Ickle Peas

Saturday I went up to see the bees. The queen cell in Hive A has emerged but there are no sign of eggs but that is to be expected. Hopefully next week. The bees in the middle hive "B" have been busy. The honey filled Brood box has been emptied, well nearly, and the queen has laid at least a third of the frames. Hive C is a pain. The queen is missing but why? There is so much honey I have put the bee escapes in to empty two of the supers. I am going to try to recover them, extract the honey and replace them on the hive during the week. I could keep my smoker going but even without smoke the bees were ok to handle. Hive "C" was a bit shirty but not that bad. I only got stung once.

I had a lot on my mind today. H and I went to the lottie about 5pm. Whilst H harvested petit pois [ickle peas] I weeded the top end of Bed3. Despite the rain the soil was fairly dry, dry enough not stick to my boots. It broke up nicely under the fork. It took little time to clear the bed of weeds. I dumped the weeds into the nearest black compo bin. The compo bin had been filled twice during the season. The bin had only about a foot of nice compost in the bottom of the bin so had plenty of room for the new batch of weeds. The bed is ready for the brassicas that are growing on in the greenhouse.

One of the white grape vines has given up the ghost. It never recovered after being hit by a late frost. I need to find a replacement. However one of the red grape vines [Hamburg] is going mad but the other not. The red grapes are at the end of the plot and whites down the side. Whilst H podded the peas, sitting on the bench at the top end of the plot, I finished the weeding and set about digging up the remainder of the first row of spuds. As soon as you turn up the Robins arrive to sit on the fence and await the soil to be disturbed and then they are in amongst the freshly turned soil. The evening was quite still and warm. Just to H's liking. H marvelled at the Robins who are getting quite tame now. There were lot of other birds about. We seem to have a small rodent running about the plot. Mouse sized but without a tail. He dashed through the cabbages and the wind netting. Close inspection of the netting showed a small hole he had made previously made for just such an escape. The main crop spuds [Cara] and in flower. Lets hope we get more rain to bulk up the tubers. Jobs done and feeling a bit pecking we went home.

We had a lovely tea of spuds and peas from the lottie and a nice bit of Lamb complemented with H home made redcurrant jelly.