We took the cat to the vet for his post-operative check-up. She probed and prodded around his leg, and seemed satisfied with his progress. He has lost a bit of weight but not enough to worry about, so long as he gains it back. She gave us another three days' worth of painkillers, and told us to ring her on Friday to discuss if he seemed OK or if he needed more drugs. It is difficult to tell whether a cat is in pain, as they are pretty stoical animals, but there are times when he sits with his leg stuck out even further than usual and looks anxious, when I think it does hurt quite a lot. The bad news is that given his age his expected recovery time is eight to twelve weeks before he can be safely let outside, which is another two or three months of having to let the other cats in and out of the house as and when they want to enter or leave. So far he hasn't shown any signs of wanting to go out, except for his one panic attack, and I think he knows he wouldn't be safe by himself. Curled up in his usual spot in the meadow he could easily be fox food.
I paid an inconclusive visit to the bees. It wasn't ideal weather for a bee inspection, being humid and windy, which make them irritable, with bad light, which makes it hard for me to see what's going on. However, yesterday had been even worse, it was now eight days since the last inspection, and I was sure they were trying to swarm. I knew what I had to do to prevent them from swarming, which was to find the queen and put her in a new beehive on the site of the old beehive, moving the old beehive to a fresh site in the apiary. The flying bees would then return to the site of the old hive, find the queen there but with no brood and plenty of space, and be satisfied that they had already swarmed (even if they couldn't remember a thing about it). Meanwhile in the old beehive the house bees would look after the brood, bees that hatched after the hive was moved would naturally return to the new site, and a new queen would emerge from the queen cells to lead the colony. I would still have all of my bees, albeit now divided into two colonies, and my honey.
That is the theory. The catch lies in the phrase 'find the queen'. I did not find the queen, so getting my comeuppance for having unmarked queens. I went through the hive three times, while the bees got more and more agitated. Farm workers appeared midway through to re-lay the irrigation pipes in the next door lettuce field, which has just been ploughed and replanted with a fresh crop. The only thing to do was destroy all the queen cells and close the hive down, then try again another day, preferably when the weather was better and there weren't people working in the field next to me.
That's what I attempted to do. The catch this time lies in the phrase 'destroy all the queen cells'. I destroyed as many as I could find, but it's difficult to be sure you have spotted all of them. They are the size of a smallish person's little finger, and can easily be hidden under the bees. In theory you can shake the combs to get all the bees off, or at least most of them, but I though the bees were getting agitated enough as it was, without shaking them. I closed the hive up and went back to the house, with several bees following me for quite a few minutes. I don't normally get followers as they are generally nice bees, but I had razzed them up a lot.
I didn't like to open the other hive while there was an atmosphere of panic in the apiary and people too close by, but they didn't look as close to swarming anyway at the last inspection. With any luck it will be quieter weather tomorrow, when this system has blown through, and maybe the farm workers will have finished doing whatever they have to do next door. It would be helpful to know when they are planning to work on that field, then I could organise inspections around them, but it would be unwise to ask, as they would never remember to tell me and I would just have implanted the idea that the bees could be dangerous.
We had lunch, and then the rain showers arrived. It's 14.25pm, and I don't feel as though I have achieved anything yet today.
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