Saint Mamertus

Today is his feast day of the former bishop of Vienne (around Anno 460). This is not a spelling mistake or connected to last nights ESC but in the area around Lyon. He was responsible for introducing the "Rogation Days". His feast day is the first of the "Ice Saints" from 11th to 15th May..

There are regional differences as to the Ice Saints days. Bavaria doesn't recognise Mamertus and so officially we don't have our first one until Monday and then additionally hang on two others on 14th & 15th, which most areas don't have.

Traditionally one should be very careful in the coming week with frosts. Strictly speaking the frost danger from the ice saints remains for another 10 days or so as the introduction of the Gregorian calendar moved the ice saints days forward.

We still haven't put out our summer hanging baskets & pot plants but due to lack of time rather than anything else. They are all stored in the greenhouse and desperate to be repotted.

Looks like we should be frost free but the coming week will be cool. Today was warm between the wind, hail, rain and thunder. Lots of small things done but nothing special.

MrB popped by in the afternoon after inspecting his bees, bringing another load of male bee larvae combs. Tochterpleach made a comment recently on this. Male bees are bigger than the working (female) bees and so need slightly bigger cells. One usually hangs a frame in the hive without a pre-formed honyeycomb sheet which are made for worker bee (and honey) cell size.

As all female Blipers will no doubt confirm, the male of the species is a pretty useless being, hanging around all day, eating, drinking, not contributing to cleaning the household or doing any useful task except hoping for an "opportunity". This only occurs if the queen bee dies. In winter the male bees are kicked out. Their larvae cells also have the feature of attracting the varroa mite, a big danger to hives. So removing the combs from time to time keeps the male population in check and reduces the varroa mite infestation. Angie would say "if only it was so easy"!

Chickens enjoyed the protein!