I’ve been checking the girls today - the weather is lovely and warm and they are flying around all over the place, returning with lots of pollen and, hopefully, nectar. We’ve been away for a couple of weeks and before we went, I fed them on about 5 pounds of honey and put a super on with last years frames - fresh (!) from extraction - in case the girls needed something to do while we were away.

I’ve taken far too long to write this up, but I’ve been rather pissed off to be honest! We’ve lost one hive of bees since February. They were alive when I checked and I’ve been feeding them but I noticed that the feed wasn’t going down. Due to the weather, I couldn’t “go in” and see what was what in case I did them some harm with the cold and damp.

Domino, our California Kingsnake was put to sleep tonight at 19:10. She’s been in the family for about 13 or 14 years with never a problem, well, except for what you can see below - she got me one night and had my finger down her throat before we could do anything about it. Alison decided to take a picture rather than get her off me! It eventually took over an hour and a half, and judicious use of January ice cold water (as advised by the RSPCA) to get her off, safely.

Earthquake, tsunami and nuclear problems. Like they don’t have enough trouble with just one of these? And as usual, the religious fuck-wits are coming out of the woodwork with their completely ridiculous claims that it’s all “someone’s” fault - be that someone the gays, women (it’s usually one of these groups to blame for everything according to the fundies!) or someone else. Mind you, the Daily Mail isn’t much better, reporting on a astrologist (did you know, astrologist is an anagram of fuckwit?

Yesterday, 24th February 2011, was about the first reasonably warm day of the year. The pond and paths around our house are now filled with frogs. It must be spring!

On Sunday 6th February I hefted the hives as usual. The new hive felt a bit on the light side so I whipped the lid off (just the lid) to take a peek - it was quite mild or I wouldn’t have disturbed them. Lifting the card I use to block the ventilation from passing through the cluster, I saw lots of live bees! Yippee! Things are looking good for a second successful winter, and this year was a cold one!

I was out this Sunday hefting the hive. It’s feeling a little lighter than I remember, so I suspect the girls are tucking in to the stores now. I heard from Peter, about a fortnight ago, that his girls have started laying already so it’s looking good for Spring. As I was hefting, one solitary bee flew out from the mouse guard and buzzed around me to have a look, then vanished back into the hive.

Ever wondered how you can call a packaged procedure (or function) which resides at the far end of a database link? Wonder no more! 1 2 3 begin package_name.Procedure_name@db_link_name(parameter, parameter, ...); end; Calling a function is just as easy: 1 2 3 4 declare vResult number(10); begin vResult := package_name.Function_name@db_link_name(parameter, parameter, ...); end; Unfortunately, you don’t appear to be able to do this sort of thing via a synonym: 1 2 3 4 5 create or replace synonym X for package_name@db_link_name; begin X.

The (Tory) government’s wonderful new system for the NHS starts tomorrow. GP’s will take over running things where the Primary Care Trusts used to and Primary Care Trusts are to vanish. If any hospital fails under the new system, there will be no tax-payer funded bale outs. Strange that, they baled out the banks and have been shafted in return as bankers returned to their old ways - the ways that all political parties said would never happen again - and stuck two fingers up at the tax-payer and the government.

Today, Alison and I took our lives in our hands and extracted the honey from 20 full frames. In all, we have now got a kitchen full of about 70 lbs of fresh garden honey courtesy of our hard working lady friends. The day started with the de-capping of the combs, four of, and then putting those into the centrifuge - a giant salad spinner of sorts. After 60 turns of the handle, we open up and turn the combs around and give the other side 60 turns as well.

It seems that this new government is off it’s bloody head. A new law has been introduced that means, in essence, that if someone tells a joke in the office, and someone else is offended by it, they can sue, even (get this) if the offended person didn’t actually hear the joke in question! WTF is the government doing for crying out loud? Have they not learned from the mistakes of the last Tory government (aka selfish b’stards) - led by the “lovely” Maggie T.

Saturday 2nd October was a fairly nice day given the weather we’ve been having recently, so we managed - at long last - to get the final harvest of honey done. We managed to take another 9 full frames and a bucket full of raw natural comb also completely full and capped off. This was the space I inadvertently left when I removed the initial three frames. The girls went mad and filled the gaps.

The pope arrives in the UK today. Personally, I think he should be arrested. As the head of an organisation that is riven with child molesting staff he should be arrested. As the man in charge of covering up the atrocities (while a Cardinal) he should be arrested. As God’s disciple on Earth - he’s a fraud! Why are the British Tax Payers, at a time when cut-backs are “required” paying for the head of the Vatican “state” to pay a “state” visit to the UK, forced to pay huge sums, running into multi-millions of pounds to provide security for this man?