Get a grip woman!

Suffolk_lass

Crikey, Bank Holiday Monday (again!) - and in pleasant plans, our son is coming over today, a day ahead of his 31st birthday. I have checked the bank accounts this morning and transferred £390 across to the running costs account, out of which, DH's credit card with the holiday deposit will be taken (in full) on about the 5th June. It is the share our friend has paid. Both of our credit cards have more than normal on them next month - I bought 500 litres of oil and we have had to buy more beekeeping equipment, to keep up with our swarming bees, and DH has half the cost of the Airbnb for next April on his.

In other news we got called yesterday to some angry bees and gave them somewhere to hang out, so they stopped chasing the home's occupants and stinging their dogs, had time to spend an hour listening to a talented local, singing soul music over a beer (£5 from the treats and entertainments budget) and have got a bit of a plan for our horrid bees. A bit of fiddling with our own bees is all that is planned for today, along with some gardening and socialising.

I have just popped three loaves in the oven and I have some ragu on the hob, bubbling gently.

Bees
The bee fiddling is three straightforward tasks:

1. Merge two colonies using newspaper - basically the ones on top have to chew through the newspaper to get out, by which time the queen pheromone of the Queen. They were much diminished in number and this will give them a nice life in another colony, and in a while it will free up the hive.
2. DH has walked over to where the angry bees are to check on them and make sure they have comb to sit on while they die off. They have no queen and are too mean to give a new queen to at the moment.
3. Finally, I want to feed a swarm some syrup. This is the third day and they will have used up what they brought with them, so feeding them will let them draw the combs in their nucleus and give their queen somewhere to lay, once she has successfully mated.

Have a lovely day, relax and enjoy x

Staffordia

Are there more swarms this year @Suffolk_lass ?  I seem to have seen more reports than usual and had one group loiter by our hedge before deciding it wasn't for them.

Suffolk_lass

Our group in Suffolk think there are, although some are saying it is the same as normal but started later because here in the east, it was a cold spring, so all crammed into a shorter period. Radio 4 interviewed someone from Jersey BKA yesterday who said they seem to have more. They also have the Asian Hornet on Jersey that we must all be vigilant for, with over 100 nests removed last year. I saw a report (yet to be confirmed) of one in Canterbury. The bee inspectorate will test it to see if it is related to last year's in Dover. I suspect (at this time of year) it is more likely to have come over in the tarpaulin of a truck, through the Channel Tunnel.

On the topic of the dreaded Asian Hornet, there is an Asian Hornet identification app (free) on your smartphone app-store that everyone should have! They are coming. Where they are established they are decimating the European honeybees (melifera melifera) which has no genetic defence against them

Suffolk_lass

Money stuff
After reading our meter on 31st May I submitted our readings and according to the graph, our use is about half of last year's for the month of May (hooray) - so in light of the solar panels (we are still getting used to these - DH still runs the dishwasher every night at about 04.00) I had already decreased our monthly payment from £198 to £119 per month. Our credit balance is £673.pp with four or five months of around £50-£60 to go so this morning I have requested a £500 refund. So our balance will be £173 soon. The consequence is that they have increased the monthly payment to £142 from June. Which means the next 5 months we should add IRO £82 per month (based on May as a 31 day month) which, when added to the residual credit of £173 gives us a winter-starting credit of £583. The other factor is that our fixed tariff runs until 31st August. I am anticipating a considerable increase from September. I will need to consider then, whether we want to fix from September or pay the variable rate until the new price cap is announced for October. Judging by the forthcoming cap change from 1st July, announced about 6 weeks early, I might know as we approach the end of our current fix. I'm going to keep the £500 I withdraw ring-fenced (maybe as a premium bond) so I can top up if and when needed.

I managed to keep our May spending in SM down to under £210 including a sack of flour for bread-making. 

I won £50 on PB this month too.

It's still all bees - we can start extracting some honey tomorrow 

Humdinger1

There's a Bee Inspectorate?! The half was not told me...I'm hoping there's a uniform which immediately identifies them.  These would be ideal characters in a novel by Margaret Atwood; or one (waiting to be unearthed, now we've sadly lost her) by Fay Weldon. Love Humdinger xx 

themadvix

Bear in mind that going into winter you may well want to be charging your battery overnight on a cheap rate, so a fix/non-standard tariff will be necessary. Being able to charge it cheaply makes up partially for the lack of sunshine in the winter. 

Suffolk_lass

Humdinger1 said:

There's a Bee Inspectorate?! The half was not told me...I'm hoping there's a uniform which immediately identifies them.  These would be ideal characters in a novel by Margaret Atwood; or one (waiting to be unearthed, now we've sadly lost her) by Fay Weldon. Love Humdinger xx 

lol - seriously, bees are livestock so Defra (APHA; Animal Plant Health Agency) with a National Bee Unit (their website is beebase!) who have oversight in the same way as for other livestock. If there is a disease outbreak they can impose control zones and are very helpful. We have sentinel hives near all the ports.

themadvix said:

Bear in mind that going into winter you may well want to be charging your battery overnight on a cheap rate, so a fix/non-standard tariff will be necessary. Being able to charge it cheaply makes up partially for the lack of sunshine in the winter. 

Yes, we are on a dual tariff "white meter" for economy 7 now (although we don't use economy 7 heating, we used to use 70 % of our electricity overnight before the solar. Using WM and DW on timer. It would only be for September if the new fixes are significantly better from October. I shall be poised to pounce once the October price guarantee is published!

Suffolk_lass

Bees
This morning's news is that we have removed one super from a hive here in the garden, with eight frames of capped honey (and three frames of undrawn comb after some juggling around. We used a rhombus excluder board put on at mid-day on Saturday and DH took it off at dusk with just one bee in it. The rhombus excluder is a diamond-shaped grill that lets the bees get back down into the rest of the hive but normally, not back up. If you leave it on for longer than two days, some bees will work out how to get back up and then signal to their sisters!

We are planning to redeploy it to another colony (maybe two) this week, gradually taking some spring honey. I am always careful to ensure that the bees have plenty of stores. Our desire for honey is second to their need to use it. For example, I swapped three frames where the honey was not all capped, with three frames of undrawn comb, so they have this in the unfilled super, together with four frames of stores at the edge of the brood nest

Suffolk_lass

Did I mention DH's error? He told me he had sorn'd his motor bike and his car. Last Friday his car was collected by the local garage who replaced the flat tyre, put in a new battery and checked all the fluids and whatnot, as it has been sitting on the drive for 6 months. I went in to tax it and he had not sorn'd it. 5 months paid for that should not have been (it was an end of December thing when it was obvious he could not drive yet, so not counting December. I know it is a mistake but I am fed up. Do I check every single financial thing I ask him to do? - no. I need to let it go.

Watty1

I love your diary.  Today I have learnt bees are livestock.  so many questions.  Do you need a licence to keep them?  Are they are registered livestock?     Would they show my land is agricultural if I had them rather than equestrian which is what the council think it is as I have horses and sheep for only a couple of months?    Is it an old wives tale that horses and bees should not be kept together?

And I will look for the Asian Hornet app as am about 15 miles from Canterbury and not far off a route used by lorries from the Tunnel.