Oh to be in England...

May is pretty sumptuous all round. It is one of my favourite things to stand in woodland at this time of year; you can almost see the canopy closing over your head, whilst sunlight still picks through to dapple over bluebells and early orchids, a soundtrack of chiff-chaffs and bumblebee queens completing the immersive experience.

Old Frames, new hives.

Working on the line of 5 new hives with Bob getting two completely ready for spring swarms and sorting out the frames in the other three. The other hives already containing colonies were busy with bees going too and from in the spring sunshine, clearly making the most of the pollen on the fruit trees and returning with pollen sacks loaded. Going through the piles of old frames it was easy to see how attractive the wax is to a host of other creatures with much of the abandoned honeycomb inundated with wax moth larvae. There were many old frames that had also been eaten into by mice as they sat in the shed over the winter with several still containing mouse nests and one with an abandoned robin's nest.