Snow?

Had been a very nice sunny day as Luna & I set off rather too late for the evening walk. It was 20:00 and sunset is at 20:30, so no more sunshine on the fields but in the distance, the sun was still shining on the Alps which appeared so white that one could have thought the grey, treeless rock was covered in snow.

Being able to see the Alps at this time of year, is almost always a sign that the weather is breaking down. There was still plenty of light but as we walked south-eastwards, behind us storm clouds were building & heading our way - see the top of the extra photo collage which was taken at exactly the same time as the main photo.

By the time we got to nearly the halfway point & turned 90° towards the south-west, I saw that the clouds were approaching fast and indeed some had even caught up with us - bottom photo of the collage.

I did a U-turn and at that very moment, the first lightning appeared about 15km away. I don't like lightning when I'm outdoors and especially when in the middle of a large flat area of fields and I am the most prominent feature other than maize plants. Surprisingly, Luna seemed less disturbed than I was by the thunder.

We raced (relatively in my case) back to the car, heading directly into the ever-nearing lightning strikes, a surge of relief when we were both in the car.

As it turned out, the storm went by without any real problems. Normally I have to unplug lots of our electrical equipment to save us from the power surges we suffer being at the end of the electricity line but it didn't even get that far. Luna seemed to have judged the situation correctly. Forecast for tomorrow not good.

I had done a bee inspection at lunchtime. The main hive is in great shape, I think I may need to harvest honey once more but very sadly something has gone wrong with the "artificial" hive I made. There is no sign of Queen Charlotte, the population is very small, no egg-laying & although lots of nectar and despite all the feeding of the last 10 days or so, no stored honey.

I am not sure what has happened - did Charlotte swarm for some reason and I didn't notice it although the hive is only 10m from the back door? Did I squash her when adding the sugar solution feed?

I have now come to the conclusion that the hive has been under constant attack from other robbing bees. I had restricted the entrance so that they could more easily defend themselves but seemingly not enough. The fact that there had been a good number of bees flying in & out daily had led me to think the hive was doing well. If I had checked the frames more often rather than simply adding more feed, I may well have spotted this earlier.

I base my conclusion on the fact that there are still lots of flying bees and that the hive is situated very close and on the direct flight path to where I used to keep my hives for the previous years. I think the robbers are less my other hive but far more from a very large (30+) hive unit about 700m away. I can say this as during the early spring when I no longer had any bees, masses appeared at my old apiary site. I think these intruders were in part responsible for the deaths of my bees last year.

Have given them a full frame of both capped brood & honey from the strong colony and will give them a chance to try and recover. The chances are slim especially at this time of year that they will make a new queen in time. If no improvement soon, will move them into the strong hive. Shame.