winter approaches

There was a frost this morning, the first of the winter.  It was not heavy, just enough to leave a thin layer of ice on the car windscreens that soon melted in the sun, but I was glad I'd shut the doors of the greenhouse and conservatory and had a final sweep round yesterday for pots of anything tender still lurking on the patio or by the pond.

The weather taking a wintry turn reminded me that I had better go and take the buckets of syrup off the bees.  It's been warm enough for them to forage in recent days, with honeybees as well as bumbles on the Mahonia 'Winter Sun', so they might have been able to do something with the syrup if they'd wanted it, but I think it is definitely getting too cold now, and the trouble with having a bucket of feed on a hive in cold weather is that you have to put a deep extra box above the brood box where the bees live in order to support the roof.  It is like giving them a giant, chilly attic, and they would be snugger without it.

While I was there I put the mouse guards on.  These are perforated metal strips with holes in large enough for a bee to pass through, but not a mouse.  There is a risk of mice setting up home in the corners of your beehives during the winter months.  The bees, if they are all clustered together for warmth, will not sting it to death, as they presumably would in summer when there were more of them and they were more active.  I felt quite pleased with myself for remembering the guards now and not in mid December, though concerned that the hives felt a little lighter than I'd have liked.  Still, I have supplies of fondant to give them in an emergency.  There is nothing more to be done until the end of the year when I shall dose them with an oxalic acid based treatment for varroa mite, except keep an eye on the hives in case they should blow or be pushed over.  Fortunately the thriving local badger population has never shown any signs of interest in the beehives.

I began to pot the tulip bulbs, now that it is November and getting colder.  Received wisdom is that November is the time to plant them, the reason given being that if the leaves emerge too early they are more prone to catch the fungal disease tulip fire.  Other, odder reasons do pop up from time to time, like the theory that the bulbs tire themselves making leaves, and I note that the RHS advice about tulip fire does not mention planting time.  It certainly doesn't hurt to plant tulips later than daffodils, since if left to their own devices they don't seem to start rooting as early as the daffodils do, and tulip bulbs don't dry out as frighteningly easy as some bulbs, like fritillaries, but having accepted the late planting gospel for years I have begun to wonder how much basis it has in fact, or if it is one of those bits of lore owing its origins more to past practice and convenience than science.

I could not finish potting because I began to run out of compost.  The days are getting so short.  I tidied the auricula pots, potted half the tulips, sorted out the bees, and that was daylight gone barring a tiny bit of weeding before it got too dark and cold.  And of course once we start getting frosts that severely limits what you can do outside for the first half of the morning.