New Developments.

Had a bee keeping meeting at Newbattle today with an interesting discussion on metaphorically changing the bees’ nappies. A long time ago, a certain Mr. Bailey developed his system of removing all of the honey comb from a hive and making the bees replace it with fresh. It’s a process that confuses a lot of people and takes up to six weeks to complete (that's both confusing people and changing the comb). Over time, the wax that makes up the comb becomes contaminated with chemicals such as pesticides and disease organisms and so the current wisdom is that all the wax should be replace every three years. The normal process is to change a third of the comb each spring, but this is often neglected and so one has to bite the bullet. However, I feel that those who forget to do a little each year will never get round to following Mr. Bailey’s advice.
 
When I first started keeping bees, the climate of opinion was a little different; bees are attracted to old black comb, so we encouraged it. Similarly, bees don’t like the smells of soaps and detergents so bee keepers were dirty people. Not too dirty, you understand, because bees don’t like body odours either – you should see how they react to having a horse nosing around their hive. Times change, now you are frowned on for going near someone’s apiary in a dirty bee suit, or worse, dirty kid leather gloves; new Marigolds are now de rigour. Hygiene rules, and rightly so.
 
Cycling home through Bonnyrigg, I marked the progress of the new housing estate. When I first started using this cycle path, it was very rural; then part of it was stolen to make way for the Borders railway and the ground clearing for the houses started; it was about the same time that Rottweilers with undocked tails started to appear. Now it looks as though there will soon be a corridor of new houses stretching all the way from Musselburgh to Penicuik. Much as I like them, I have to blame all this unwelcome development on the Rotties.