Weed.

While I was busy with the bees late this afternoon, there had been some young girls playing further up the garden, so I assumed that there were some lost gardeners working just out of sight. I needed to finished before the air cooled too much, so I finished the task in hand before seeking them out. I was too late, they had gone, but in the upper garden I stumbled across these weeds, probably hybrids between the standard lawn daisy and a cultivated variety from the times when this was a commercial enterprise. It’s bigger with petals more brightly coloured and numerous than normal. It is one of the many Blips that I think may demand another attempt now that I know where they are, and I don’t think anyone in this community is likely to pull them up.
 

There was one colony of bees that needed transferring from a nuc (a half sized hive) to a full hive, and I had planned on a picture of the queen; although I found her easily enough it wasn’t convenient to photograph her as she was on a frame that needed modifying so I gently lifted her off and ran her into the new hive. Having shaken the bees off the frame, I found the young lady in the extra emerging from the cell where she has spent the last 12 days pupating, into the light of day. The process if often incorrectly referred to as hatching but, strictly speaking, they hatch from the egg. As you can see, she was a tight fit and it takes a lot of effort to extricate herself; her wing tips are still stuck and she seemed to stop for a breather at this stage. Notably, her hair is quite pale and unkempt at this stage and it will be a week before she makes her first tentative flight; three weeks after emerging, she will cease doing domestic indoor chores and will graduate to foraging and guard duties for the last few weeks of her life, at the end of which she will be nearly bald making pollen collection difficult and her wings will be frayed preventing her from carrying a full load back to the hive. But, just now, she can look forward to six weeks of Scottish summer, I do hope the weather’s fine for her.


Thanks are due to BikerBear for hosting Flower Friday this week and I'm sure you all join me in wishing Mr BB a speedy recovery after his stroke last week.