Mostly focused on beekeeping

Today ended up being mostly focussed on my beekeeping equipment.

I think that the reason for this, is as a result of Tuesday's hive inspection. It looks like there might be a sizeable honey crop, and the store room will need to be tidied in preparation for the extraction.

However, my original plan was simply to get some honey bottled. Supplies for my roadside stall had run low, and I had a special order for a lady, who wants mini jars for her B&B business. I had put a batch of jars in the dishwasher last night, and had wandered out to collect some lids from the store room.

The untidy state of the room made me realise that I would be harvesting in the not too distant future, and, with plenty of other jobs to do as well, I should get busy.

I shifted a couple of nucleus hives and then got distracted ... They had been sat on top of a crown board that I had knocked up at the end of last month. I realised that I will likely need an additional clearer board when I remove the supers from the hives, so I headed off to the workshop with the crown board and a plastic rhombus clearer. Half an hour later I had finished converting the crown board to a clearer and 30% was calling me in for breakfast.

The rest of the morning was spent bottling honey. I now have 18 half pound jars ready for sale, and these will hopefully last until I get back from my biking holiday in France. I also bottled 28 one ounce jars for the special order.

In the afternoon I headed out to the tomato greenhouse. They had grown well in the week that we had been away, and an hour was spent removing side shoots and tying up the vines.

I then returned to the store room and continued tidying up my apiary equipment. I had definitely been bitten by the tidying bug, as hive #2 has now been brought down form the apiary, broken down in to its component parts, scraped clean of debris, and is stacked away.

My plan for tomorrow is to give Hobson a haircut and get on with some log splitting, although 30% has already reminded me that we need to collect the chickens.*

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* They have spent a week boarding in a friend's coop, while we were away narrowboating.