Storm and Catastrophy.

The storm of Wednesday and Thursday was one of the worst we have had for a long time here and kept waking me throughout the night. The slates rattled and banged, there were branches falling from trees, various flower pots clashing and rolling around, a real cacophony. Luckily, no real damage at home but I have seen fence panels blown down and some houses have lost slates not to far away. So I thought we had got away it, but no. I received a call from t'other half at work Thursday afternoon containing bad news, two hives in an out-apiary had blown over. I'm not sure how long they had been knocked apart, but my good friend whose property the hives are on picked them up and reassembled them as best as he could as soon as he found this small catastrophe. This may sound a simple task, just picking up a few hive parts, but believe me, when you've got a several hundred VERY upset bees doing their best to defend what's left of their home, just getting near them is no mean feat! My friend was actually quite brave to do this task with no protective clothing at all. They stung me several times when went to prepare them for moving on Friday morning.
All my hives are at the home apiary now which will allow me to keep an eye on them and make winter management much easier. I will have to treat the bees for the dreaded varroa mite soon and will possibly have to feed them in the next month or so. Varroa can wipe a colony out if not managed or at best set them back markedly. Time will tell if the two upset colonies will survive. This depends on two major factors: are there enough worker bees left alive to support the colony and is the queen in good health? Many hundreds of bees have died, I know this as I have emptied out hundreds of their little corpses from the hive floors. A bee can only live for a very short time in low temperatures, maybe a minute or two. Anyway, time will tell, there's a good deal of winter left to contend with yet.
T'other half has decided to take down the Christmas decorations, so that was this evenings job for the both of us. I must say it's quite nice to be back to normal after a very good and relaxed holiday.