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| Beekeeping | |
Thanks to Mary Holt for sending these photos that tell the story of a heart shaped swarm that landed near her Cotswold Cottage in England a few weeks back. Splendid, eh? I love everything about them… the storybook cottage, the garden, Mr. Crabtree, the captions… “the first photo I sent you shows the dormer window beside which the bees entered the roof. Unlike most dormer windows that have solid sides, ours have glass in the east-facing side because the view is so extensive and beautiful. (The bees must have agreed when they chose that spot to live for a while). That is how I came to observe them at such close quarters while they lived up in the attic.”
“The garden is my absolute joy.”
“You could not wish for a more gentle mentor. I was up at his place recently where he was inspecting a brood box and transferring some bees to another hive. He had told me that bees love goose feathers as a ‘brush’ to persuade them to move, and there I saw him use these enormously long white feathers bound together into a perfect tool. It looked as if they had come from part of a wing. He gently stroked the bees off the frames with them and they were extremely calm.”
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