Week twentyfour - June 10th - June 17th
2006
Week twenty four June 10th - June 17th
2004
June 16th Some of the swarms of bees I collected a few weeks ago are looking good and begining to make honey. The last people to contactl me found my email address through www.norfolkhoney.co.uk
June 15th 2004 The last time I left the apiary a few weeks ago there was one bee hive with a laying queen but as I have stations set out ready for other hives and some spare kit I left another brood box set up with four or five rather battered old brood frames in it. But when I went to inspect today I found two hives with bees going in and out of both of the hive entrances. A swarm (a nice yellow queen - so I don't think they were from any of my bees) had adopted the empty hive and was busily cleaning up and repairing the old frames. The base of the hive was evidence to how much rubbish there was to remove and as a lot of that was old wax it was also providing an ideal home for other less than welcome visitors - the wax moth (this is the one problem with leaving non used hives set up ready and waiting for a passing swarm) but as the base had been burned and scraped earlier in the year it took no time to shake it clean leaving the moths and their grubs to the mercy of the apiary robin who was soon on the scene.
June 14th 2004 I was called out to collect another swarm today making it the third swarm collected this year.
June 13th 2004 Last december I sowed two kinds of 'Meteor' pea seeds that I had kept from the year before. One was fairly true to type but there was also one that I had selected out of the crop (see below) and there are some distinct differences between the two. The ' Meteor cross' has a much lighter leaf and is a taller growing plant (that is how I identified it in the first place) and having now sown it separately find that it also matures about two weeks later than the 'Meteor'.
2003
June 17 2003 And it rained
Yesterday the potatoes were wilting after several weeks of dry weather. Today it rained and this evening was an ideal time to plant out more cabbages - in the rain with thunder and lightening. I guess I got carried away with these warm damp conditions that we haven't seen recently as I also planted out the winter cauliflower as well. They were still very small but big enough to handle. They haven't got the very best of positions being partially shaded by the largest apple tree so I have some in the seed bed that can be planted out later.
Round or wrinkled
The first peas and beans (Meteor and Aquadulce) have finished cropping now. The short growing Meteor (sown first week of December last year) was from seed that I had saved from last years crop and one of the plants, or maybe only one pod, of last years Meteor has crossed pollinated with my tall growing unnamed old fashioned peas. In one of the rows there are four or five tall growing peas standing well above the others. They are not as tall as the old fashioned variety but do have similar characteristics. I will collect the seed from these and keep them separate to sow on their own next year as they have much better looking and better pollinated pods.
2000
Saturday 10th June. An ideal day for opening up beehives. The sun was shining and I was able to check all of the bees, both on the allotment and in the apiary. I have 5 queen right hives. Only 2 of them will produce much in the way of honey this year, the other three are still too small, but I can now go into the winter with a fair chance of a great year next year, given that I came through this winter with only three hives intact.
Of the new queens I have seen two of them. The smallest colony is from the stack of spare supers and they have a small dark queen. The second hive in the allotment has a good-looking large leather brown queen, much like her red marked mother and a descendant of a Fordham queen via the apiary. The original allotment hive will need a careful search through to find the queen. It's still a busy hive with lots of bees in it.
I haven't seen the elusive queen (I haven't seen her yet this year) that has taken so long to start laying in the apiary and the WBC's green queen was hiding on this visit.
The main thing is that there was eggs and brood in all stages in all of the five brood boxes and there are plenty of spare supers to hand should we get a sustained bout of warm sunny weather.
The back garden lawn not only got mowed this weekend but also had is unruly edges trimmed. It now looks a bit neater although the edging tool is next to be used on some of it.
Sunday 11th June I dug the tulips planted last November out of the allotment as the bed was now a display of red poppies and I don't want them to seed. The poppies are on the compost heap, the tulips are in the shed, the bed has had its weeds carefully removed and a row of French beans sown. At the end of one of the rows of tulips one lone broad been was growing with pods on it just about big enough to pick. As it turns out this bean was a very useful marker in amongst the poppies. Next year I will sow one bean at both ends of the row. (I liked this idea and planted an iris at one end of the new row of French beans and a geranium at the other). The beans should have finished cropping by the end of October giving me time to dig the area over and feed it ready to plant the tulips again for cutting next year.
Monday 12th Today the bees make honey. It was a really warm sunny day. Summer is here and the allotment needs hoeing, weeding, feeding and watering and of course more French bean seed sowing. Unlike my neighbors I still have large areas of overgrown land to dig ready for planting out and summer sowing.
Tuesday 13th Again the day was sunny, but not as warm as yesterday. There is a change in the air. I did actually clear an area in the middle of the allotment from a stack of reclaimed windows (one day I'm going to make some kind of greenhouse out of them) and got some digging done. Three of the earliest sown shallots have run to seed and as this is a trait that I don't want to foster or encourage in any way they have been removed to the kitchen to make sure that those plants won't get selected later for re-planting
Wednesday 14th The evening was gray with a fine occasional drizzle coming down. That was before I got to the allotment and had got stuck into some weeding (all of the carrots except the very first sowing which are just about ready for pulling
Thursday 15th Autumn sown broad beans are remarkably free of pest and diseases, even the black fly leave them alone preferring younger plants. At an early stage they do get their leaves chewed around the edges but that doesn't seem to do them much harm or stop them growing and cropping well. When checking mine (they are nearly ready for the kitchen) there was one plant that did seem to be suffering a rash black spots on the bottom of the most developed pods. Whether this started as physical damage that has let a fungus in, or not, it seemed wise to remove it from the row and not keep any seed from it.
For the last few years I have been growing sprouts on hard compacted soil in order to ensure that the eventual sprouts don't 'blow' and stay compact and hard. This doesn't seen to uniformly work as each plant seems to want to do it's own thing. This year I have planted half a dozen plants on very loose, well prepared soil, just to what the difference is.
1999
June 13th 1999 Bargains
It's been raining on and off for two weeks now. Yesterday it came straight down all day long. These unusual conditions led me to do two things that I wouldn't normally do at this time of year. Laying a lawn in summer is asking for trouble and the ideal time for planting Clematis isn't the middle of June. This June has not however been typical and good well grown, healthy, Clematis at half price are hard to pass by at the best of times. I bought two and may well regret it a few months time when I'm standing there with the hose. That's if I get a break from trying to keep the lawn alive.
