Get a grip woman!

beanielou

Enjoy your break. 

RedDragonHpc

Hi SL, I've just discovered your diary because you commented on tomorrow's forum updates. I've been using MSE advice for an entirely different purpose (parking charges), but I've jumped ship and now I'm an avid reader (even though I should be working!).

A couple of things occurred to me though:

1. Do your investments include the occasional use of online betting? Emphasis strongly on "occasional". Last year I managed to make about £800 on "sure-thing" win-only betting on England cricket team test matches. You wait until England are in a unfavourable looking position early in the match to get odds of between 2.15 and 4.00 for example. Within a day or two they've fought back and won the match. Welcome winnings for a modest £20-£50 stake. (I hope I haven't broken an important unwritten rule by asking this!)

2. When describing planned changes to your garden/patio, have you considered including a photo so we can see the detail of the area you are contemplating changing/improving?

starnac

Just wanted to wave and say hi. I've popped over as I saw you had a diary in your signature. I am very interested in the bee talk.

Now off I go to have a read and a catch up. 

Suffolk_lass

Hello everyone, and especially @RedDragonHpc and @starnac, I haven't been keeping up with things on here! It's been busy at home, and there is always masses to do to catch up when we have been away, even for a few days.

Gardening
I am hopeful that my cucumber plants will recover from DS (house and cat sitter) "caring" for them while we were away. He seems to have drowned them and starved them so the small setting cucumbers have gone yellow and withered, and the leaves are yellow. I have given them one feed of tomorite but will feed them again today. We have a gap in provision, in the meantime!

My courgettes are just staring to harvest. I may have been a week or two later than normal, planting them out but everything has gone static, when potted on or planted out. I used my usual compost but from a different (cheaper) source and it may well be the problem. I also have some sort of weed now that I have never seen before (it's a grass like plant but looks like sweetcorn seedlings, very symmetrical and fast growing). A few beans are maturing, and I have removed my shallots to dry in the greenhouse. Strawberries are done but blackcurrants in full throttle - masses and huge. Raspberries are just coming. Potatoes need digging, as do the other onions. I think I will reuse the onion bed to bring on strawberry runners for next year.

Oh yes, much trimming of shrubs and removing of weeds is taking place. More than normal!

Bees
On Tuesday, there was enough time for me to check the two queen-less nucs in the garden between rain showers. One has a new laying queen as there are two out of six frames with new brood (capped and uncapped on them. If it is fine today I would like to start uniting them with the other that remains queen-less and vulnerable to wasps. It will give them both a bit of a numbers boost.

Speaking of wasps, DH had put some old frames with stores into one of the new nucs - while we were away, the wasps removed the foam entrance blocker and were robbing. Better that box than any with bees in but quite a frenzy. They have been moved to the middle of the garden, away from the back door, and the hives. Wasp traps (homemade) are in position. Should anyone want to make one, I use an old 2L pop bottle, cut in half round the waist, top half inverted into the bottom (lid off!). I put about 8-10cm of full sugar cheap fizzy drink in each, with a bit of raw meat (this stops the bees being interested) and a spoonful of jam. Once the honey has been robbed, the ones looking for more will find these. The smell of the meat will help too

DH popped along to our neighbours and inspected that colony that had also failed to have a mated queen for several weeks and they also now have a laying queen. Also a very small colony, the only one there, they are a bit vulnerable to wasps if they are found. 

At this stage we watch our colonies from outside the hive. How many bees are foraging? are they letting wasps in? Is there pollen going in? - If the answers are that there are plenty of bees collecting nectar, pollen going in, and guard bees chasing away wasps, we do not go in to inspect. We might heft to check they have stores but we know the ones in the garden have plenty. 

I also popped over to another neighbour's with two swarm hives in their grounds. All looked well and both relatively small so we left them to it, without inspecting.

On Wednesday we went to the farm track. There is one queen-less colony and two with new queens. Both with new queens have been furious with us for the whole year but now seem to have settled down a fair bit. We may have to rename them (they have temper-related names at the moment). I culled a lot of their drones by putting in excluders so the newly emerged could not get out to spread their angry genetics. I have ordered a new queen for the queenless colony and the other two were fine and did not get inspected. I also did not check they have stores so may go and look this morning.

We will certainly have a summer harvest of some sort this year, and hopefully, good strong colonies going into winter and setting us up for next year.

Money and MSE
I have completed 3 of the four shops over £80 I need to get the £27 of points from Morrisons by stocking up on things like wine (25% off three bottles of "The Best...") and more expensive DW tablets - I have one more to complete before the deadline in August. I don't need anything at the moment though, really. I'm not convinced but we might go for a Freezer and garden month to get things back on track after that one remaining shop.

We have friends coming over on Saturday - I will make a pasta bake and a lemon meringue pie - both from stores. Plenty of salad to accompany it too as they both try to eat healthily.

RedDragon HPC you asked about investments including on-line betting - I do have one online betting account but I'm not using it for person-related betting normally. This year I have not done my previous practice so it has remained pretty static. My previous regular bets (in the season) have been on non-handicap flat horse races in the UK, with a £5 EW on Favourite. It has worked for me to boost the pot over the years. Bees mean I missed out this year as too busy to spend a morning placing the bets though. My investments are really the S&S ISAs that I supervise for both of us and DS. My other little gamble is on PB and the occasional NL bet - in fact, I did the latter this week. Put £25 in and scheduled all over the next 4 weeks with a mix of set for life, regular lotto and Euro-m. I am fortunate to be able to afford this and I view it as contributing to good causes as well as a highly unlikely speculate to accumulate.

Other than that, it is all a bit dull money-wise.

Suffolk_lass

Oh yes, while I am on a roll - I cleared all the notifications and it appears this marks the posts as read, so after ten years plus following some threads I have lost my place. Ho hum. Progress, hey!

starnac

The bees update is really interesting. Who knew you could order a queen bee? How many hives do you have?

Suffolk_lass

11 hives and 2 nucs (one of each is queenless) across four locations in our Village. It's the first time I've bought a queen. The chap locally who breeds them has not had any the last few times I have asked so I am trying an Italian-origin sub-species - bred and open mated in UK, from Kent. They are meant to be productive and gentle. It should arrive on 8th August

foxgloves

It's so interesting reading about the bees @Suffolk_lass. I noticed last week that the house a couple of streets from us which has bees, is once again advertising honey for sale. I must go & buy some. I like to think that these are the bees which frequent our garden, which is very floriferous. Our white buddleja didn't have a single butterfly when I looked yesterday, but the honey bees were loving it.
Courgettes are out of control here - good job we like them!
Not many wasps here yet. I put the same one out 3 times while I was making the courgette chutney & it still came back inside. Unfortunately it ran foul of Soot or Ash - thankfully neither of them were stung - but it was game over for Mr Wasp.
F

Suffolk_lass

Oh @foxgloves, to have a single wasp! It's more like 3-400 around the nuc of stores. I really must get the two weak nucs in the garden united, or they will be next on the list for the yellow jackets.

Equally worrying is the discovery of an asian hornet primary nest in Kent and a credible sighting in Plymouth. It is inevitable that they will come, and the ferries from Europe will bring the first group - in tarpaulin covers on containers and even in the rolled up awnings on caravans and motorhomes. That is as well as the hot house hibernator that was found in a food warehouse in Northumbria this spring. We had a talk about Asian Hornets last winter from a beekeeper who has been tracking them for around ten years, mapping their progress across the mainland. They are out of control on Jersey this year, after around ten years of trying to control them before they breed. Compare Jersey to the UK and it is miniscule. Belgium and France failed to get their act together so the spread north has been horrific, with thousands.

They hawk the returning foraging bees, returning to their nests with the fat bodies and honey stomachs full of nectar for their own brood. The way they hawk causes the message to go around the colony and they stop foraging, use their stores and eventually collapse and die. Various methods are being tried to create a screen through which the bees can pass but the hornets cannot. The most effective seem to be "harps" with wires a specific thickness and distance apart, some with a battery to electrify them. Not a cheap option. 

There is an Asian Hornet App from FERA (free) for identification and uploading pictures of suspects and sightings. They never mind if it isn't. We would rather the public report than not. And don't kill them - the inspectors track them (yes, really) back to the nests and we need everyone to be super vigilant now as August is when the multiple Princesses are made and leave to found their own colonies (400+) from each nest. No natural protection in Melifera Melifera (our European honeybees) and no natural predators as they are the very worst of invasive species.

Enough, I am making a pasta bake, lemon meringue pie, sourdough loaf and some sort of cake or biscuit to have with tea, all ready for our visitors after lunch (our best man (woman) and her husband). Good friends, treasured time together.

beanielou

Coming for tea.