FALLING FORWARD INTO SPRING

Just over 3 months since my last post. So many things must have happened whilst I was hibernating, but I didn`t notice.
But the sleep was worth it.
Not true of course.
My hectic retirement keeps me very busy, and the thought of a new year with a new season of beekeeping in mind, and new experiences to be sought, has been forward in my mind.
The snow has finally receded around our village, but it is still to be seen on the high Cheviots across the Merse to the south, and also on the tops of the Lammermuir Hills to the west and north. although it is much less than in the depths of winter.
Our Council apparently spent an additional million pounds this winter because of snow clearing and road gritting, with some council employees putting in 90+ hours in a week!
They are still doing sterling service filling potholes in the roads.
I did suggest to the council how they could have saved a little money.
My idea was instead of waiting for the snow to make everywhere impassable, and then spend time loading tons and tons of the stuff onto huge lorries, all they had to do was park lots of lorries on the roads, nose to tail, before it snowed.
Do you get my drift?
Nature would have done all the costly hard work, by snowing directly onto the lorries instead of the roads, under the trucks.
Then just the simple task of driving it all away when it stopped snowing. No JCBs, and 100s of hours saved.
`Seemple`as the meerkats would say.
Roads cleared in no time at all, not even compressed snow left behind, and much less cost.
They did not take my idea up.
Possibly the date (01 APR 2010) had something to do with it. You know, financial year end and so on coming up. Too busy with paperwork etc.
As we progress further into spring my thoughts were constantly with my bees in the wood near Gifford.
Before winter, on accepting the hives and the single colony, I decided to give a winter feed to the colony to ensure sufficient stores were available to them. The weather at the time being late in the season, precluded opening the hive to examine the bees before the winter shutdown, so it was a case of feed them quickly and secure the colony for the winter, with the least possible disturbance, leaving them to their own devices and to Nature to make it through till the spring, when the warmer weather arrived.
Normally a warmish dry day in late March would be ideal to assess the colony`s strength.
A suitable day did not occur until earlier this week, so suitably equipped I ventured forth on a round trip of 65 miles to check the colony over.
It was a very pleasant walk through the woodland after parking my van. Signs of spring springing were in the air, all was looking favourable for the bees to be flying. Meghan my Collie was as usual enjoying the romp through the woods, never more than 20 yards away, alert to every rustle in the undergrowth and doing what Meghan does best.
Anticipation of seeing the bees flying at the hive entrance was foremost on my mind, as the area of the wood where the hives are came into view. Surely I had left them with a fighting chance of survival. We approached the hive startling a deer which bounded off through the trees. A blackbird was singing and everywhere was looking fresh after a hard winter. All I wanted was to see bees flying and working the early spring dandelions. The hives came into view, everything looked as if it should be OK. Meghan was doing her usual thing, chasing and throwing sticks into the air.
Since my hives were stolen last September, I went into the winter with only one colony of bees left. This was thanks to the kindness of my friend, Pat, who donated these two hives housing one colony to me, to get me started again.
I have been associated with bees and beekeeping for more than 50 years. You cannot imagine after this time what it was like to be bereft of bees, but Pat generously came to the rescue with the hives in the wood. The plan was, that I could slowly make increase given favourable conditions and get back to where I was with several colony`s of bees in a good apiary, given a couple of seasons and good conditions.
I`ll tell you in my next blog what happened next.

David
Thistledew.