Upsides

If you happen to have an eight-storey cherry-picker (Wellingtonia-picker?) on site, however sombre the reason, why not use it to fix the flag-pole that has been broken since the winter storms? I'm glad; we have missed the flag as an indicator of wind direction, significant deaths (from brewery alumni to sovereign), and cultural events (a Ukraine flag for a while; a New Zealand flag when a NZ brewer did a residency here). Nothing is flying yet, but I hope something appears soon as a gesture of defiance of malicious fate

In the orchard our resident refugee sat on the bee shed as we prepared for our grim duty with the bees. We appreciate the gesture of solidarity. Heavy-hearted, we have even taken off and extracted a final offering of honey. "For human consumption only" say the instructions from the king (i.e. it might be carrying infection, so don't feed it to bees). I'm not sure how long it will be before we feel able to eat it. 

To my considerable surprise, despite almost none of the honey having wax cappings on the cells yet, and therefore not considered 'ripe' (for harvest), in traditional beekeeping language, it is only 17% moisture, and so will keep indefinitely. No hurry