Next steps; grip-relaxing bimbling, and avoiding the temptations

Suffolk_lass

It is bees for me today - still got four colonies to inspect and a couple to check back on. The warm weather means they will be collecting nectar as there is plenty around now with oil seed rape in flower locally. I shall need to be looking for space, evidence of disease, and making sure they have stores, good looking brood and plenty of bees

Mr Sl spent yesterday with former colleagues in London, visiting a number of hostelries including one or two Jack the Ripper venues. When I went to the Station to collect him the road was closed. I was due to be there 10 minutes early, so was able to warn him, but dog and I sat in the car in a dark side road over a mile away to see if he could walk through the blue police cordon. He could, phew! - as the alternative was a 20 minute detour for us in the car. The cause looked like an Audi overtook a transit at the moment the transit elected to take the cut round under the very low bridge. Mr Sl reported bits of vehicle all over the road and the police had closed it between the two roundabouts either side of the river, railway and station.

Meanwhile, I had a pottering day, mostly garden based. dug out several annoying brambles, and removed a trug-full of weeds (docs, nettles, thistles etc) from the gravel paths between the beds in the veg garden. I did not get around to planting the perennials but will be asking Mr Sl to help with these.

I did pot on some miserable little plugs that were finally delivered by post - mid afternoon by our postman, but they had been through Whistl and Parcelforce Worldwide and had plant passports - ordered from Devon. 9 days in transit. - I have requested a refund and removed the subscriptions that meant daily email bombardment. They were Dobies (actually part of Suttons). A very similar name to the garden centre I go to for coffee when Mr Sl is at outpatients appointments, and close to my cousin's house, that physical premises has a pet store that dog likes too (two bs in their name though), and very much a garden centre rather than the nurseries I prefer. That is where the money is though so all the nurseries are succumbing to redevelopment or housing.

Money wise I have shuffled the money from the TT savings pot into my bank account so that the humungous (truck purchase) CC bill is covered. It is going on the 13th, according to the email, but they have a track record of taking it earlier. Other than that it is just the anticipated payments out of the accounts this morning and another no-spend day. I do need to look at some money things - pay the wholesale difference in price for the larger solar battery due to be fitted tomorrow, look at a different phone tariff for me, contact tentacled ones as my tariff is ending on 23rd May and I don't know how to achieve what I want (I want to receive SEG credits in the summer combined with cheap overnight download from the grid to fill the battery in winter, so the running costs of our aga are reduced then, and we have a little more credit in summer). When I search the assumption is that I want solar or a battery installed.

Food and fridge - I finished the vegetable soup for lunch yesterday and had chicken salad for supper. I might make some soup in a minute and we could have the same again this evening, I need to keep it light and simple to shed the winter weight I always carry. So does Mr Sl whose cheese tummy is there again.

Have a good day and keep those purses shut!

Suffolk_lass

I have been round all my bees now and they are absolutely booming! I need to go and swap frames in a box that I gave a colony to draw - they will be a bit ansi this afternoon as forecast is too cool. I do need to go to one site where I keep a single colony with my mentee's bees. We need to do swarm control on his - split them so he is back to two. I might offer him the colony I have in a nuc still. They were happier when I checked since moving them to smaller accommodation. I have one monster colony to see to too. I can hardly reach the top! Lots of bees this week and just a little seed care in the garden.

Mr Sl needs a list too!

Suffolk_lass

Oh my, we are so busy! So much for being retired… So bees are either requeening or planning to, and honey is being pulled off two colonies so far. I have been asked to remove bees from a place I have had them for about four years because they are hosting a wedding next year and because their female gardener is afraid of bees (good grief!). It isn't ideal timing and I will push back a little bit as I have to agree where they are going that is outside my apiary fly-home area. Someone else's land. I have also been offered a new apiary indirectly and I need to go and chat with the land owner there. It's far enough away from some but not that particular apiary.

Enough of bees! I have been busy in the garden and so has Mr Sl! - yesterday I finally said I needed help to remove everything from the GH and clean it. It should be an annual event but last year he was not able to help so it didn't happen. It was an all day affair and involved several trips! A spray bottle for the Jeyes dilution (is that why outside smells like a farmyard now?) and another to replenish said disinfectant (£20 on offer from the woodwork mending shop). Anyway, I cleaned the glass, swept it and there are lots of clean pots and trays (thanks to him) all tidy, and many, many cobwebs removed, everything ordered and ready.

I am baking bread and this morning's lower temperature means time on here as it is slower proving. As always, I need to do other things too and I plan to collect the missing item from my prescription, and visit the garden centre where I get a discount for some annuals for the hanging baskets. Good jobs for a rainy morning. I hope @foxgloves is enjoying better weather than here for her birthday (it is due to cheer up later)!

Suffolk_lass

Hopefully a quieter day today - we need to drop off the truck for yet more warranty work (Lemon, anyone?) then I am due at someone else's bees for 10.00 and back here for lunch at 12.30. We went along to see the field where someone is offering a space for a beekeeper yesterday afternoon, thinking we would have a pint at the pub there - the adjacent owner was not there so we will try again today.

Oh, and I caught a swarm and found a home for it, so that will move next week. This means I need to make up more frames and be ready for more. It was one of our colonies that put out a small cast swarm. They seem happy with their accommodation. I do hope their queen is more pleasant than her mother. A cast swarm is about the size of a galia melon and has a virgin queen at its heart. (A prime swarm in contrast, is the size of a rugby ball (at least) with the established queen in its midst). I knew there were two queen cells in this colony but I thought I had made them weak enough to prevent swarming having split them into 3 and given brood to the adjacent colony. What do I know! With another virgin queen in there I didn't inspect them, and I have agreed to move them soon, but they need to be left for a week or two for the queens to mate now.

I have promised Mr Sl that I will help with the cleaning pile(s) this afternoon - I shall give him an hour or two of scraping propolis, wax and dead bits of bee off kit to pass to him for scorching and then replenish the clean and ready kit pile.

In money news, a pleasant surprise this morning, as both my pensions arrived with modest increases to them - the work one was due Monday but as it is a bank holiday it is early! - on the down side there is little in the way of slack and it's going to be a long month - five weeks including the second bank holiday within this month. Mr Sl's credit card payments, along with the regular saver means that the running costs account has less than £100 of leeway, so my Tilly tidying will be modest, just to the next £10 rather than £50 (£50 was my hope in order to recover some of the money spent on the troublesome truck!).

I have also had my hair cut (as has Mr Sl) - it definitely grew more quickly this last time so he went for it and I have what my barber (hairdresser) refers to as my summer plumage now. My ears were cold last night, lol - still £25 for both of us, with mine taking a good 40 minutes. Thanks to HRT it is still thick and in good condition!

Have a good day and enjoy your weekends everyone!

beanielou

Enjoy your weekend.

Suffolk_lass

I got a few bits done yesterday, what with planting some beans in pots (only four pots; one each of scarlet and white flowered runner beans, a pot of borlottis and a pot of blauhilde climbing French bean) And oh joy, lots of little squash seeds are germinating, a week on from planting them. My tomato seedlings seem to have temporarily stalled - I want their roots to fill the pots before potting them on again. As for my chilli seedlings, I still have seed leaves in each of the three pots so I will wait a bit longer before moving these into individual pots.

I spent about three hours at a different teaching apiary yesterday in the next County, to see how they manage their project to only use locally adapted bees. The system works well for them with a double brood box with a Queen excluder between them and frames of eggs and young larvae constantly being put in the top box to provide young bees for nucleus colonies when swarm cells are found in colonies they are hoping to breed from. They can safely take them without fear of the Queen being moved. They are moving towards locally adapted bees of the native darker colour.

My association is considering setting up a queen rearing programme to try and discourage beekeepers from buying in queens (because most have been imported and the risk of some awful notifiable pests being imported with them is huge). So it was research for me.

This afternoon I am teaching at the Teaching Apiary, so this morning I must do some preparation and get my props together - my swarm kit and paperwork, along with some posters and booklets. Right, I have wax filtering through a sheet of thick kitchen roll at the moment, and my coffee cup needs refilling!

Makingabobor2

You are certainly a busy little bee.....see what I did there? 🤣🤣

beanielou

A very busy bee 🐝

Suffolk_lass

The teaching apiary was a bit of a damp squib this week (what with the Secretary being on holiday it has not been well advertised, and it being a bank holiday). A group of us went down and sorted out lots of stuff. Now we have been notified that there is EFB in the area. We will have to emphasise the hygiene and disinfectant elements of beekeeping!

I went to some never-friendly bees yesterday and they are all still making new Queens. I considered taking a cell from one that is normally nice, over to one who are always cross with me, but as I "harvested it, the new queen began to emerge and so I simply released her back in with her sisters and I shall leave them to it.

I'm afraid my diary on here has become one long beekeeping diary but we do save money too. I saw that food has increased by an estimated 50% in price since 2021 - so I must be getting something right as our budget has remained static at £3000 per year since then. My current spend is just under £920 for the year to date. May is a five week month for us, but we will continue, eating plenty of veg with meat around 4-5 times a week, and smaller portions of meat mean we are still eating from the carrier bag of portioned up meat, rather than dealing with lots of leftovers. I have mince out and defrosted at the moment and will do a simple pasta and sauce tonight. Or possibly a small chilli I can just dump in the slow cooker and forget. I am proving a loaf as we speak and then going for coffee with a friend.

I must remember to take the cloches off the seedlings this morning. I covered everything as something eat my cayenne chillies down to stumps. There must be a snail or slug in my newly clean greenhouse!

Have fun, whatever you are doing.

foxgloves

I had to do a mollusc hunt in our cold frame yesterday as something had been helping itself to lettuce & echinacea. Large slug duly dispatched into a dense prickly hedge where he can take his chances with local corvids & hedgehog.

I increased our food budget during the pandemic when availability issues were affecting how much we bought & when (bulk buys, etc) Then the pandemic ended but food prices were going up, so I left the higher monthly grocery budget in place. Since then, there has been the big food price inflation but I haven't increased our budget further to cover that & have no plans to do so. We have found that swapping from weekly to monthly meal plans has been positive for the grocery budget so has probably helped off-set food price inflation. Growing stuff helps too, of course when it's harvesting season.