thin on bees.

It can't have been more than about 3 minutes before I was back at the pea wigwam, cardboard box in hand, ready to work out how to collect this mass of bees. Except, small problem, no bees. Not there, not in the orchard, or Don's orchard, or the roadside hedge. In fact, nowhere to be seen. No photos and the swarm lost! At least I got to see my first ever swarm.
As last time, they'd quickly moved off and I'd missed them. About a hundred quid's worth of bees gone!

A short history of our hives might help here. After we first got our colony of bees they quickly started building masses of queen cells. We split the hive into two, putting the old queen into Hive 2. A newly emerged queen went into Hive 1.
Then we waited...and waited...and waited, but no sign of any eggs or brood in Hive 1. After four weeks we felt it likely that something had happened to the virgin queen we had put in. The weather had been lousy, but by now she shoudl have made her mating flight and there should be some sign of eggs and larvae.
So when we found a couple of queen cells in Hive 2 it seemed prudent to transfer them into Hive 1, for without a queen and fresh bees this colony was sure to eventually die out. An active bee only lasts about 6 weeks at this time of year (maybe a bit longer as they've not been able to fly much).
Hive 1 was by no means heaving and today's swarm came as a complete surprise to me. Obviously either the first queen survived or one of the queen cells hatched and, for whatever reason, off they went!

I would like to say this was an expensive lesson learned, but on reflection I don't think I've learned a thing from this experience. Bee behaviour remains a complete mystery to me.

Absolute bee-ginners

Thursday 31st June 2012

Opening up the hives
After work today, our bee colleague had agreed to come and open up the hives with us. We were expecting the worst. After all, Hive A appeared to have swarmed and Hive B (with the original queen) had been very quiet indeed. In fact, I suspected that the action at Hive B may have been the others going in and taking the store of honey.

It was somewhat reassuring to find out that this week has been a mega week for swarms. I guess everyone's bees were stuck inside during wet April and the first half of May. They obviously just spent their time multiplying! Then a hot fortnight for them to cram the hive full of honey. The result seems to have been hives full to the brim and mass swarms.

I heard, too, that our nearest fellow beekeeper had a bit of a nasty accident earlier in the week. While mowing his grass the bees came out of the rape field and stung him badly. Now I'm always careful to mow the lawn near the hives late on, after the bees have gone to bed, but after hearing this I think that extra precautions will be called for.

I've been rambling on when I should be telling what we found inside the hives. Well, Hive B had about 6 frames full of bees and brood, including plenty of newly laid eggs, which means that there is a queen and she is laying. In fact, it was fairly easy to find our old queen. The brood pattern looked healthy and there were stores of pollen and honey. Overall then, this hive should fairly quickly build into a healthy colony again. As the rape goes over in the field next door, so the clover begins to flower in the meadow.

Hive A, in which we had left a couple of queen cells, and which had swarmed, contained a surprising number of bees. Maybe seven or  eight full frames still. We couldn't find a queen, though a new queen would still be quite small and, obviously, unmarked. More importantly, nor could we find any eggs, which meant that the hive did not yet have a laying queen.
There were however a few old queen cells, which seemed to be empty. Probably the bees had chosen their new queen and destroyed the others. Thing is, they had then flown off with her.
But there were a few new queen cells too. So we removed the older queen cells and left the best looking so that, hopefully, a new virgin queen would emerge.

When this happens, she spends a few days in the hive before flying out and high up in search of drones from another hive with which to mate. As long as she does not get blown away by the wind, washed away by rain, or plucked out of the air by a bird, then she returns to start laying and building up her new colony.

The other job which needed doing in this hive was to move some of the honey-filled frames above the brood box and replace them with new frames. This is to keep the bees busy so they don't get ideas about swarming again. Secondary swarms are known as cast swarms, and can deplete the hive to the extent that it is no longer a viable colony.

A Queen Appears
As we were doing this, our bee colleague picked up one of the old queen cells which we had discarded. Out of it was crawling a bee... but not just any old bee. Even to my inexperienced eye this bee was longer bodied than the others. It looked absolutely pristine. A new queen, and a well-shaped one to boot.
This came as a big surprise, so the plan was changed. We decided to let her crawl in amongst the brood frames, and instead destroyed the two queen cells which we had left in there. With luck, the bees will accept her as their new queen and, next time we open the hive, we will see freshly laid eggs.


I would like to apologise for the lack of photos, as all of this will be a bit confusing if you don't keep bees. Reason is there's just too much to think about at the moment when we open the hives. Combine this with wearing a space suit and the fact that my glasses focus disconcertingly on the mesh veil of my hood and that's why there are no photos.

I promise to put together a photo essay at some stage in the near future.


Pigeon goes to roost
A comedic end to the day. As I ushered the goose pair into their stable block our new pigeon shuffled ahead of them and there it spent the night.

A new lodger moves in with the geese.

Swarm

Wednesday 30th May 2012
Not much to say about this sunrise.

Anyone seen a swarm of bees?
I got home from work today and had a late afternoon catnap. So, about 5 o'clock, I wandered out into the veg patch and saw Don, who had just been pulling ragwort from his field. I was most surprised when he asked me if I had lost some of my bees!

He then gave me a vivid account of a swirling cloud of bees moving through his orchard.

Damn! My bees had swarmed. Despite everything we did to try to discourage them, they were clearly determined to do so. So that's it. Half my bees just gone. We did go looking for them, but no sign. What will we find when we open up the hives? Probably not a lot.

And double damn! I have never seen a swarm of bees before and would love to have at least had the chance to wave goodbye to them!

A new arrrival
Normally, when I write of new arrivals, I'm talking hatched eggs or multiple piglet births. Or it may be my birding obsession taking over, getting all excited about some unusual migrant or other.
But today's new arrival was most unexpected. There it was, shyly pecking away at the weedy base of the fence inside the veg patch. It allowed me a close approach, then walked towards me.

Yes, a homing pigeon seems to have got lost and chosen to move in with us.
He (or she) is clearly unable to fly for some reason. Last year we had a moribund Collared Dove do the same thing. I guess they're attracted by the other birds, or the bird feed.




Talking of the other birds, Chick of Elvis is still sitting. I have now put 7 eggs under her, though when she went for a wander today there were 8.

Spare Veg patch taking shape.
Last year I struggled to grow any crops down near the pigs as the rabbits periodically nibbled them. So 20 sweetcorn plants would be 18 in the morning and 15 the next and so on. Gerry has done an excellent job preventing the rabbits from multiplying this year but I still wanted to protect the area with fencing. Also, I witnessed a chicken just strut past a young squash plant and peck off a leaf. It won't take much of that, along with their determined scraping at the ground looking for seeds and insects, before my vegetables are losing the fight again. So this evening, up went the orange fence. If I need to, I can connect this up to the end of the electric fence, but at the moment I am hoping that the physical deterrent will suffice.





Tomorrow we open up the hives and inspect the damage.