That's gotta go!

At our first encounter with Wilson, we both noticed that he had a rather peculiar clip. 

He had a fairly short topknot which extended down the back of his neck. We both agreed that it made him look like he had a mullet.  Now neither of us are particularly stylish, but there is no way that any of our dogs is wandering around with the world's worst hairstyle.

As the title of today's post makes clear, it had to go!

After several days of nagging, I finally got out the clippers to remove the offending mullet.

I was aware that Wilson is used to being groomed, but I had no idea how he was going to respond to me sitting him down and attacking the back of his neck with my cordless Andis. It only took a couple of minutes to trim back his coat and I can report that he was quite happy to let me do it. 

Of course, a complete clip is a different matter, and I think I'd like to do that myself before we take him to the dog groomers. After all, I want to be certain of his temperament, before he is inflicted on an unsuspecting trainee.

I have already mention that I had been nagged politely requested to get rid of Wilson's mullet. This nagging request was multi layered, and I had also been instructed asked to trim Whiffler and Hobson's faces.  This was achieved without a fuss, but there was one more Herculean labour to be accomplished ... Dog #4 aka The Rat needed a complete clip!

I have previously documented the fact that The Rat does not like going to the groomers, so will not bore you again. She does not like being groomed, so today was not going to be fun! However the weather gods had smiled upon her, and she had earned a reprieve.

30% had foolishly taken the dogs out for an early morning walk and they had got quite wet. Now a quick face clip is no problem, but there was no way I could clip The Rat until she was completely dry.  We have discussed this at length, and it is the view of Ratty that she won't be fully dry "until the back end of July!"

Now the preceding paragraphs are usually sufficient for one day, but today turned out to be more productive than expected.

The bees were overdue for an inspection, but the weather would not oblige. It has either been sunny, but very windy or cool or showery. Neither of these are ideal conditions to open up a hive. But, after a wet start to the day, the weather finally cleared in the early afternoon and I managed to work my way through all three hives.

I can report that the young queen in Hive #3 was spotted, but there is still no sign of eggs or brood. I am reasonably confident that she has been mated, so, hopefully, she will start to lay in the next week.

I then moved on to Hive #2. This would be the first inspection since I took a shook swarm from it at the beginning of May.  After working my way through half a dozen frames in the brood box, I was delighted to see a frame of capped worker brood. The queen had hatched, mated, and returned to the colony. Clearly she was also laying well. As I continued my inspection I actually caught sight of her wandering across a frame. Satisfied that all was well, the hive was reassembled and the colony left to rebuild.

I finally checked the third hive. For the past few weeks I have found it challenging to locate the queen, and there has been very limited quantities of brood. Today's inspection yielded the same result. I located the queen and there was a couple of frames of brood, but, at this time of year, the brood box should contain six or seven frames rammed with brood.

I think I may have a failing queen. I am now faced with a dilemma; do I attempt to re-queen the colony, or do I leave them alone and hope that a natural supersedure will take place?* The fact that I will be away in Germany from next Friday makes re-queening challenging. On balance I think that I will leave the colony alone. I can always buy in a new queen when I get back, if there is no signs of supersedure.

Right, I'm almost finished! On the subject of the motorcycle tour to Germany, I have purchased a larger touring screen to make longer trips a little more comfortable. The screen arrived today, and eventually got fitted to the R1250R.**

I've finished now ... I promise!

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* As has happened with Hive #3

** After a call to the retailer to got a copy of the correct fitting instructions.