Death swoops down from the air

I was mowing the lawn when out of the corner of my eye I saw a figure approaching the house. We live in a very private place, down a long track, and anyone wandering about is either a burglar, someone coming to see us, or hopelessly lost.

He was stoopong and carrying a cross bow. His right hand held the pistol grip, the black arms stretched out to each side. I jumped off the mower and ran across the newly mown lawn towards him without thinking. He looked up and pointed the crossbow at me which made me stop... and then look closer. It was not the normal cross bow, had no string and had a number of arms on either side.

Unthinking, I accosted him (a little aggressively I fear) and asked what he thought he was doing.
His story was a relief to hear. He was not planning to take me and my family hostage or anything sinister. He was searching for his pet. It had a radio bleeper on it, and the "crossbow" was the radio direction finder.
"What sort of pet?" I asked him, thinking it might be a ferret (Ferretmen use radio locators.)

"It's a large Goshawk!" he said "and I think it might have killed something here."

We looked around in the direction of the bleeps and sure enough under the short beech hedge there was the dark shape of the Goshawk with its prey.
I was quite excited. I have never seen one close up before.
However when I saw the prey I was less excited and a little more irritated.


The Goshawk had swooped down and murdered one of my fine new Frech Bluebell chickens. Talk about an easy target. It should have been after the low flying partridges which populate the countryside round here. One could tell immediately that the long fang like claws would have pierced almost every vital organ in the first crunch. Bluebell did not stand a chance.
So, beware if you are thinking about walking round our place unannounced.
You will definitely need to wear a camoflage hat so the Goshawk does not pounch on you.

The other chickens, kittens and free range pet rabbit have been warned, and unless they take heed, they do not stand a chance on the next encounter...if he dares to come by again.

He did give us £10 to get a new chicken.

The Autumn Air Show

Living in a remote house with nothing but fields on all side sounds like the perfect idill. It certainly has its up sides but there are one or two downsides as well. Not all remote places have the same problems or the same benefits.
Every autumn, just as the temperature begins to drop and the chestnut trees start to turn from their dark summer green to the beautiful ocres and russet colours, we have the local air show. This is not the Duxford extravaganza. This is the Insect Airshow. Our bees seem to have been well looked after but the strays and wild bees have smelt the honey that we extracted and are out looking for it, so they can rob it for their own winter stores. This in its self is not too much of a problem. One can dodge the odd bee in the house (I hesitate to swat or spray them now I am in the apiarist fraternity). I can also tell that they are not my bees from my hive... you do get to know them.

No. The real Insect Airshow appears on warm sunny days in autumn. One side of our house faces in each direction. The south side on a warm sunny afternoon changes colour.
It grows darker as the number of small files bask in the hot sun. These are the dreaded cluster flies. They are looking for a place to hibernate and in rural areas they tend to creep into crevices in houses.
The roof space is full of them.
The windows facing south have 100s of dead flies on the window cills. They can squeeze through the tiniest gaps between the window and the frame. They creep into the folds of the curtains. They die in their 1000's all over the house.
But the worst place is in the bathrooms. The lights are a recessed type, and which puncture the ceiling into the roof space. Most of the light is aimed down wards, but there is enough light in the roof space to attract the squadrons of cluster flies. They try to creep through the gap into the bathroom but nearly all get frazzeled by the bulb.
The numbers are so large that the bathroom eventually becomes dark. (The picture shows just a few hours collection when the light was only on for about half and hour.) So I have to pull out the bulbs and scrape out thousands of flies into the bin. Then clean the glass on the light which has been coated with brown cooked fly ointment.

Cluster flies are strange:
They do not eat.
They are not attracted to theose sticky fly papers.
They are not attracted to ultra violet fly zappers.
If you leave them for a day or two they leave an unpleasant oily smell and stain.

Last year I purchased a couple of gallons of persistent insecticide called Protctor "C". This is excellent stuff. You spray it onto a surface and it will kill any bug that walks over it for about 2 months. The only trouble is that I have to spray the inside and outside of all south and west facing windows and much of the roof space.

I also spray it onto the bricks of the south facing outside walls. It can be used in kitchens and is harmless to mammals. (It does kill fish, however).

The other thing you need is a batch of new bags for the vacuum cleaner. It is a once a day job, every evening after the sun has gone down. I must have collected several gallons of fly carcasses by now!
At least they will be gone when the first frost arrives! I can't wait for it!

The honey harvest is in!

The advance careful planning went out of the window, as usual. I spoke with the local GP beekeeper and booked a time to use his centrifuge. During our conversation he said that I should definitely take out any filled frames in the more recent 2nd super. I had only added this (brand new and self assembled, with sparkly new frames and wax foundation) at the very beginning of August, just before we went on holiday. On subsequent hive inspections in Mid August and early September the bees had hardly touched it, so I was not expecting to extract anything from it .
Any way, on the advice of the good doctor I opened the hive and to my great surprise found the 2nd super about 60% full. The bees were seriously unimpressed at being robbed again (I had not had the time or chance to put the Porter excluders in) and they put up a fearful din. My smoker ran out of smoke, 2 bees got into my trouser pocket and another inside the veil where they did their duty. Ooowwww! Next time I will remember that time spent planning is time well spent!

I took all the frames over to his extraction room (this makes him sound more like a dentist than a doctor) and started decapping the frames using an old bread knife. This is a messy job and surprisingly hard work. In no time I had cramp in my hands. When I spoke to some apiarists at the Quy Country Fair they said they had used a hair drier to melt of the caps and it works very well, once you have realised that you do not want to melt holes through the frame; a light touch is clearly required but it sounds much quicker.

The second lot of frames were thinner and strangely had significant proportion of the honey in a crystalised form, which therefore did not extract. The honey smelled and tasted different too. Doc says it is probably from Ivy and not so sweet or flavoursome. The bees will reprocess the crystalised comb when I put the frames back in the super.

The centrifuge is simple and effective but you have to hold it down with all your weight when it gets up to speed, or it can shake itself to bits. A slight difference in weight of honey in the frames gets magnified enormously when the centrifuge gets up to speed. Its elementary physics really.
The honey splats out onto the walls of the centrifuge walls and drips down to the bottom, with all sorts of bits of wax, dead earwigs, bees and propylis etc. We then lifted the whole thing onto a table and drained the honey through a double sieve (coarse and then fine) into a bucket.

The great part of it all is that you do not need to clean anything. Just leave it out in the garden and in no time at all the bees have found it and over the next day or two they will clean it up completely. If there is a lot of runny honey in a bucket, put in some hay or straw so the bees do not drown.

So now the honey is in the kitchen keeping warm and settling. Any impurities float to the top.
I am ordering my honey jars and about to design the labels. I think that we will get about 25-30 lbs.

The children all asked for home made bread and honey for breakfast. This is a first. Great excitement!
And they have taken a sticky frame of honey to school for "Show and Tell". The teacher has been learning what she can from the internet.
I just hope they do not leave it lying about or the school will be filled with 100s of bees, and I will be in the Dog House!