Oca

I lifted these yesterday, from two plants. As you can see, the red

oca didn't produce much. I don't know whether it's typical, though; I couldn't see any more of the same variety with tubers on the surface, which would give me a comparison. Some of the tubers I put in were very small, and I'm planning to plant the biggest next time. I don't know whether that makes a difference. It showed no frost damage at all, having come sailing through with nothing but fleece and snow above some of the tubers. The white variety had a more satisfactory yield, but all the tubers on the surface had gone soft from being frosted. There was next to no slug damage, and what there was, was all on the surface.

The second pic shows some alliums like long shallotts whic I found on a Chinese stall at the Bull Ring market in town. Many of them are shallott size, and at first I assumed that was whaqt they were. Some were much bigger though; for comparison, they're sitting on an A4 sheet. When I got them, there were very few of that size, and I picked them out for growing on. Today, though, I saw they had more in, and a lot were this size. Obviously the customers prefer the big ones! I'll try them and see what they turn into.

Snow

I've been a bit incapacitated for a few days due to a rather nasty fall. I went over on some very slippery steps in town, and smashed the base of my spine on the stone. Nothing's broken, but I haven't been able to walk properly, and bending or getting out of a chair are painful. I took these pics a few days ago, but haven't felt up to posting them.

I'm no good at laying these posts out (don't know how people do it actually), but the next pic shows chunks of ice three inches thick on the canal. I can't get it to go anywhere else. The freeze went on for a week or so after the ice was broken, so the ultimate thickness would have been considerably more. Not that I'd have risked walking on it!

















The rest of the pics were taken round the allotment site.

Deadouts

Hives 2 and 5 have died out. I can't see any obvious reason; neither had touched the candy I gave them, though both were very short of stores. They don't show the normal signs of starvation, so it's not isolation, when a cluster can't move over to food in cold weather. The overwhelming majority of my losses involve first-year queens, so it has to be something to do with the queens. They weren't mated in bad weather, or when there was a shortage of drones, so it's a mystery. Losing half my hives is a major setback!

What do we do with the Christmas story?

Despite what the church says, there isn't one Christmas story in the Bible. There are two, and they're different.

Matthew is a strict Jew, writing for a Jewish audience. He hates the Pharisees, insists that the Law must be kept more strictly than they do, but who generally agrees with their interpretations. His Jesus is born in a Jewish context, to a family in Bethlehem (apparently they live there), in the reign of Herod I, who died in 4 BC. The first people to respond to the birth are Gentile astrologers, following a star.

The origin of the star is to be found in Numbers 24:17. A king called Balak has summoned Balaam, a pagan prophet, to curse Israel An angel intervenes, and Balaam is forced to bless them instead. He says that 'A star shall come out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel; it shall crush the borderlands of Moab, and the territory of all the Shethites.'

When devout Jews found themselves impoverished and oppressed in the last couple of centuries BC, they started to imagine that God would intervene decisively, to put things to rights. Either he would send a great angel, or a human king, the Messiah (messiah means 'anointed one'; the king was anointed at his coronation, and was sometimes called 'the Lord's anointed'). This king was symbolised by the star; the Dead Sea Scrolls use the passage in a messianic context.

Matthew envisages an essentially Jewish Kingdom, but there is plenty of room for Gentiles within it. There is no evidence that any Jew ever claimed that Gentiles would not find their place. So to emphasise this, Matthew presents Gentiles as the first people to respond to Jesus.

The astrologers go to Herod, expecting to see a royal baby. He knows nothing of the birth, and reacts angrily. He was a paranoid tyrant; Augustus allegedly said that 'It was safer to be Herod's pig than his son'. When he was dying, he had the sons of Jewish notables arrested, with orders that they should be killed as soon as he was dead, so that the Jews would mourn his passing. In the event, they were released unharmed. So, according to Matthew, Herod ordered the slaughter of all the children under two around Bethlehem. The massacre is not mentioned elsewhere.

Meanwhile, Mary and Joseph have been warned by an angel in a dream, and have run away to Egypt, where they live as refugees. Eventually, they return, believing it to be safe. However, Herod's son Archelaus now rules Judea and Samaria. After another dream, they move to Nazareth, where another of Herod's sons, Antipas, now rules.

Luke writes for Romanised Greeks, and is the most obviously Gentile of the Gospels. His Jesus is born immediately after the Romans establish direct control of Judea. Archelaus ruled as Ethnarch for about ten years, until Jewish complaints led to the Romans sending him into exile, and establishing direct rule.

Judea came under the Syrian Legate, the most senior Roman official after the emperor, who had responsibility for the entire eastern frontier as far as the border of Egypt. This was far too large an area for one man to control directly, so most of it had come under native princes who were subject to Rome. At the time, the Legate was a man named Quirinius. He visited Judea, and carried out a census, to determine the taxation base. This happened in late 6 or early 7 AD. In order to deny that there is a discrepancy between the two Gospels, some conservatives claim that Quirinius may have served as Legate twice. Unfortunately, this is based on a mistranslation of a partial inscription which does not include the mane of the governor it refers to. After the census was complete, a Prefect, drawn from the minor aristocracy, was appointed to govern Judea.

According to Luke, John the Baptist was born before Jesus, and was his cousin. He was born miraculously, to an elderly mother, under 'King Herod of Judea', ie Herod I. Six months later, ten years having been dropped from the story, unless Luke confused his Herods, an angel appeared to Mary announcing the birth of Jesus. She protested that she was too young (parthenos means 'a young woman', not necessarily 'virgin') but the angel reassures her. There is an undoubted virgin birth in Matthew, but Luke is ambiguous, and can be read either way. Both are concerned to say that the birth was miraculous.

The family live in Nazareth, but have to visit Bethlehem for the census, as this is where Joseph's family originated. This makes little sense. Roman taxation was based on where you lived, not where you ancestors lived, for obvious reasons. No system could handle that degree of chaos. Additionally, Galilee was ruled by Antipas, and taxes would have been paid to him, not to Rome. Both Matthew and Like have to cope with a tradition which said both that the Messiah was to come form Bethlehem, and that Jesus was from Nazareth. Luke's solution looks a little contrived!

So, according to Luke, Jesus was born in a stable in Bethlehem. There are no animals; they were added to the story later. Shepherds are the first to respond to the birth; Luke is greatly concerned for the poor.

So we have two rather different versions of the story, one for Jews, and one for Gentiles. In all probability, neither author had much to go on; very likely, nobody was sure of the exact year of Jesus' birth. But that doesn't matter; they weren't writing history. In fact, in our modern sense, history writing had not been invented. They were writing theology, in the form of story. Matthew writes for Jews at a very difficult moment of their history, and presents Jesus as a suffering Jew. Luke writes for Gentiles, and presents him as having been born into the Roman world, and as being recognised first by the poor. Both show him as the miraculous Son of God from the moment of birth.

After 2000 years, the church should be mature enough to take both stories seriously, with all the tensions between them, rather than smothering them with the saccharine nonsense of the traditional 'Christmas story'!

Cold!

I had a quick look at the allotment yesterday; as expected, everything's frozen solid. The canal towpath, which is fancy brick paving going into town, is like an icerink. It's supposed to be warming up a little by the end of the week, according to Metcheck, so with any luck, I might get to taste some oca this side of the New Year.

The failure of the Overconfident Age

Somehow, we have drifted into a situation where we think we have the power to find an easy answer to everything. We feel we need 'effective management' of every situation, to make the 'problem' go away, and let us get on with our lives untroubled by whatever it is. When things don't get solved in a short time, we look for someone to blame. We blame the individual worker, the manager, or in politics, we blame the government. But some 'problems' don't have instant or easy solutions.

We think we can solve the 'problem' of crime by imprisoning ever more people, without remembering the historical link between crime and relative poverty, as that would upset our ever more unequal society. We don't think about how many criminals suffer from mild learning disabilities, or mental health probles, which deny them the chance of a decent job. We don't think how many come from broken families, or wonder whether these might be a function of an individualised, very mobile society in which we no longer know our neighbours, and no longer have the support of the extended family. Support networks are missing, so in every generation, some parents fail to cope. Children of dysfunctional families are unlikely to become the parents of healthy families, and so the 'problem' snowballs from one generation to the next.

Then there is climate change. There is, of necessity, no easy or instant solution. So we deny it, and believe every manipulated 'fact' thrust at us by people who are doing very nicely out of deceiving us. Governments meet to seek solutions, but lack the courage to look beyond the next election, the next opinion poll, the next press conference. We have built a society where a government which asks for sacrifice in the face of disaster may well lose the next election to a party which offers pie in the sky. Whatever power struggles are going on behind the scenes in China, their government evidently has as much invested in short-termism as we.

So Copenhagen has failed, as it was always likely to, and Obama is spinning it as 'meaningful', as he inevitably would. Nations get the governments they deserve, and this catastrophe is a function, not of political failure, but of ingrained hedonism. As a society, we are unable or unwilling to face reality.

But a significant proportion of us do realise what is happening. That is our strength. If a grassroots movement could grow until even governments realised that slavery had no future, we can do the same here. None of us have any interest in the collapse of our climate. Only ordinary people, defying when necessary a regime which consistently attempts to criminalise protest, can force can force that regime to take the necessary action.

Bad sex?

A church in New Zealand has got itself into hot water with a poster about Mary and Joseph: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/churchs-provocative-poster-begets-almighty-row-1844274.html .

What strikes me is that it doesn't deny the Virgin Birth, as I would, but it asks questions about it. There's nothing wrong with that; as Thomas Aquinas said, God is not the answer, but the question. I suppose the conservatives would get upset. I don't understand the mentality, but to them, it's de rigeur to be offended by any questioning of religious tradition. But questioning is good. As St. Paul said, 'Test everything, hang onto the good'. If we don't ask questions, how can we sieve the good from the bad in our traditions?

We don't know anything directly about Jesus. He didn't write anything down himself that we know about, and if he did, it has not come down to us. Unlike Muhammad, nobody recorded eyewitness testimony about him; claims that the Gospels were written by eyewitness hang on special pleading and dubious interpretation. Rather, we have what some sections of the church chose to record about him a generation or two after his death. Not suprisingly, they disagree. Matthew makes him a strict Jew, insisting that every least bit of the Law [of Moses] should be followed strictly, as they interpreted it. Despite Matthew's loathing for the Pharisees, his Jesus always seems to agree with them on legal matters. Mark, on the other hand, makes Jesus abolish the food laws, and Luke is so eager to whitewash the Romans that he blames the Jews for everything. The evangelists were men of their time and place, wtiting for the diverse needs of their own communities.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't take what they say seriously. If the church wants to call the Bible a holy book - even presume to call it 'the Word of God', whatever that means - then we need to take it ultra-seriously, even the bits we don't like and don't read. It is, after all, the only witness we have to the origins of church traditions. If we want to claim that Christianity has some basis in history, then that is where we have to begin. But let's drop the practice of taking selected snippets, ignoring the diversity of the Bible's witness, and insisting that traditional interpretations are 'what the Bible says' and have to be 'believed'.

How many people out there believe that infanticide can be a blessed thing? It's there in the Bible (Psalm 137), doubtless as the witness of a community which remembered Babylonians killing their kids during the sack of Jerusalem. We can take their despair and grief seriously without making infanticide a religious duty. Why can't we be as mature in our handling of the rest of the Bible?

Oca

The oca was, as I expected, flattened by the frost a couple of days ago. it's a south American rootcrop which I haven't grown before, and which, you will have gathered, is frost-sensitive. I had wanted to fleece it, but I couldn't due to a bad cold.

You plant it in spring, about a foot apart, and let it get on with its business all season. Tubers start to develop as the daylength shortens, and you lift them a couple of weeks after the foliagfe dies completely back. I expect to have it for Christmas, if there's a crop there.

All the beehives are still alive. That's a pleasant change from last year. I think the difference is in the autumn weather. Two autumns ago, the weather was so vile that they couldn't go out and forage, and went through what stores they had. I got them through last winter on candy, but that's only carbohydrate. I think the lack of pollen led to malnutrition, hence the problems. There are artificial substitutes available, but they're only used as a stopgap, and aren't satisfactory for more than a few weeks. This year, they were bringing in lots of pollen, so hopefully they'll come through better. Hive 5 is a bit of a worry, with only two seams of bees, but the others all have four.

Internet access

It's working properly today. It worked properly yesterday as well.

I changed to Sky a few weeks back, purely because AOL is so damned expensive. Since then, I've regretted it. Very often, it slows right down about 9am, as office connections come on, and stays slow for much of the day. It will still download material without any problem, but accessing sites becomes extremely difficult. Sometimes it's like that all day. A dialup would be faster and more reliable. But then, sometimes it works.

We gave up on their phone connection after a month, and went back to BT. Their salesman lied to us, the service wasn't what we asked for, and it was more expensive than we were told. I'm trying to persuade the wife to drop their TV service, since it's also expensive, and she watches very little that isn't on cable. I'll probably get rid of their internet before long as well.

Mystery bean

It's not a good shot, but has anyone got any idea what these beans are? They were at the bottom of a parcel we're passing round, and that's all I know!

PS I've been informed that they're soya beans, probably 'Elena', which is, as far as I can see from a quick google, the best one for British weather. I'l try them next year and see what happens.

Last week I should have been in Oxford for a gathering of gardening bloggers, but I've had some horrible gastro-intestinal bug, and spent most of the weekend on the toilet. I'm still not right, but I did manage to check the bees yesterday. All four hives look healthy, with small amounts of brood, eggs, and reasonable quantities of stores. There aren't as much of the latter as I'd have liked, but they'll be OK if I keep an eye on them, and probably feed syrup next spring. This year they've gathered plenty of pollen, which provides most of their nutrition; honey is just a source of carbohydrate. This time last year, the weather was so awful that much of the ivy went unpollinated, resulting in a shortage of berries. The bees hardly managed to forage at all. It's going to be interesting to see whether they come out of the winter stronger than last year, after going into it well fed.

I knew I should have stolen a frame of brood for that split I made. They've abandoned the queen cell I gave them (which was on a frame of honey), so I combined the hive with No. 2. So that's four hives going into winter, and I won't be trying any more queen raising till June. We'll see what's still alive in the spring.

I've checked all the hives, and not one of my recent splits has worked. The new Hive 3 had very few bees and no queen, so I've combined it with Hive 4. The top story of Hive 2 had lots of bees but no queen. I did find a hatched cell, but it was unbelievably small, the size of a worker cell, and they were making a loud buzz all the time they were open, as queenless colonies do. Hive 4 had a single supersedure cell, so I've moved that box across to Hive 3, and given it the cell. There are still drones about, so one sunny day at the right time should ensure mating.

The old queen is still there, and queenright autumn supersedure is a regular habit of native strains. This is when the hive raises a new queen without swarming, with the old queen still present and laying. She usually continues to lay for some time before finally disappearing. It's something which should be sought out and selected for, since strains which do this rarely swarm. I haven't had a colony make swarm preparations since 2006.

I don't have as many colonies as I'd hoped to go into winter with. One has an old queen at the end of her life, but if they don't raise another cell, there's every chance of her coming through the winter. It's a pity it was only the one, as if there had been more I could have left one. Three colonies have young queens which appear to be well mated, and one has a cell. We'll see what's left next spring!

Hive 6 is deserted. There's dead brood, two dead queen cells, and no bees live or dead. I can only assume they all went back to Hive 5 next door. The honey has been completely robbed out. This never happens in hives with my standard reduced entrance, but I didn't have one spare, so this one ended up with a wide-open entrance. I noticed bees going in and out, not wasps, so the honey is presumably in the other hives.

I'm digging over a patch I dug earlier in the season. It had a big patch of bindweed, and there's still some left. I may not have done very well growing veg this year, but at least there's a lot more ground free from perennial weeds, which isn't going to need any more routine digging.

Some of us spent Saturday learning to identify apples. We've got around 70 old apple trees on the site. Many have been idnetified already, but there are more to do. While most are common varieties, there are some rarities as well. As far as we know, it's a unique feature of the site, and we want to maintain it, by replacing trees as they die off. I know, for instance, that there were once three apple trees on my plot. All I found was a few rotting logs, and many others have gone the same way. I've planted trees to replace them, and we've now planted a communal apple orchard at the end of the site, on a plot that was completely derelict.

Last year we had a day to learn how to prune them. Some of us are now planning to get some apple books, and try to identify as many of the remaining trees as we can.

Oca

This is the oca I planted last spring, sprawling all over the place. It doesn't do much until midsummer, then starts spreading. It's a South American root vegetable; the tubers swell as the shoots die back, so I won't be lifting it till all the top growth is dead, in late November or December. It's about my one success story this year, so I'm looking forward to it!

You probably remember that Hive 5 used to be very large, and nasty-tempered. About half the bees had a yellow stripe, and it was full of drones. I had a look yesterday. All the bees are black, and extremely quiet on the comb, just like Hive 4. I can only imagine that the queen, raised from an egg laid in Hive 4, avoided mating with drones from her own hive, and mated selectively with Hive 4 drones. These may have shared a mother with her, but will have had a different scent.

Hive 4 has lots of honey in the broodbox, so no worries about that one. I'll give it a gallon of feed with Fumidil-B in it, for Nosema, and that's all. Hive 1 is fine, but it doesn't have so much honey stored, so I'll give it candy just in case. It's a lot better off than any of the hives were this time last year, though. Hive 5 has some drones, so there's something for the new queens to mate with. I'll check them out next week and see what's happening.

I've been feeling a bit better today. I managed to dig a patch of bindweed which was spreading out across the ground and rooting as it went. I split Hives 4 and 5. I was hoping 3, the split from 4, would raise its own queen cells, but it failed to do so, so I gave it a cell, and gave another to the split from 5,which is now Hive 6. I left a cell in the top story on Hive 3 as well, and we'll see how many of them mate successfully.

It's not been a good week for me. I was in casualty, briefly, the other night - nothing serious - and I've been fit for nothing most of the time. I've checked Hive 1, which now has a laying queen again, and done a vertical split with Hive 2. It's now raising queen cells in the top box. Meanwhile, most of the fruit have been blown off the Cambridge Gage, and the slugs have had a feast, losing me most of the crop.

I'm feeling a bit better, and today I actually managed to go shopping in town, get back with a load of fruit from the market, and then get to the allotment for a couple of hours. That's a great improvement! My wife's off sick with a whiplash injury after a car crash, and it hasn't been easy with us both unwell.

I've split Hive 2 vertically, preparatory to raising more queens. Hive 5 still has a lot of the old drones, but hopefully they'll be on the way out. Hive 4 has got rid of its drones in the bad weather, but more will be along, and Hive 2 has plenty. Non-native bees tend to get rid of theirs around now, but given reasonable weather, native colonies should have them into October, if not later. It is, of course, a waste of time raising queens if there's nothing for them to mate with.

The peas are starting to produce, but with the pigeon damage, I'll be using them to produce seed rather than eating the crop, such as it is. Salmon-Flowered is the only one with plenty of pods, and as it's rare, I'll keep them for seed swaps.

We had our site show today. Unfortunately I had a bad attack of migraine yesterday, in the middle of organising it. It was a complete nightmare getting it sorted, and I had to leave most of the practical stuff today to other people. Still, the show was a success, and we got 15 entrants this year, two up on last year. Unfortunately I was so shattered I didn't get any pics. I only had three entries in, and probably missed a first for my garlic because I was feeling so awful last night I didn't get the presentation sorted properly. The question now is, how can I do it better next year?

I've had some wretched stomach bug, so I haven't managed to do too much. Last weekend I just about got through a work party, building a couple of bins for dead leaves and grass cuttings. We haven't been getting so many this year, so I wonder how full they'll ever be! you can se how they ended up, anyway.

Meanwhile, my Cambridge Gage is well laden with fruit.

The bees have not been in a good mood, and for the moment I'm going to have to stop my usual careless habit of inspecting them in flimsy trousers. I'm not at all thrilled with the new queen in Hive 2, as the bees are decidedly jumpy. However, she's not destined for a long life. Once I have more queen cells, I'll probably slip one into the broodnest and try a forced supersedure. This is a way of conning the ees into replacing a queen you don't want, without too much disturbance. Mostly, it works, and if it doesn't, it's usually safest to assume that the bees know something you don't.

However, everything is going more or less to plan. I'm going to be raising more queens in a couple of weeks, and by the time they're ready to mate, the old drones should hopefully have disappeared, and I should end up with nice docile hives once more, after the new queens mate with drones of my own strain.

I've been through Hive 5, and checked that the top box has neither eggs nor queen cells. The bottom box has eggs, so the new queen's there and laying. I broke down all the drone cells I could see.

Behaviour is a bit better, they weren't making the same determined attempts to sting. Stinging depends of pheromones given off by the queen, so if you change the queen, you change stinging behaviour. However, they were still jumping - flying off the combs at me - and following, buzzing around me. these are intimidating, and often lead to stinging. They're programmed into the individual worker's genes, so they'll last as long as this generation of bees. Hopefully that'll be the end of it, but I have three queens which will have mated with drones from this hive, so I can't be sure. I'll be getting rid of those queens next year; I can use them to produce drones or honey, but I can't raise good queens from them.

I went through Hive 1 this afternoon, to break down any queen cells in the top box (I found three) and check the bottom box with the new queen was OK. It wasn't. It had queen cells and no eggs or uncapped larvae. I can only suppose that the queen flew up when I opened the hive last week, as young queens occasionally do, and got lost. I don't want her misbegotten daughters, so I broke down all the cells, and gave them a frame from Hive 4 with lots of eggs in it. If they really are queenless, they'll raise a new one from that.

After sitting for several days in a new position, Hive 5 finally emptied itself of the great majority of its original inhabitants, with all the older bees (the ones that sting) being in the box with the new queen, in the original position. I was able at last to go through them without getting stung, and the queen has been duly squashed. The only thing was, I was expecting to find a light coloured queen, with a red mark. What I found was a dark-coloured queen, with no mark. As I half expected, they've superseded, that is, they've raised a new queen, and got rid of the old. Given the number of bees I found in the top box, I suspect that swarmed as well. However, the deed is done, and the two halves have been reunited, without any of the tantrums I used to get with the old queen.

I now have four hives, all headed by queens of my own strain. The only thing is, three of them will be mismated with drones from other strains, largely those from the biggest hive, the bad-tempered one. I definitely don't want their daughters in my hives! I also have the two spare hives. So I need to wait for this generation of drones to die off, and start another round of queen raising. That way I should be able to go into winter with several queens which will, hopefully, be properly mated and able to provide daughters to carry on the strain.

I can't remember who sent me seed of Carolfiore di sicilia violetto , but if it was you, thanks!

Hive 1 seems to be settling down nicely, but Hive 5 is being awkward. The new queen has laid flat-capped worker brood, so no problem there. Yesterday morning, I put her broodbox at the bottom, and moved the original broodbox onto the stand next to it. By now, all the flying bees (the ones that sting) should have gone back to the original stand, and joined the new hive headed by the new queen. That should leave nothing but docile young bees with the old queen. This afternoon, flying bees were still coming out at a rate of several per minute, the broodbox was still packed, and they were decidedly in a stingy mood. So I put off sorting through for the queen till tomorrow. Hopefully the polder bees will all be gone by then.

I was looking through a £1 bookstall in town the other day, and found a gem, 'The Transplanted Gardener', by Charles Elliott. Elliott (why do we refer to authors by their surnames? It brings back horrible memories of schooldays) is an American living in England, who brings his own point of view to British gardens and garden history. It's a refreshing change from the utilitarian style of garden writing, which so often just repeats the same old advice we've all heard before, larded out with lots of glossy photos. OK if you're being paid to write it, I suppose, but it's not much fun to read.

Hive 1 has capped brood, and after some messing about I've squashed the old queen, and left them with just the new one. I couldn't find her yesterday, so I shook all the bees in the relevant broodbox off the frames into a roof plus an empty super. Naturally, all the older flying bees took to the air, leaving the queen, younger hive bees, and lots of drones, since it was too chilly for them to be flying. I tacked a queen excluder over it, turned it the right way up, and put it at the top of the hive. Overnight, many of the bees found their way down to the brood, leaving a small cluster with the queen in the middle.It wasn't too hard to sort through and find her.

The peas are finally starting to flower, at a smaller size than normal. After the trauma of being chewed by pigeons, maybe they won't reach their normal size.

Someone sent me a copy of a recent article from the Celator (a US numismatic periodical) by David Hendin, about some Jewish coins I've been interested in for a long time. The first pic shows one; you can see that it looks a bit of a mess. It's been struck (twice in this case) with a type of Alexander Jannaeus, King of the Jews 103-76 BC, showing an anchor on one side, with the king's name in Greek, and a lily in a diadem on the other, with the king's name in Aramaic (second pic). This side uses his Hebrew name, Yehonatan. It's then been struck a second time, using a traditional type with a double cornucopia (horn of plenty) and a pomegranate on one side, and on the other, an inscription, YONATAN THE HIGH PRIEST AND THE COUNCIL OF THE JEWS, in Hebrew, within a wreath. The question has been, is Yonatan a version of Yehonatan, or is it the name of one of his sons?

I used to think it was probably a son known to history by his Greek name, Hyrcanus II. However, Hendin reports finding one which has been overstruck a second time, with another undoubted type of Jannaeus, showing an anchor one one side, the same as the lily coin, and a star in a diadem on the other, with Jannaeus' name, once again, in Aramaic (third pic). this proves beyond doubt that the overstruck coins were issued by Jannaeus. The last pic is a YONATAN coin struck on a blank flan so you can see what it was intended to look like. By such nitpicking arguments are academic disputes settled! Am I the only one who finds setting out pics in Blogger a frustrating experience, by the way? they never want to go where they're supposed to, then I publish the post and it's all over the place.

I had some good news the other day. I've been working on a very part-time basis for health reasons, but afte several months, a new teacher training course a friend of mine has been setting up has almost got through the accreditation process. So, God willing, I'll soon be back at work properly, in a less stressful job. So before long, with luck, I'll be able to buy coins again!

Bees and blight

Both new queens are now laying. I just need to leave them another week to ensure that they're producing worker brood, and I can squash the old queens and sort out the hives properly. Then after a couple of months the drones from those queens will be gone, and I'll be able to raise another batch of queens, and, hopefully, have them mated as I want.

Hive 2 has four frames of brood, and is looking good. Almost all the brood in the top box has hatched, and most of the bees have moved down to the bottom. There's still a small cluster of decidedly nasty-tempered bees there.

There's a small patch of blight among my Charlotte potatoes, and many of the others have dark brown patches of dead tissue on the leaves. I'll still get a crop, but it'll wipe out my tomatoes before I get anything from them, for the third year running. There's no blight reported from farms closer than Woverhampton, about 15 miles away. I think it's overwintering on the site, in volunteer potatoes. A campaign to get people to be ruthless about rooting them out every spring might make some progress.

We've had a pretty wet week, and I noticed that the hives don't have so many eggs. This is an adaptation to our climate; queens cut down egg laying in bad weather, and as a result, the colony needs less food to get through till the weather improves. Neither of the two new queens has started laying yet. I hope they're in there! I've started another frame for the eggs, just in case they aren't.

The peas are now growing well, after being netted for a couple of weeks to keep the pigeons off. The crop will be safe, but I'm not sure I'll have anything for the show in a few weeks' time. I've been digging as fast as I can, clearing areas I couldn't get to over the winter, but I'm terribly behind. The good thing is that a lot of ground has been cleared of ground elder. That'll make life easier next year.

Slugs have been having a field day on my squashes. I keep getting this; the solution may be to grow them on for a while in bigger pots, and plant them out when they're big enough to take it. They're particularly vulnerable when they first go out in the open, so it might help to keep them off the ground at this stage.

I tried posting earlier, got an error message, and lost my post!

I've netted the peas, since they were being eaten down by pigeons. I haven't had that particular problem with sky rats before. The nets won't keep a determined pigeon out, but they will deter them for a while, and give the peas a chance to recover. They soon get too big to be vulnerable, and hopefully the birds will have moved on to other fodder before then anyway. They've been knocked back to the point where they're probably going to be toolate for the show next month, unfortunately.

Everything's going in late this year, but at least I'm getting plenty of weedy ground sorted out, so it'll be easier going next year. The weeds grew like mad in the wet last year, especially the bindweed, while the veg did the exact opposite! The oca is now in, despite being delayed thanks to the flood washing away the mulch I'd laid ready for it. The corn is going in, and that has plenty of time to make a crop. I've almost finished digging over the ground I want to use for tomatoes, and they still seem happy in pots. Maybe everything will still be OK.

I got 11 1/2 lb of honey today. It's not much but it's something. I'd have masses by now, except that after two dreadful seasons, there was nothing in the broodboxes, and the bees fill those first. That's their supply, and I don't touch it.

I spotted this pair of Bombus terrestis mating on the pavement this morning.

I've been feeling decidedly under the weather, which is why I didn't post last week. The floodwaters have receded, but they've walloped my beans, and the peas are getting nibbled by pigeons. I've put up some netting to scare off the latter; if once they stop, they're unlikely to start again this time of year.

Last week, I squashed the old queen in Hive 3, renamed it Hive 2, since it's in position 2, and now has an unrelated queen, and put the box with the new queen at the bottom. This week, I found three supersedure cells at one end of the box, and eggs (not many of them) at the other. This could be a failing queen, or it could be due to the three frames of foundation I put between the two. I have heard that a barrier across the broodnest can induce cell raising, though I haven't seen it. So I broke down the cells, and left it. If there are still problems next week, they'll have to raise another queen.

Hive 1 was split last week, and given queen cells, so it should have a virgin ready to mate by now. Hive 4 is looking good. Hive 5 gave me the worst stinging I've had in years last week; I think it has to have been down to the thundery weather, as they were OK today. The day before I opened the hives, a neighbour had eight stings from a wasps' nest which I subsequently dealt with. They've got - I hope - a queen ready to mate in the top box, but last week the old queen was failing, and they were raising supersedure cells. She's no loss, but like Hive 2, I don't want her raising a daughter. Any such queen would produce hybrid drones that I don't want. So I broke down cells, last week and again this week. Hopefully the hive should be sorted next week.