Lord of the flies

Posted on January 11, 2026 by james

In the Summer of 2025, the flies were just horrifying. Being so hot and dry outdoors they seemed to congregate anywhere there was some shade. Thousands upon thousands of them. It wasn’t just me, either. Everyone else I spoke to about it was experiencing exactly the same problem.

These are two strips of fly paper that I’d hung in the workshop about an hour earlier.

Every morning for several weeks I was replacing the strips because in just one day they’d become so full of flies that there was no room for more. Obviously I put the full ones on the compost heap. No sense wasting them.

(Ignore the mess of the workshop. It was in the middle of a major reorganisation.)

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Yay! Cellulitis again!

Posted on January 11, 2026 by james

Fourth time, I think. It doesn’t look anywhere near as angry in this photo as it did in real life. In case it’s unclear, that’s the back of my left calf, foot out of shot on the right, knee out of shot on the left.

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We’ll call that full, then

Posted on January 11, 2026 by james

Don’t think I’m going to be getting much more in this compost heap.

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Miscellaneous bait hives

Posted on January 11, 2026 by james

All of these use quite old Abelo poly brood boxes that weren’t made to the correct dimensions — they have both a top and a bottom bee space.

The stands have sacrificial/adjustable legs. adjustable because nowhere around where I live is level. Sacrificial so that if one rots, it’s just a small piece of wood to replace.

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More laser-cut beekeeping stuff

Posted on January 11, 2026 by james

Honestly, I probably made these because I could rather than because laser-cutting was the best way to do them. First, a very fat dummy — to take up several frames worth of space in a queen-rearing box.

And the same thing, with a built-in feeder.

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What a load of rubbish!

Posted on January 11, 2026 by james

Or not. We have recycling collections every week — cans/plastics, glass and paper/card. We’re supposed to do food waste as well, but that all gets composted. And in fact a fair bit of the paper and card also ends up in the compost. The non-recyclable stuff is collected every three weeks. This is our bin, after three weeks. It’s not uncommon to find this little in it.

I shan’t bother putting it out. Most of the time I reckon we could comfortably go a couple of months between non-recyclable collections.

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This is a swarm I’ll pass on…

Posted on January 11, 2026 by james

In a hole that had rotted out of a tree after a branch fell off/was removed. The landowner wanted them removed before the tree was cut down a few days later. I decided that I didn’t fancy trying to do anything up so high at such short notice.

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Off the scale!

Posted on January 10, 2026 by james

Ok, not quite.

I wish I could think of a practical way to extract this heat though, say until the heap cooled to about 50°C.

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Tacwise 191EL nail/brad gun repair

Posted on January 10, 2026 by james

I use my Tacwise 191EL quite a bit for making bee equipment, so I was a little distressed when it stopped working. After doing the easy “check the fuse” type stuff I decided that since it was out of guarantee anyhow there was little to lose by taking it apart.

Once in pieces, the problem was pretty obvious. The switch (the upper one in this photo) had failed. The slider had snapped off and the mechanism wasn’t sliding properly so it was never triggering the gun to fire. I’m not entirely sure why the slider had failed. The trigger doesn’t actually press on that part at all, instead making contact with the end of the slider that is inside the switch (which is sprung, so it returns once the trigger is released). Missing the slider however means that the mechanism becomes unstable and tends to jam or even travel too far.

I tried a few bodges, but couldn’t get the switch to work reliably. In the end I just decided to replace the switch. I wasn’t able to find a direct replacement, so in the end I made up a small carrier from an offcut of aluminium plate and added a momentary button that would be operated by the trigger.

The range of movement of the trigger is smaller as a result, but at least the gun works once again and I don’t have to splash out on a new one.

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This little chile lived all Winter

Posted on January 10, 2026 by james

A Hungarian Black, which oddly is not a mind-altering leaf crop, in Frankenstein’s greenhouse. This survived the entire Winter last year and is still going strong even now. Produced a nice crop of chiles, too 😀 Others nearby didn’t make it so I’m wondering if it is the proximity to the compost heap (the other side of the wooden wall) that kept it going.

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