New Residents

It’s been a lovely week, and I feel much better for the warm spring sun and the longer nights. I’m not a great lover of heat, but I must admit I’m a bit of a daylight junkie.

Pretty much everything is in full flower in the garden and out in the countryside. There are just a few of the larger trees yet to come into full leaf, but they won’t be long.

Yesterday I noticed we’ve got new residents in our house. High up on the side wall of the house, there’s a hole in the brickwork, about one inch in diameter. There were a couple of large bumble bees flying around near it and I stood and watched as they disappeared into the hole and reappeared a minute or so later.

My first reaction wasn’t printable, as I had visions of a large nest in the loft. I went up and checked, but they’re not nesting inside the house, which is a huge relief. I wasn’t sure what to do, so I searched the internet for suggestions and came across the website of the British Bee Keeping Association (BBKA). Reading through their forum, I found plenty of people who have had bees nesting in their walls.

The BBKA’s advice is not to worry. They’re very unlikely to be a huge colony of honey bees, which can number tens of thousands. If they’re bumble bees we might get a hundred or so in the nest, but they are completely harmless, won’t do any structural damage to the walls and will be gone by September. The general view on the BBKA site is to relax, enjoy watching the bees and be grateful that they’ve chosen our wall to set up home in.

So that’s what we’ll do. Later in the summer when there’s more activity in the nest, I’ll set up my camera with a telephoto lens on it and write a Bee Special for the blog. It’s true what journalists say: everything’s copy.

This Friday I’m publishing a photo-essay Death at Deerpark House. At the beginning of May we rented an eighteenth century hunting lodge with some friends and spent a couple of nights playing a murder mystery. Look out of it tomorrow.

Other than that I’m still in the middle of a intensive reading phase, working my way through CP Snow’s Strangers and Brothers sequence of novels. I’ll review them on this blog when I’ve read all eleven novels in the series. For some reason these books really fascinate me.

I hope you’re all having a good time, so until tomorrow, take care.

Regards

Dave