Thursday 1st September

I will be on a short break on the island of Majorca, from 3rd to 11th September

Blog will be internet dependent while away....

Wednesday 31st August 2016

Bees....................

Last week we discovered that Honey Bees had moved in on the Barn Owl box in Pembrey Forest, given that both Barn Owls and Honey Bees are in need of a helping hand a small dilemma loomed, what to do?

The answer was quite easy the bees possibly came from one of the many hives in the forest and should be moved on to make way for any prospective Barn Owl.

As chance would have it I ended up talking to a visitor who turned out to be one of the local bee keepers and put him in touch with Simeon to make further arrangements.

This found us in the forest admiring the skills of John, the bee keeper, as he put in place the steps to encourage the bees to move from the nest box into a temporary hive for onward travel to pastures new, they will need to be ,moved about 3 miles to stop them coming back to the nest box.

Opps that's a lot of Honey Bees

It was very interesting to hear about the lives of the Honey Bee directly from someone who clearly is very passionate about these industrious insects, apparently the only farmed insect in the world.

Honey Bees are excellent parents, so part of the plan involved moving the brood chambers from the nest box into the temporary hive, the bees would instinctively look for the eggs and grubs and continue caring for them... well that's the plan!

Brood chambers

The one thing that we and John were impressed by was how docile the bees were despite the disturbance being caused, I was particularly pleased!!!

Calm or not John still had his smoker ready

difficult to see in the photo but the bees on the roof were "waggling" ,

waving their bodies/bums

With John satisfied that he had done all he could we stopped for lunch before continuing with our Wednesday tasks......

a more mundane job......

Monday 29th August 2016

Don't forget the extra net.......!

With limitations due to public access; I had this mornings ringing planned with military precision, nets planned last night pegs in place all I needed to do was put an extra net, with the two already in the bag,  ready to pick up this morning, on site for 5:30 and ready to go when I thought where's the extra net?? I know on the table in the house....

With just two nets and contemplating "what if.." a short session ensued, the clear conditions over night and the fact that there were NO hirundines at the roost last night should have been a clue to the quiet time I had.

Quality prevailed with a stunning Lesser Whitethroat in the first round with Blackcap and Common Whitethroat to follow.

Hard to beat I think..........

Lesser Whitethroat

Lesser Whitethroat

Blackcap