Planting time

I've started the first little bits of planting. Seven varities of bread bean; Crimson Flowered, Red Bristow (from the HSL), Aquadulce, Grando Violetto, Wizard, a field bean, and Red Epicure, all tp be planted together. I'm going to let them all cross, add more to the mix next year, and see what I end up with. I'm looking for somthing tasty, tough (hence the field bean), red-flowered and red-seeded. I've also put three lines of TPS (true potato seed) in at home; Skagit Magic, which is supposedly blight resistant, only I didn't have any blight to test it last year, Russian Blue, and Blue Belle. Last year I got them in mid-May, and planted then, far too late. This year they've got plenty of time to develop.

My surviving bee colony has far too much brood; four and a half frames of it. That's consistent with what I'm hearing elsewhere, and it's no doubt due to the mild winter. Trouble is, there's no way the bees are going to bring in enough food for that lot in early March. We're going to see a lot of colonies starving this spring, and those tha come through will be unusually strong. All we need then is a dry and sunny May, and there are going to be swarms all over the place. At the moment, they're bringing in a little pollen - a lot for the time of year, but not much in absolute terms - from snowdrops, blackthorn and hazel.

 The first pussy willow is showing, and it won't be long before wllow pollen predominates. It's that time of year; it's often a bit warmer, so the bees can fly for longer, and there are large trees within a few yards. With an ample supply of food for the first time since early autumn, the bees can expand the boodnest, and build up the numbers. They're still vulnerable, though. If there's a shortage of stored food, a spell of cold or wet weather can easily reduce them to starvation.

Meanwhile, the hellebores are in full bloom.

Nosema

I started the winter with four colonies of bees, and ended it with one. The three which didn't make it all died off after New Year, with clusters shrinking steadily. The survivor is extremely strong. This is due to a gut disease called Nosema apis. At least, it's probably N apis. There is a second species, ceranae, which originated with the Asian honeybee, but we don't know a lot about it yet. The disease shortens the bee's life, so the colony wither doesn't make it through our long winters, or comes through weakened.

I know why this happened; it's because I put colonies onto old comb, which must have been infected. So I need to sterilise all my unused broodcomb with concentrated acetic acid. The fumes are lethal to humans as well as disease organisms, so it takes careful handling. I've avoided concentrated acids for many years, but I can get the stuff on eBay, and I'm going to have a go. Then if I get as much new comb pulled as I can, melt the worst of the old, and medicate the bees in the autumn, that should deal with the problem.

On a pleasanter note, it's time to start planting. I went to an event organised by the HSL last Saturday at Martineau Gardens, a couple of miles away. Unfortunately I forgot the camera, but I came back with some interesting seed; shark's fin squash, fenugreek, a Bangladeshi variety of callalloo, which is darker green than the Caribbean varieties - I don't know whether there's any other difference - and halon, which is apparently a sort of spicy cress.

First signs of spring

Galanthus caucasicus (I like snowdrops enough to have the odd species; it's about twice the size of the normal snowdrop) coming out.

One of numerous hybrid Hellebores I have round the allotment. A neighbour once used some blue plastic by mistake; it disintegrated due to the ultraviolet, and there are still bits around the place. the only plastic sheeting that should be used on a garden is the black stuff used to smother weeds.

And a crow.

Winter's grip

As you can see, I'm digging steadily, and covering everything with dead leaves. There's not much goodness in them, but it keeps the weeds down, keeps the soil damp in dry soells, feeds the worms, and adds humus. The recent frosts finished off the roses, but hellebores are flowering, and snowdrops are showing colour. Not long to the end of winter!

One hive has died out; the other three are looking good. The dead one dwindled away over a period, leaving a very small, very dead cluster, with food available. So they didn't starve. I suspect a bowel fungus called Nosema, but without a microscope, I can't prove it.

Frost pocket

Frost has been very evident oon the allotment the last few days, making its status as a major frost pocket only too obvious. There's not much frost where I live, and it soon melts in the sun, but on the plot, it hangs about all day. Cold air flows down to the stream, runs along its course, and hits the railway embankment at the bottom. So we get a pool of cold air hanging over the site. I don't think it affects our vegetable growing much, if at all, but it leaves me worrying about the tender tubers I have sitting in buckets of damp sand. Another time, I may leave them in the boiler house at church, which is probably going to be completely frost free. The buckets would take a good bit of freezing though, so they'll probably be OK. One more night of it, and it's supposed to warm up again.

I haven't done a thing down there this week, as I've been getting a new carpet laid in church, along with a sound system, and an electronic hymnal, which is like a little computer which plays hymns. Just what we need when the organist isn't there, but I did my back in shifting chairs. I was expecting the carpet people on Wednesday, they turned up Monday morning, and I had to get everything shifted out in a hurry.

Only six or eight weeks to go till spring!

Robin

And here's a crow.

Fallen tree

There's a hawthorn down a few yards from my plot. Also a massive sheet of corrugated in the stream at the bottom. Fortunately it was too big to go round a tight bend by the bridge, and block the culvert. The problems that would cause don't bear thinking about. I managed to drag it out from under the bridge, but couldn't get it up the bank on my own. With a bit of luck, I might manage to find some assistance today, and get it shifted. Apart from that, I think we've all survived the week's gales in good shape, and the Council have been informed about the tree. They're usually pretty good about getting somebody out to clear the lane.

Wasps' nest

I was admiring this wasps' nest in one of my empty hives yesterday. It almost fills an 18-inch square broodbox; I've never seen anything like it outside the University Museum of Natural History in Oxford. They've got a massive one on display there; from what I remember, they had two nests side by side, and they combined into a monster. This is a single nest, which I watched throughout its development.

I've planted out twenty raspberry canes; they've been on the plot a couple of years, but I haven't managed to get them organised. I tried last year, but health problems plus the drought led to most of the canes dying. This time it should work, as they've got plenty of time to get settled in before summer.

A neighbour just gave me a tray of shallots, whihc need planting out. i haven't had any success with these before, but I'm quite happy to try again. They're his show stock, so they're nice fat bulbs which should, in theory, do well. So that's the next job, along with garlic and elephant garlic which need planting out as well. Walking onions, Babbington leeks and Welsh onions can all stay in their pots for the time being. I'm waiting for maincrop onions to appear in the 99p shop, since I got them there last year, and they did really well. I haven't had any success growing seed yet, but maybe once I get a polytunnel up. Hopefully I'll manage it this year!

Mites and seed parcels

I recieved this this morning, courtesy of JayB and the folks at Allotments4all. We just save seed from a few varieties, send it in, and this is what we each get. Lots of rarities in there!

I've given the bees their annual oxalic acid treatment, for varroa mites. I use 100g sugar, 7.5g oxalic acid, and 100ml water. The acid came from Thornes a few years ago; a 500g packet should be enough for a lifetime. All four colonies were alive. The two colonies headed by queens I raised this year are extremely strong, with clusters on 7-8 seams. They flew better than the others during the autumn, when the strengths were more equal. The wakest is the swarm which moved in last May, which is on two seams. It may be dwindling, or it may just be genetically predisposed to wintering in a small cluster, which obviously eats less and is less likely to run out of stores and starve.

Both the colonies with older queens are light, so I gave them both candy. This is made like human candy. I used 2 1/2 Kg sugar, with a mugful of water per Kg, and boiled it until it formed a reasonably solid ball when dropped into cold water. All very unscientific! It's just sugar with added water, so the bees can use it without having to find the extra water. The process has to be stopped before ti caramelises and turns brown, as bees are unable to digest caramel, and the extra matter in their gut can finish a colony off in a long, cold spell with no opportunities for a poo flight.

So far, it's looking good. I just hope it lasts!

Oca

This is now dying back after having been frosted during the week. As you can see, a crop appears to be forming. I'm not lifting anything till the top growth is completely dead.

I need to add more varieties for next year, to increase my chances of getting seed. I always get a few flowers, around October, but I haven't seen a seed pod yet. Once I have some, that starts a process of selection for plants which will flower, and set seed, reliably in our climate. It works with cacti. South American species which were exceedingly shy bloomers in Britain when they were first grown here, have now adapted after a number of generations, and flower reliably. No reason why the same thing shouldn't work with oca!

Rare Brassicas

I've been minus a camera for a bit but I now have a replacement. 12 megapixels, so I'm anticipating having to make reduced versions of pics for the internet, and the contrast is far better than the old one. No need to enhance it digitally! So here are some of the first pics, taken on a very dull day, and uploaded as they come.

This is Gloire de Portugal, a variety of couve tronchuda. It's a rare old Portugese cabbage type, loose leaved as you see. It's a dual purpose vegetable; you can cook the midribs as well as the rest of the leaf. They're good in stirfries. Harry Dodson makes much of the lack of cabbage smell when cooking it in 'The Victorian Kitchen Garden', but I tend to give everything minimal cooking, and it cabbage never smells when I do it! It tried to bolt during the autumn, possibly because of the drought. I picked off the flowering stems as they appeared. As you can see, it's a large plant. The only source I know of for (generic) couve tronchuda in Britain is Thomas Etty, and they suggest planting a foot or two apart. Two and a half to three feet would be more like it. Some plants have done well despite the drought, others poorly.

 'Spis Bladene' (not its proper name; it was written on the seed envelope, and means 'good eating') from the HSL. It's pretty stunted, no doubt due to the drought. They say it's a perennial kale, but I know no more than that. As I only have three small plants I'll probably cut it back when it tries to flower, see if it does regenerate, and plant more next year. With any luck, that might give me a better number of plants for seed saving.

Variegated Daubenton's Kale, looking rather tattered and squashed as the slugs like it, and it's had net draped over it. It's a perennial, non-seeding kale; I'm planning to take cuttings in the spring. I also have Taunton Deane, a similar, redder, variety. My one plant's rather small, slug-eaten, and thoroughly unphotogenic.

Autumn

I'm still harvesting the Egremont Russet. It's one of my favourite apples, and as they're hanging on the tree well, I don't have to try to find somewhere to store them. A lot have split. The rain after the dry summer made them swell up, and as the skins had already 'set', the result was inevitable.

Much of the soil is now damp, but there are still patches where it's bone dry. It's amazing how much rain it can take to wet it properly. The stream's running at last, but I'm not sure how long that'll last if it stops raining for a few days. I've seen buzzards over the site twice in the last week. They've been appearing for the last few years; I think they're more of a winter visitor, but I'm still not sure.

I lifted the Skagit Magic this last week. May was far too late to plant true potato seed; I've got more coming, and I'll probably start it in January. I did get tubers off some plants; I've probably selected for earlies since it only flowered last month. They're very small, up to an inch. I've no experience of overwintering microtubers (which is almost what they are), but I'm going to try. We didn't have any blight this year, so I don't know whether any of them are resistant to British strains. I'll probably find out next year.

Meanwhile, I've sent off one seed swap parcel, and I've got to do another over the weekend. The beans are still drying, but it's that time of year already!

Crossed beans

It's been a while since I posted here, dues to my not having been well. I've been harvesting seed, doing a bit of digging, and not much else. The broad beans are hybridised; half the Red Epicure seed was green. It must have crossed with Aquadulce Claudia. I've been thinking of trying to breed my own variety, and I'm going to do it. I'll cross the existing mix with Crimson Flowered, maybe one or two other varieties, and aim at something red-flowered, red-seeded, hardy, and tenderer than AQ. It should be possible, with patience.

One of my Couve Tronchudas was running to seed, with unusual white flowers for a cabbage. I've pulled all the flowering stems off as I don't have as many as I'd like, and I don't want it dying on me before it's had a chance to fertilise my other plants next year!

Meanwhile I'm feeding the bees up. Two colonies have enough honey for the winter, two don't. I've marked both the new queens; one of them gave me a right shock. A couple of weeks ago, I marked her using a crown of thorns cage, which is based on a ring of nails which you push down into the comb to hold the queen against it. She curled up and started twitching. She seemed OK a couple of minutes later, and is still there, still laying happily. I've heard of queens playing dead before, but I've never seen it, and it's frighteningly realistic!

Honey Show

I spent the weekend helping with the Birmingham Association's Honey Show at Martineau Gardens in Edgbaston. It's the first time it's been held there, and we weren't sure how it would go. In the event, there was plenty of interest, and we sold all the honey we had. I spent the time sitting by an observation hive, answering questions and showing people what was going on inside it. It was the first time I've had a chance to spend several hours watching a queen; I'm not sure her behaviour was entirely normal, but she spent the great majority of the time standing about doing nothing, just laying the occasional egg.



Quite a few people entered jars of honey for the competition; the judge spent hours examining it, but I'm really not sure what the criteria are.

Honey sales were a great success





The observation hive generated loads of interest, particularly from the kids.



Not surprisingly, the bees didn't like being cooped up all weekend with the light streaming in, and they were fanning like mad to keep the temperature down. The're very good at this; I saw a photo in an old 'ABC and XYZ of Beeping' (an American beekeeping encyclopedia) of a hive which had been right next to a serious fire in a timber yard. the back of the hive had been burning, and the wood looked well and truly charred. The bees inside survived.

Find the queen!



New Queens

I sneaked a look at the two new splits; both have eggs, laid in nice patterns; one egg per cell, and laid in contiguous cells. It looks as though the new queens have mated satisfactorily, so there's not much to do except feed them up for the winter, and see what survives.

A lot Bramleys have been dropping off the tree, so they've been chopped up and frozen. The greengage crop isn't good this year, but I did a massive crumble, and there are plenty more.

Another Swarm

I've just spent a couple of hours winkling a swarm out of a neighbour's hedge. I put a swarm box upside-down on top of the hedge, and applied smoke to the bottom of the swarm. The idea is that they move up into the box. They moved, very slowly, but they went diagonally, into the depths of the hedge, and I ended up with a third in the box, a third on the outside, and a third still in the hedge. I found the queen on the outside, picked her up, and put her in the box, with the lid on. That made all the difference; I knocked the bees in the hedge into the air, and before long they were all in the box. They're now in an empty hive.

I split the original hives last week, so I now have five; two with laying queens, two with virgins, which should have hatched over the weekend, and one with a queen which is an unknown quantity. The swarm is probably a cast with a virgin, but it's a reasonable size, and it's been hanging in the hedge for at least a week, so the queen has had time to mate.

Vitally, I have plenty of young drones from Hive 5, which have hatched in the last couple of weeks. It takes 12-14 days before they become fertile, so they're at the right point in their lives. It's easy to arrange for new queens, as colonies produce them any time you take the queen away, assuming they have eggs or newly hatched larvae available. Drones are hard; they raise them when they want, not when it suits the beekeeper.

The beans are at last starting to produce; I've been pleasantly surprised by the runner bean 'Black Magic'. I heard that it was stringy, and had assumed it was going to be a drying bean. In fact, the young beans are stringless and sweet-tasting. I don't like the larger beans anyway, so it's a question of picking them at about six inches long.

My rhubarb got a first at the site show last week; I haven't been well since, but I'll put a few pics up later.

23 August. I went back to check this afternoon, and the swarm was back in the hedge. I've come across that before; they sometimes seem to get wedded to the idea of hanging in a specific spot, and won't stay put in a hive. I'll try again tomorrow.

24 August I didn't have time to extract the swarm from the hedge again yesterday, so I went back today. Naturally, it was gone.

Bees

I went through Hive 3 again today, broke down a lot of queen cells, and got rid of several that were prematurely capped. If they're capped after four days, then they were raised from larvae which were too old to make good queens. I used to have a strain which never did this, so I have to assume it's genetic, and can potentially be bred out. In another week or so, when the bees have had time to build up and strengthen the cell walls, I'll split Hive 5 as well, and give a couple of cells to the queenless side. It's then a matter of waiting while they hatch, mate, and start laying.

Bees and Riots

I split Hive 4 - the big one - over the weekend. The brood and young bees are now Hive 3; the queen and flying bees remain where they were. Both splits are extremely strong. I checked them today, and everything is as it ought to be. Hive 3 has several dozen queen cells - more than I like - and not much open brood. That's good; you want lots of young bees, and not much for them to feed, to ensure that the queens get the best possible treatment.


A queenless hive will always produce queen cells as long as it has eggs or newly hatched larvae. Drones are harder. Hives 3 and 4 don't have a drone cell between them, but Hive 4 does have a lot of drones. They'll probably be a bit long in the tooth by the time the queens are ready to mate, but hopefully they'll still be fertile. Hive 5 is better; it has a reasonable amount of hatching drone brood. The adult queen hatches 15 days after the egg is laid, and flies to mate about 5-8 days later, depending on the weather. Drones become fertile about 12-14 days after hatching, so I'd expect mating in about two and a half to three weeks, weather permitting, at which time I should have some reasonably young drones available. That's critical, as bees produce them when they feel like it, not when the beekeeper needs them!

On a more serious note, I just spoke to my daughter in Hackney. She's OK, but they're rioting outside, and she couldn't get to her placement. She's horrified by what's happening; as she says, the damage they're doing will just make things worse.

16 years

This is us out for a 16th anniversary meal yesterday. People forecasted disaster, tried to sabotage the wedding, claimed Namissa was only marrying me to get her stay here. Our minister at the time wrote and asked me not to go ahead since she's Muslim. Despite it all, we've failed to murder each other, divorce, or do anything else to cause an irreparable breach, and as you see, we're still together. We've never had a single row about religion either. It's the same God, and beside that, what else matters?

Hedges

I'm beginning to think this may be the year my hedges finally get sorted. I'd given up on cordless tools; a hedge trimmer I had a few years ago was hopeless. But people kept telling me the recent ones are OK, so I bought a Flymo Sabrecut hedge trimmer; it comes with a massive 24 volt battery that goes on your waist, and appears to be the nearest thing to a heavy-duty model out there. I've been pleasantly surprised. It cuts branches as thick as the ones the petrol cutter I used to struggle with could cope with. At the same time, it's far more manageable. It cuts the top of the hedge without my needing to stand on anything, and the battery lasts longer than I do

At the moment I need the loppers for the heavier stuff, particularly along the top of the hedge where I can't get the leverage I can on the side. Once it's done, though, it cuts smaller twigs with ease, so it should be easy to keep the hedges under control. I've said it before, but it should happen this time!

I wish there was a cordless strimmer as good. I looked at several models, and plumped for a Bosch ART 23 li, with a lithum battery. I like the blades it uses rather than cord; they don't last that long, but they work out about 30p each on eBay, so it's not expensive to run. It does the job adequately, but still feels somewhat underpowered. The battery lasts long enough to see me through the amount of strimming I'm likely to do in a day. It would be better with an 18-volt battery rather than 14.4, but I don't need anything like the overpowered petrol thing I used before. Not only did it give me backache, it once cut straight through a plastic bucket. There's no call for that!

Slow progress

I planted out 40 sweet corn today; they're a bit late, but they weren't potbound so they'll be OK. There are more to do tomorrow. I meant to chop a few feet of overgrown hedge, but I looked at it and wilted in the heat. The thing's quite intimidating, given the difficulty I have handling the hedge cutter. I've ordered a battery powered one (it should have been delivered on Friday, but they didn't knock, and I had an email to say that they'd 'been unable to deliver', and would I rearrange it. It's a recurring problem; I hope it comes tomorrow. It won't do the overgrown hedge, but I should be able to handle it easily, and if so, I can keep the young growth in order from now on. There's a strmimmer comig as well, which will be more than useful. I had battery powered ones some years ago; they were OK for about a year, but the batteries gave up on me. I'm assured they're better now.

The wasps' nest has now grown to the point where it's stuck to the hive roof, and I can't take any more pics till it does out at the end of the season. I've still got lots of bees round my empty hives, but they haven't moved in yet. Hive 3 - the big one - has nine frames of brood; Hive 5, the swarm, has five and a half, and is building up steadily. There should be honey soon, and it's coming in nicely.

Thundery

It was as hot as the backside of hell this afternoon, and the bees were in a right mood. I couldn't go within ten yards of the hives without being buzzed. That's most unusual, but they're known for an extreme aversion to thundery weather. You don't open a hive on a day like this!

I've mislaid a pea. I had two varieties from a Swedish seed bank; they're so rare that we don't know what they look like, and as far as I know only one other person had seed. Paula is doing fine, but I couldn't find Skansk Margart. Either its lost its label or I forgot to put one on in the first place. I know I planted it out as I found the label from the original pot. I did find a few plants of a strange pea, sharing a wigwam with Clarke's Beltony Blue. It has a pale pink, self-coloured flower unlike anything I've seen before in a pea. I bet that's it, but I'll have to check with the other grower. I hope it's not purple-podded, or it'll be hard to tell the two apart.

Pigeons have been trampling all over some of the peas I'm growing for a crop rather than seed, despite CD's hanging just overhead. They've attacked very few pods - they aren't ripe yet - but they've had a good go at the foliage, and the stems are all broken down. It's not going to make them any easier to harvest.

Wasps, Bramleys and Peas

This is a wasps' nest I killed for another plotholder. Opening the shed door tore the side off, and they really went wild. You can see the structure quite well, with the horizontal paper combs, and the white grubs hanging upside-down, each one hanging from a silk thread. The adults feed them on insects, and in return, the grubs feed them on sweet syrup.

I planred this Bramley's about six years ago, and it's beginning to crop well. It took a while to get moving because of the waterlogging; fruit trees don't like it at all. It's a partial tip bearer, and the heavy fruit weigh thin branches down, to the point where it grows sideways or even downwards. When it's grown without a trunk, people end up tieing the branches to stakes to keep them off the ground. I wish now I'd given it a taller trunk!

I finished planting out the peas today. 24 varieties, unless I've missed some. There's plenty more still to do!

Wasps, Bees and Weeds

This is rapidly getting bigger. The wasps still quite unaggressive though, and ignore me while I watch them. The patterns in the paper - made from chewed wood pulp from all sorts of places - are amazing. Both hives are getting stronger; Hive 4 is laying down honey - at least ten pounds in the bottom super during the last week, a smidgeon in the one above it, and a lot more in the broodbox. Hive 5 is expanding steadily, and now has five frames of brood, and a little stored honey.

Weeds are doing better than anything else at the moment. they always seem to at this time of year, but it's far worse than usual as I couldn't keep up last year. I'm really struggling, but as long as I can keep planting things out I'll manage. The slugs hammered the French beans and the Gloire de Portugal when it rained. All the other brassicas were left unmolested, as are the runner beans. I should have some peas soon. I've had a few lettuces, and while the spinach went straight to seed, it is at least beginning to flower, so I should have plenty of seeds.

The Sarracenia flava are eating large quantities of medium-sized insects, up to and including wasps. I've been surprised how many of the latter I see staring up at me when I look down the pitchers. They're not supposed to be looking for nectar this early in the season. S rubra only eats smaller victims, and doesn't seem to get as many, unless it's simply that they're sinking out of sight, while the flavas are getting clogged up with larger prey.

Sarracenias

These grow in acid bogs in the US. Such an environment is very short on nutrients, expecially nitrogen, and plants have developed all sorts of ways to supplement their diet with small invertebrates. Sarracenia leaves are rolled into a trumpet shape; the upper part produces nectar to attract insects. Just inside the lip, where the plant produces the most nectar, is a very smooth area with no hairs; the insect can't get a secure gip, and falls. Further down, all the hairs point downward, making it hard for the victim to go in any other direction. Eventually, it falls into the liquid at the bottom, which contains a wetting agent, and soon drowns. It rots, and the plant absorbs the resulting soup.

This is Sarracenia flava, the largest species. These pitchers are about fifteen inches high, and well over an inch across; other strains get significantly bigger. They look as though they could probably eat a blubottle or a wasp, but most of their diet seems to be small flies about the size of an aphid.

Sarracenia rubra rubra is the smallest member of the genus, barely reaching a foot high; the pitchers are about half an inch in diameter.

Meanwhile, the bees are flourishing, and beginning to store honey for me. I'm struggling to fins space for everything I need to plant out, as a lot of the plot is still a mass of weeds from last year. I can't go fast enough, that's my problem!

Late frost

We had a slight frost on Saturday night - 11-12 June; my record late frost here was on the 16th a few years ago. The tips of the potatos were shrivelled, and one or two beans which escaped the fleece were blasted. The oca was OK, as was everything in the mini-greenhouses. Not too much damage, but it's unexpected this late.

I've been planting out peas and brassicas; the Daubenton's Kale is now almost a foot high, and out among the peas. When I pull them, the brassicas can grow on and profit from the extra nitrogen.

Useful insects

This beauty's in one of my empty hives; I can lift the roof off and watch them without being threatened at all. They get through thousands of insects a day to feed the larvae, and are far too useful to kill. There's really very little chance of getting stung; I've shared my shed with wasps several times, and never had a sting yet.

The bees have just started to lay down honey in the supers, where I take the harvest from. The brambles are starting to flower, but from what I can see most of the bees are still on ground elder.

I fleeced the beans and the oca this afternoon, as they're forecasting a couple of cold nights, and I've already had a couple of bean varieties damaged by frost. Most of the peas are recovering well from the pigeon damage, and the rest should be OK once I've rearranged the netting a bit. Unfortunately that's going to mean readjusting all the ties, and I didn't have time today.

The Helleborus argutifolius has set seed, though it's not ripe yet. I'm not sure there's going to be anough for swapping, but I should at least get some seedlings to grow on, and hopefully have more next year. There's heavy rain forecast for Sunday, but I'm still struggling to get ahead of the weeds.

Bees

It's now drizzling steadily, which is something I suppose, though the ground's still very dry and we need a real downpour to make much difference. I nipped down to the plot earlier, to check the bees before it started.

I now have half a dozen tiny Meconopsis seedlings; I've falied to get seed of this to germinate many times, but the trick seems to be very fresh seed, and stratification over winter. the Daubenton's Kale is growing well. The name seems to be a generic one for any non-flowering perennial kale; we've now identified three varieties. There's the variegated one I have, a green one, and Taunton Deane, named after the garden in Devon where it's been preserved.

The big hive - No. 4 - is flourishing. I'm slipping a frame or two of foundation in every week, and easing out the remaining standard National frames. When I swapped to 14x12's, I let the bees build comb out on the bottoms of the frames rather than starting with all foundation, and it's worked well. It's time for them to go, however. The broodbox is packed with bees, though there's nothing going on in the supers yet. There's no sign of swarm cells so far, which is good. I don't like swarmy bees. They gave me a bit of a stinging last week, but this time they were fine.

The swarm - No. 5 - now has brood on three frames. I found the queen, and marked her white; it's last year's colour, but she's highly unlikely to have been raised this year. They're pulling comb steadily, and they sit very quietly during examinations.

Bees

I had a look at both colonies this afternoon. The swarm is happily settled in, has stored some honey, and has a couple of frames of eggs. So that's looking good. They seem to have stopped buzzing me as well. The original colony (Hive No. 4) is still building up fast. They're moving up into the supers, where the honey crop's stored. They got a bit agitated while I was inspecting them, buzzing around my head. Not a good habit. Unfortunately, not many beekeepers make much effort to breed from the best queens, so you really are taking pot luck with swarms. I've had far worse! Both hives have been given a couple of frames of foundation to pull out into comb. It should do something to discourage Hive 4 from swarming, and it'll enable me to get rid of some of my nastier old comb.

I've also planted out some more peas; Victorian Purple Podded, Glory of Devon, and Lancashire Lad.

The May is out

And the clouts are well and truly cast.

This last one is (I think) Midland Thorn; it has smaller leaves, and as you see, pink flowers.

Goodlife sent me a couple of small cuttings of Daubenton's Kale. It's perennial, and, as you see, propagated by cuttings. It rarely sets seed, though it does happen. There are a few perennial brassicas; the only well-known one is Nine-Star Perennial Broccoli, which I'm also growing.  I also have 'Spis Bladene' (which isn't its proper name; we don't know what it is) from the HSL. They say it 'appears to be a perennial kale', suggesting they don't really know themselves. It obviously sets seed, but I believe some of them flower, and then sprout from the base instead of dying. It'll be interesting to see!

On Thursday morning, I passed by the plot, to see dozens of bees flying around two empty hives. There had been a few around for just over a week, and this usually turns out to be the precursor of a swarm, as they stake their new home out in advance, and defend it against other bees. Sure enough, when I returned after lunch, they'd made their choice, and there was a swarm in residence, having frightened a couple of neighbours on the way in. Swarming bees don't sting, but they can certainly look impressive! Unfortunately they have a habit of buzzing round my head. This is a known undesirable habit ('following'), so I'm going to be requeening them. It's hereditary, and I don't want all my bees doing it.