The peppers in the polytunnel have not enjoyed the cold

Posted on January 8, 2026 by james

Not sure these are going to make it to next season…

On the other hand, these ones in Frankenstein’s greenhouse are still looking pretty good.

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Damn! That tree has snapped right off in the storm

Posted on January 8, 2026 by james

Or so I thought. Completely snapped. Must be at least 200mm diameter.

But no, it just got snapped off here.

Still, it’s all good firewood, eh? Wouldn’t be surprised if the rest came down in the next decent storm we have…

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Meet my new DIY swarm collection box

Posted on January 8, 2026 by james

I’ve used cardboard boxes for years. They do the job, but they’re not exactly very tolerant of the occasional rain shower and if I’ve not used one for a while it seems to disappear to be used for other purposes.

So, I made a decent wooden one (two, in fact), with a 3d-printed entrance.

And a slide-out solid floor with a mesh floor above it, for ventilation.

When collecting the swarm the solid floor is left in so the bees don’t get confused and hang onto the outside.

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Honey shipping boxes

Posted on January 8, 2026 by james

I needed some boxes for shipping jars of honey in the post and wasn’t really confident that just cardboard would do the job. So I made these to contain bubble-wrapped jars instead.

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Damn! The world disappeared

Posted on January 8, 2026 by james

Sometimes I’m not sure that isn’t a good thing 😀

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More clearer boards incoming

Posted on January 8, 2026 by james

I needed some more clearer boards. It’s tempting to stack all the supers in an apiary together to clear them, but in some cases I just don’t have the space (or anywhere remotely level), so I needed some more clearer boards to actually go on the hives.

I found some offcuts of 15mm phenolic ply with the ideal pattern on the surface, cut a groove in the inside to take a 5.5mm thick sheet and played with a hole saw. They’re done!

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New honey labels

Posted on January 8, 2026 by james

Rather than using pre-printed labels for my jars of honey as sold by the likes of Thorne’s I wanted something a little more special. Something unique to me and that tells a little bit of a story about the contents of the jar.

So, I bought some blank labels and a cheap laser printer, spent some time fighting with Libre Office to get what I wanted, the way that I wanted it, and eventually came up with this.

I much prefer them to the pre-fab labels that I have used in the past.

Now I just need to get an out-apiary near Wellington and I can sell some “Welly Honey” 😀

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If you think what happened yesterday was in any way excusable

Posted on January 8, 2026 by james

Then you have nothing left in common with a human being.

That is all.

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Skoda Octavia lock failure #1

Posted on January 7, 2026 by james

Joy of joys, the front passenger door would not unlock on our 2012 Skoda Octavia. I’m mostly the only person who uses it so that didn’t seem such a major deal, but it turns out to be an MOT fail if the doors won’t open so it had to be fixed.

Of course, actually getting to do the door mechanism when the door won’t open in the first place isn’t because it involves removing the door card. Removing the door card requires removing screws that are obstructed by the passenger seat.

Eventually after a lot of grubbing about in the foot well and careful application of many swearwords I managed to release the door card and remove it, only to find that there was still no way to get to the lock mechanism 🙁

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So how does this perry stuff work then?

Posted on January 7, 2026 by james

I’ve not come across anyone with perry pears until recently, but in the Autumn I was offered the opportunity to pick some from a tree in a local orchard. I’ve pressed them and put them in a fermenter, but information on making perry seems pretty thing on the ground compared to what’s available for cider. Unless I can get hold of more information, I’m just going to let it ferment and see what happens.

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