A plea

Misswinterfinch reported the other day that spraying against the Zika virus in the SW of the USA has caused the death of billions of bees and massive losses to beekeepers there.

Bees need a lot of water to do their work and mine are very thirsty at the moment as they are being fed up with sugar fondant to bunker for their winter food. This involves eating the fondant and mixing it with water to make honey.

Bees though are very poor swimmers, in fact they seem to be totally incompetent once they land up in water, even in a still pond with loads of  water lily leaves you would think they could swim to. We see it worst on our swimming pool - when the plastic bubble cover is on, they manage generally well but when off, loads drown. Moving water is a catastrophe for them.

So still standing shallow water, the type mosquitoes like too is ideal! The quality of the water does not seem to be so important. The bees, as in the very poor photo, like to fly to the edge and then walk down to the waters edge to drink. In this case it was an old metal container that had trapped rain water. My daughter some time ago sent me a great idea - a shallow bowl or pot filled with marbles. When I tried to buy a huge bag of marbles earlier this year, Amazon was sold out and I have forgotten to look again.

And don't worry about the bees. They are far too busy to bother with us humans

A good day, weather is now heading upwards and a great few days promised. Great for the kids in Bavaria who are still on holiday. I did some "logging" work and hope to take off to the sawmill tomorrow.