Nasties.

Buried amongst the ivy on our fence is a basket of nasturtiums with variegated leaves and flowers. They give a wonderful lift to a salad – both by adding a touch of colour and by putting a bit of zing into the taste - but, sadly Mrs TD has forbidden me to touch them. It’s just a pity that it isn’t Flower Friday.
 
In another life, the last couple of weeks have brought the bees to life; suddenly they are doing most things right. Of the five colonies the three strongest have been bringing the honey in so that I shall (fingers crossed here) have some for sale at the monthly market. Where the nectar is coming from is anybody’s guess, but honey is honey and it is sure to have a unique and nice flavour. Unless you take your bees to a monoculture, ruthlessly eradicating any other forage, you can guarantee that your customers will never, ever, buy a honey quite like this again unless they manage to get a second jar from the same batch. The only flower that is blossoming in sufficient quantity to produce a crop, at present, is the willow herb but, while it is a useful flower for the bees, it rarely produces a mono-floral honey. I’m not an expert, so rarely know what my bees have collected; though I have asked more knowledgeable people what a particular jar contains, proffering the same jar on different occasions and receiving different answers.
 
Remarkably, the colony that I found starving to death on the first of July is not only one of the three, it is also trying to produce a late swarm. I’ve created a pre-emptive artificial swarm that I shall now have to cosset through the winter.