Tales from a down-shifted family
- Making the most of modest means
Morgan and I have just carried out a bee inspection on our two hives. Clettwr The first hive (Clettwr) is the one in which the queen died a few weeks ago. We last saw here on July 1st when all looked goo, but on July 7th found her dead at the bottom of the hive....
Yep, that’s 18 days of summer so far and counting. Admittedly yesterday wasn’t quite as nice as it had been as it was now a bit muggy but the temperatures still made it to 25.1°C which is pretty warm for these parts. It was also a Monday which is never much fun after a nice...
There’s always something with those pesky bees! Today’s inspection turned into what we though was going to be the performance of an artificial swarm. The first hive we inspected had some queen cells in. All were uncapped but had some well developed larvae in them so there was only one thing to do. The plan was to find the queen, perform...
Just a quick update on our bees. Since installing our new honey bee colonies in the garden a few weeks ago, the weather hasn’t been great. There have been a few sunny days but the temperature hasn’t really risen much and activity has been slow. There have been bees coming and going and all seems fine...
The garden has been growing like mad. I was only away in Turkey for a week but it seems as though everything has become overgrown whilst I was away and I haven’t had much chance to get out there and get it under control. It’s not as bad as it sounds though, just that all...
Some bad news I’m afraid. Our final colony of bees has died. We lost the other colonies going into winter as they didn’t manage to re-queen last summer due to the terrible weather and then weren’t strong enough to get through the winter. The one colony we did have left was strong and looked healthy...
I’ve just finished the Spring edition of the Aberystwyth Beekeepers Association Newsletter. It’s a lot of work writing the content, editing it, sourcing content and images and then desktop publishing it all ready for the members but I quite enjoy it and I’m always pleased with the result. Best of all, the association members seem...
Anna and I, along with half of the Aberystwyth Beekeeping Association attending a lecture in the National Library on Wednesday. It was a lunchtime lecture so we all met up for dinner in the cafe first and then headed into the very nice lecture theatre. The lecture was titled ‘Plants for Bees‘ and was given...
The Christmas festivities continue here. We’ve already had a birthday meal for my Mum’s 60th last week and a Christmas Carvery with my family. Last night we had a another celebratory meal, this time with the Aberystwyth Beekeepers Association. It was also my birthday yesterday so it doubled as a birthday meal as well. We...
Friday October 26th and at last I think we’re over the Jetlag as I woke up at a normal time of around 6am. I left Anna and Morgan sleeping and headed off for a stroll along the beach of Mercury Bay whilst watching the sun rise. It was a gorgeous still day with no one...
Fitness / Technology / Triathlon
Fixing the Altimeter on my Garmin Forerunner 910XT
Monday, March 17th, 2014
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