Bees under attack!

Tonight I went to visit one of my hives near Shuttleworth at my Bee buddy Margaret's place, I'd been a bit concerned about wasp activity around the hives so I thought I'd better go and check it out. Turns out, one of the hives is under full attack from wasps. I closed the entrance up to a space which would only fit one bee in, one bee out - but they still persisted. They're treating it like a hotel! I'm really worried this might affect the hive and bees quite badly, the colony may even collapse...

I took a fly swat with me, you know those ones shaped like a tennis raquet that zap unsuspecting flies and wasps? It worked quite well but didn't really seem to have any effect on the numbers of wasps there were so many...

I've decided the only thing left to do is to unite this colony with another so they are stronger and better equipped to fight against the wasps. This will give the colony a stronger chance of surviving the Winter and bringing us more honey in the New Year. I'll do this as soon as I can and hopefully (fingers crossed) it will do the trick.

Come and feed the piglets for charity!

We're raising money again for The Alzheimer's Society - I'm climbing Ben Nevis in a months time (lucky me!) and I'm trying to raise as much money as possible for this very worthy cause - for more info on why I've decided to climb the UK's highest mountain please see here: www.justgiving.com/janeandfotoulla

So, we'll be bringing along two lovely little Gloucester Old Spot piglets to The Two Brewers pub in Stotfold and selling bags of piglet food for £1.00 - All money raised will be donated to the charity. We'll be there to answer all your questions about rearing pigs for the table too - so feel free to come along just for a chat...

We'd like to say a really big thank you to The Two Brewers for being such a lovely bunch and to all their regulars who have been steadily filling a jug with their spare change to go towards our fundraising efforts, we really, really appreciate it!

Jane x