The weather forecasts in the preceding week have indicated that heavy showers were expected this week, as the remnants of a hurricane system came in across the Atlantic.
There has been rain, but very little has fallen in our vicinity. We have had a couple of showers that have barely dampened down the dust, but nothing worth mentioning.
When watching the forecasts I was concerned that I would not find a gap in the weather to inspect my bees this week. I need not have worried. This morning was fine and dry. A little breezy perhaps, but fine and dry.
I prepared my smoker and was about to put on my bee suit when a delivery lorry pulled up at the gate. It was the stone trough that I had recently ordered. My plan is to use it as a cistern for a water feature I hope to construct in the next few weeks. The trough was stored in the car port and I headed up to have a look at the hives.
There is no need to go in to any great detail, as they all look pretty much as they did last week.
I need to have a think about hives #1 and #3, as they don't seem to be taking honey out of the supers and storing it in the brood box. Perhaps I need to use an uncapping fork to open up the cells, and encourage them to take the honey down in to the hive?
Hive #2 looks very much like it did last week. The bees do not seem to have redistributed the stored syrup to give the queen more space to lay. Perhaps the relocation has disturbed her laying? All I can do is continue with the frame change and hope that matters right themselves in the next couple of weeks.
As I finished the inspection of the last hive I felt a couple of drops of rain fall. My timing had been perfect, as the drops had become a downpour by the time I as unzipping my bee suit in the shelter of the store room. Unfortunately the rain only lasted for a few minutes, and the ground was soon dry again.
The title of today's Journal entry refers to this evening's fishing on the Avon at Barton.
We didn't have a huge amount of luck this evening, although the one catch I did have might explain a lot ...
... Fairly early in the evening I had a bite and I struck. I could tell that I had a fish on my hook, and I started to reel it in. Bubbles grabbed the landing net and clambered down to the water's edge, while I played the fish. By this time the tip of my rod was curved right over and what seemed to be a large fish was struggling to escape. As I reeled the fish in, Bubbles started to laugh and asked if I was sure I needed a landing net.
I looked down to see a small flash of silver. The fish was a tiny chublet, perhaps six or seven inches in length. As I lifted the fish from the water we suddenly realised why I had thought I had caught a monster. The small chub had a huge open slice in one side of it. Basically it had been attacked by a pike as I was in the process of reeling it in. The weight and struggling had been the pike, rather than the small chub.
So, I may not have caught the biggest fish in my life, but this was certainly one of the more unusual catches. And, with a pike in the vicinity, perhaps the other fish were staying well away?
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