To bee or not to bee? #2

This is the email I received on Thursday and read, whilst still at work in London.  By the time I’d returned home later that evening I’d completely forgotten about it and consequently didn’t mention it to the OH.

I left the island again on Friday morning to spend a lovely weekend with my daughter, including the whistlestop visit to Nymans I blogged about yesterday.  I was only reminded of the email when I walked into the kitchen on Sunday evening and saw a small Jiffy envelope in a pile of post next to the Aga.  I immediately moved it out of the kitchen, but it was with a certain amount of trepidation that I opened the package the following day.  And indeed roped in the OH – hence the hand below.

As the email explained, the bees would emerge as the temperature increased, but as you can see, a gentle toasting by the Aga, clearly made one of them think it was time to make an entrance.  Hopefully the remainder will follow the usual schedule and won’t have been damaged by their roller coaster temperature experience.

As instructed, we placed the tub in the release box (already looking rather mouldy due to rain seeping in by the hinge, again, I hope that doesn’t matter).

And then filled the empty nesting tube holder with nesting tubes.

Having read the website after filling the tubes I realise we’ve done a couple of things wrong – firstly the tubes were in rubber bands which we took off, but apparently they help prevent birds pulling the tubes out.  And secondly, the smaller tubes are ‘inner’ tubes and shouldn’t have been used, they are spares to replace the inners when they become ‘capped’.  I’ll sort this out when I get back this Thursday.

Meanwhile we wait – and thank goodness I didn’t try honey bees….