Swarming (Thats one above my head)

Spent almost the whole day trying to catch two bee swarms - eventually with success. All the details on bee journal. A short video of both swarms on Flickr.

A very close up of the photo shows I am surrounded by the bees. Amazing how peaceful they are but it does take some courage to get in the middle of a few ten thousand bees!

I was lucky enough to witness the swarms having to go outside to take a mobile phone call. After yesterday PV cleaning Blip, I emailed last night the solar company who had installed it. Today they called to discuss the possibilities. The salesman had already viewed the house on Google Earth and knew exactly what possibilities there are!
Footnote: The offer for a 10kW PV unit came a week later. Gets a bit complicated as one establishes a "company" for tax reasons. Means you save VAT on purchase but pay VAT on your private use of electricity and any you sell to the electricity board. We have a very high electricity usage - 7000kW/pa and the offer reckons we should be able to use 30% of the electricity generated ourselves, saving around 800€/pa and sell the rest which would bring in about the same again. So compared with current situation, we would have around 1500€ "income" to finance the unit which would cost around 13,000€. In other words after 9 years, the unit would have financed itself and the expected 12 years of the units life would bring in money. (decreasing efficency of the unit over the years is taken in to account). I think though that we could increase the amount of electricity we could use ourselves by replanning some of the tasks to ensure they are done at times when there is sufficient electricity being generated and this would include an electric emersion heater in the central heating boiler system to produce warm water in the summer months.
I would like to do it but suspect Finance Minister will take another view. PV electricity generation is no longer the cash cow it once was. The guaranteed electricity price has been reduced drastically - especially here in Bavaria, we are producing "too" much regenertive energy! Missing is still the means to store the power. Battery systems are available but still too expensive.
Benefit would also mean a form of insulation over part of the horse stables which would reduce noise and "sweating" caused by the metal roof. The solar company did also produce a second offer to cover the entire stable roof - a 30kW unit costing 35,000€. Doubt the bank would agree to finance that.