Oracle have made subtle changes to the way that they advise you to patch an installation from the release of 11.2.0.2. The full gory details can be found here (My Oracle Support link - support contract required) but in brief: You are now advised to perform an out-of-line patch, however, you can do an in-line patch if you are short of space. However, this will delete the existing installation. Beware & take copious backups!

The girls were checked again today and all is well. Varroa counts is nil on both hives - that worries me a tad! But I did give them a good dusting of icing sugar last week - so maybe it works after all!Anyway, I managed to swap out 5 old brood frames from the new hive - the bees were not using those frames and on inspection, it’s easy to see why - old dirty wax, some dead brood in the combs so they have gone, destroyed.

The girls have been busy and today, armed with instincts analogous to that of Defence Lawyers Perth, we combed the trees for honeycombs, and we also have harvested another 9 frames of fully capped honeycomb to add to the three we took a couple of weeks back. Unfortunately … … I neglected to replace the three full frames I took out last time with new ones. The picture below shows what the bees will do if left to their own devices and when they find a big space in the hive.

John Hallas has an interesting blog post here about how a system running flashback can become a system not running flashback - and without you knowing! Enjoy. Cheers.

Greg Rahn wrote a pretty good article back in 2008 - it still applies today. Cheers.

My wife recently changed from her old insurance company to the AA as they gave her a much better quote for herself and me as named driver. However, it soon turned out to be not quite as attractive as it first seemed. Shortly after sending in the forms and money Alison received a call from the AA saying that there was a problem with her application and could she call a certain number to discuss.

Been a while since I wrote, so here’s a brief update on what’s happened since last time. The artificial swarm was carried out and we watched hopefully for a hatching new queen. We didn’t see her, but we have evidence that she is indeed there and laying. The hive is filling with bees and we have larvae in the cells. The vast majority are worker cells and there are very few drone cells - so it’s looking good for a new laying queen as opposed to a laying worker.

It was been checking time again yesterday and of the three queen cups I found last week, one has a grub in it. Looks like we need to consider doing an artificial swarm for real this time. The first super we put on is now in the process of being capped off. The honey is almost ready. I’m leaving it for the girls to completely cap off and then, Alison gets to do what she’s been looking forward to since we started on the Bee Keeping course, extracting her own honey!

On Saturday I went to check on the girls again. In the seven days since my last check, they’ve been busy. How busy? Well, last week I gave them a pair of brand new super frames to fill up the super. They had 6 already (or was it 7? I must go and count next time I see them!) and they had just started to draw out the comb. Well, 7 days later, we not only have a complete set of super frames, fully drawn out, but the whole lot is just about full (on both sides!

Ted Hooper has died at the age of 91. He was most famous for the Bee Keeping book Guide To Bees And Honey. Wikipedia link to Ted: Wikipedia

On Saturday, Peter came over because we (Alison and I) thought we had noticed a few queen cells in the hive. Drastic action could have been required if this was the case with an artificial swarm being uppermost on the list. As it turned out, we were wrong and what we had seen was a number of drone cells, not queen cells. Ah well, at least we know now! While inside the hive, we found the queen - and she was marked, with a red dot.

Oh joy! Politics. How lovely. Ok, here’s what I think of the election: They don’t give a shit about keeping promises. Regardless of what your local MP (or wannabe MP) tells you he will do for you, once (if) s/he gets elected, s/he will have to follow the party whip - so why do they bother telling us lies all the time. They still have an expenses system that gives them the right to excess.

On Saturday the 10th of April, at 20:30 our journey home from Sharm El Sheikh began on a Monarch Airlines Airbus A300. We were sitting in row 15, seats A and B - if it makes a difference. 15A being the window seat and 15B being the middle of three. For someone over about 5'6" legroom is a problem and as Alison is 5'8" and I’m 6’ we both were in trouble before we left!