the bees are OK (so far)

I inspected the bees this morning, straight after breakfast.  Apart from checking that the hives were still intact and the right way up, and one quick look to see that they didn't need more space, I didn't disturb them in July.  Two had already swarmed by then, I didn't believe the one that requeened this spring would swarm, and the swarm I collected had to sort itself out, so I would have been stressing them to no good purpose.  Today I thought I'd better finally see how things were going.

All seemed to be pretty well.  I found eggs in the third frame I looked at in the number one hive, which told me that the new queen had hatched successfully, and returned from her mating flight without getting lost or being eaten by a bird or a hornet.  Once I'd seen the eggs I didn't even go through the rest of the hive.  There were no eggs yet in the number two hive, but the bees seemed quiet and some of the cells in the brood nest had been polished, so I'm hopeful that there is a queen in there and that the bees expect her to start laying any day soon.  Another inspection in a week or two should confirm whether this is the case.  The number three hive, as I expected, had not swarmed.  There was still plenty of brood, of all ages, as though they know they need to make up for their late start this spring.  Queens can stop laying in the late summer, but this lot are still working hard.  There was a bit of honey stored in the super, and I should get a very small crop this off that hive.  The swarm was tiny, but there were eggs and brood of all ages.  They are very dark bees, that set up a loud and not entirely amiable hum as soon as I took the lid off their little box, though they stopped as soon as I put it back.  Today was humid and not ideal weather to be inspecting bees, so I won't form a firm view on their temperament on the basis of this one inspection.  I'm not convinced that by autumn the colony will be large enough to meet the criteria in the textbooks for successful overwintering, but at the moment I'm inclined to think they'll have to take their chance.  I don't especially want to risk upsetting my other colonies by trying to combine them.  The empty hive I'd left up there on the offchance hadn't attracted another swarm, but I think I'll install one earlier in the season next year.

By late summer wasps can be a nuisance to bee colonies.  They will rob the honey if they can, much as they eat apples and plums on the trees.  Wasps mainly attack weak bee colonies with inadequate defences, and if the bees become demoralised the wasp incursion can get so bad that the colony is destroyed.  I was pleased not to find wasps inside any of my hives.  One reason for opening hives as infrequently and for as little time as possible at this time of year is to avoid letting wasps in.

In the meadow, on the way to the bees, I discovered an area of freshly trampled grass, with a hole the size of a bucket dug in it.  A few wasps hung around the hole, and there were some grubs in the bottom.  It must have been a wasps' nest, and I should say that it had been dug out by badgers, probably last night.  Once the residual wasps have disappeared I'd better pick up the stones, before they can get mixed up with the power scythe or the lawnmower, and find some earth to fill in the hole.  I hope that the badger, having had a tasty meal of insect grubs, won't start on the beehives.  Badgers are a known risk to beekeepers, and I have been lucky that so far I have not had any problems.  The solution would be to surround the beehives with an electric fence, but it would be an awful nuisance, keeping it clear of vegetation and making sure the battery was charged.  When I used to listen to the Archers I formed the distinct view that electric fences always let you down in the end.  But maybe the badgers won't make the extrapolation from wasps in the ground to bees in wooden boxes.

Back in the house, I saw a green woodpecker probing the lawn outside the sitting room window.  This has been an astounding year for ants, so it may have been after those.  Our lawns are not the most pristine, but I would far rather see woodpeckers just by the house than have an immaculate, pest-free bowling green.

fixing the wire

I spent today working on the boundary anti-rabbit (and muntjac) fence.  We know from the grazing and digging, plus photos from the trail camera, that both are coming into the garden regularly.  When we started the garden we installed conventional rabbit fencing, which for a long time worked pretty well, though the odd determined bunny used to jump over.  However, it is not high enough to stop muntjac, and over time it does get broken down in places where tree branches fall on it, or extra-determined animals gnaw holes in it.  I'd been stopping these up as I noticed them, but have now done a more systematic search and block exercise.

To stop muntjac jumping I'd added a second higher layer of wire netting in places, but unlike the original rabbit wire it wasn't attached to a strand of heavy wire along the top, and over time it had fallen down again, so I've been adding a top wire and attaching the second layer of netting to that, and fixing a higher layer along stretches where there wasn't one before.

It is all rather dull, when there is so much weeding and clearing and planting and mulching still to do, and pulling the next crop of goose grass seedlings out of the bed by the ditch while admiring the pulmonarias and cyclamen seedlings is so much more fun.  Wire is not pleasant stuff to handle, and  I've collected a few more scratches and my fingers hurt.  But there's no point in planting things for them to be dug up again, and in worrying about weeding when established plants are being regularly browsed down to stumps.  A friend commented that by now the rabbits were probably living in the garden anyway.  I hope this is not true, but if they are she can give me the name of somebody who will Deal with Them.

The great unknown is whether the badgers will accept having their runs and routes blocked up.  In the past they've been quite amenable, but it may be that one of today's holes could be on a sort of badger version of Elephant Walk.  There is another solution to try if that happens, which is to build them a badger gate.  I've seen such a thing at Waddesden Manor.  It is like an extra-large cat-flap.  Rabbits couldn't move it, and I don't imagine muntjac would, though they are quite stout little deer.  But given there are loads of other things to do it really would be better if we didn't find ourselves having to fabricate badger gates.

creatures of the night

We invested in one of those motion activated waterproof cameras I was talking about.  It turns out they are called trail cameras, and there is a whole internet community chatting about them and posting pictures of nocturnal animals.  Deer, wild boar (not in north Essex), all sorts.  You can set it to do time lapse photography as well, and short videos.  A new world of technology and wildlife spotting beckons, once we've got the hang of it.  We put the camera up by the chicken house, and I was convinced that the fox would go past, but all we got were a couple of shots of the cats wandering out in the early morning, and one blackbird (we're going to train the camera on the cat door one night, and see if any of the rodent operatives bother to stir themselves outside after we've gone to bed).  Then due to an error in setting up the camera it ran continuously and the batteries went flat before it could capture anything.  Last night, getting anxious to see something, we put it by the far end of the wood.  We got lucky.

A fox did go by.  I knew there were foxes, given they've taken several chickens over the years, we've seen them (I kicked one once, but that's another story), we hear the vixens call, and something had the carcass of last week's roast out of the dustbin.  It was running fast, so only stayed in camera shot for one picture, and that's blurry, but it's quite clearly a fox (photo).

There were also muntjac, two in fact, so they hunt in pairs (photo) .  Again, I knew we had muntjac.  I've seen them, and heard them bark, and they come into the garden and eat the leaves of the evergreen shrubs.  We need to use the camera to work out where they are hippity-hoppitying over the wire, then I'll raise it, and pile brushwood outside to make it the muntjac equivalent of a Grand National fence.

There was also a badger (photo).  I'd never seen one before in seventeen years, but thought they were around.  They are very fond of peanuts, so if we regularly set bait out for them we should get some more photos.  Badgers are clean animals that rather than soil their setts create latrines for themselves at a distance.  I once heard a R4 interview with someone whose job required him to monitor the territories belonging to different badger setts.  His method, which he had been using for about twenty years, was old-fashioned and low-tech science, as he cheerfully admitted.  He fed the occupants of each sett peanuts, laced with a mixture of golden syrup and non-toxic coloured plastic balls, a different colour for each sett.  Then he meticulously recorded which coloured balls appeared in each badger latrine.  I think we'd better skip the golden syrup.  With the beehives on the premises I don't want to encourage these badgers to develop a sweet tooth.