The smallest colony is filling out nicely; saw Queen Enigma and plenty of capped brood. Queen Philibert, who must be the most prolific Queen in the Northern Hemisphere, continues to lay in abundance and has nearly filled her brood box. In fact, we decided we'd give her a brood and a half by moving the queen excluder up a floor. No obvious sign of any swarming but as we've discovered, you can never get too many steps ahead of a bee colony.
Queen April the 21st remains invisible to the naked eye, but she MUST be there because there was masses of brood, masses of larvae, masses of bees and we're going to have to put on super number three next week because they are storing honey like it's going out of fashion. Her colony was very tranquil today - barely a hum as they went about their business. Also, her girls have decided to free form quite a bit of comb, including filling one massive space that should have been filled with a frame but wasn't (our fault). The comb stretches all the way down from the first super through to the bottom of the brood box. We need to do something with, but haven't the heart. So we won't. A thing of beauty should be left alone.
As for Queen Olga of the top bar - well! She's almost filled it up! The free form comb looks absolutely beautiful but it does make for tricky checking.
On the camping front, we have booked space on a site in a woodland glade for the end of July. We tried to put the tent up in the back garden so we wouldn't look complete struggling novices when we got to the site, but found the tent was too big for the space we had. In fact, it's a lot bigger than we anticipated. But we kind of put it upish as best we could, and then we put it away, and to be honest it was a mini-miracle we managed to get the whole thing back in its bag. And, of course, we've had to buy a gas lamp, and a two ring grilly cooker thingy, and a water carrier and a fold-away table. It's all very exciting!!
Yesterday, Andy and I went to a vegetarian eatery in town for lunch, as a change from our usual haunt. Apart from the slow service, the food was gorgeous, plus we got a discount because I belong to the Vegetarian Society.
Today, I did a load of school work; in a scarily odd moment on Thursday, two Year 8 girls actually came to see me to ask if I could put together some ideas for them to improve their English over the summer holidays in preparation for Year 9. I was so surprised I said that of course I could. And then I planned a series of fun, fun, fun activities for Year 6 when they come for their Induction Day on Tuesday. Well, I think they're fun. If I was 10 years old, I'd be delirious with happiness.
And that was Saturday, Sunday. Nothing exciting. But lots done.
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