FuZzY BeE-BuMs🐝🐝🐝

 Thank you everyone for your comments on my last post - glad I made you smile!

❤️💙💛💚🧡🤍

Hopefully this will do too - fuzzy bee-bums - yes they are a 'thing' and today at work I managed to get a couple of photos of just that very thing .....

Just look at those little fuzzy leggies hanging out backwards while the bumble is buried deep in the nasturtium.🌞

The world needs more fuzzy bee-bums🐝🌞❤️

you can thank me later xxxxx

🌞

Where've I bee(n)🐝 recently

You see, the thing is  this ..... no hang on, I'll say at the end.

Last Friday my lovely colleague and I went off on a training day. We are learning how to be bee🐝 keepers. Where we work we have a small apiary and the original bee 🐝keeper just did not come back after the autumn.   

Fortunately for the charity a very kind and extremely knowledgeable lady stepped in and monitored the hives over winter and spring while the charity decided what to do. 

It was very obvious that the bees🐝 needed to be looked after and I found myself putting my hand up (carefully and after much thought) and for good measure, a colleague was 'volunteered' along with me so that I would not be🐝 solely responsible.

So, with plenty of discussion both at work and with our lovely but temporary bee keeper🐝 we were initiated into a bee🐝 keeping course which, 'thanks to' the lockdown meant our classes were all on zoom (appropriately named I though). 

We muddled through, both the course givers and the students. Technology failed, we had lagging, the internet was intermittent, the course givers struggled with modern systems, but we all survived the seven week course (mostly due to reading books and absorbing as much info from our temporary bee🐝 keeper who we gently pressganged into being our mentor). 

As restrictions lifted,  we finally got an onsite visit to the association's apiary. It was a bit of a logistical nightmare clearing the day however we managed.

There were six of us in total and I have decided that bee🐝 keepers or beeks as they affectionately call themselves - are a species unto themselves. Enthusiastic, mostly retired, bumbling characters. Full of knowledge and desperately keen to share - even if it meant all of them told us the same thing at the same time at increasing volume to ensure their story was heard....

Two of the experienced beeks were stung - the bees🐝 were inside their protective hoods, one of the beeks did a flappy hand dance and ran off to his car while our mentor, when she removed her bee🐝 suit back at the car - found it was full of stings - probably 18 - 20 little stings stuck into the fabric on her back. We were quite cheerfully told that this can be normal - you can't be a beek without a few stings ..

We were there for several hours as we observed the inspections - my colleague taking a greater part in the process while I took photos. I was very quickly nicknamed ...The Lassie with the camera. We were congratulated on our calm manner 'especially as we were novices' and all I could think of was the retreating back of the bloke who'd been stung. He was a loud, animated and full of jovial banter - may be the bees🐝 had heard all his stories before.

It was an interesting day - full of new folk, new stories, new skills to learn and we have been invited to go back - so we obviously did not disgrace ourselves!

Oh - yes, so what was I going to tell you at the beginning?

I am rather allergic to bees............................. 🐝🐝

Musing in a gardening vein

 Look. 

Look closely - can you see? 

A lamb. This to me is proof that spring is definitely on her way!

I was working in the village today - there was a bitter chill breeze with the lightest rain.  The type that floats in the air and never reaches the ground. By the time I got to the garden, I was covered in sparkling droplets and my fringe stuck to my face.

A couple of hours clearing over enthusiastic ivy - a thick unruly carpet of tendrils strangling sculptures, shrubs and trees followed by the pleasure of planting spring flowering primula in little drifts of hopeful colour.

Then, this afternoon, another garden, windswept and wild. Moss chased the breeze and galloped up and down with a silly grin on her face with her fur being blown backwards. Sheltering beneath a large native hedge, quietly weeding and finding bulbs popping up, ferns unfurling, cyclamen emerging, all through the thick layer of mulch I piled on last autumn. They all seem so happy and vibrant and cheerful.

I also finally managed to finish the traditional stone wall I'd started in autumn, not a huge wall but a small curving one, distracting the eye from the two compost bays. The snowdrops, planted last year, are absolutely glorious. I must remember to mark the clusters which I can divide and spread - they are too beautiful to keep just in one spot.

Tomorrow's weather is promising to be vile, but who cares - I shall be working the glasshouse, I have loads of annual seeds to be sown. We need to get the 'bee garden' going before the kitchen garden bees wake up. 

Anyway, enough waffle, time to shut the laptop and go to bed. Oh - did I tell you I saw lambs? Woop woop!

And.... the vile weather has just landed, I can hear a howling hooley outside *yay* 🙄