Aquilegia.

Flower Friday is usually also shopping day and, since the weather was nice this afternoon, it was bee keeping day as well. The weather, combined with other commitments, over the last ten days has prevented me from attending to their needs but the cool temperatures and heavy rain have kept the bees quiet. Capital in the form of stored food is being accumulated for the winter and they don’t squander it on anything, they only use income for expanding their brood nest and building new comb.
 
There have been a couple of strange developments though: one colony that I was about to give up for dead has magicked up a pair of beautiful queen cells, one of the queens should emerge in the next week; it is, however behaving so weirdly that I will not count my chickens. In another colony that had a swarm control procedure carried out on the last visit, the queen has squeezed through the bars of the queen excluder and has filled a honey box up with drone brood so I will have to go through the operation again once it has settled down. Neither of these problems is mentioned in any of the text books but then, as is often pointed out, What’ds the point? The bees don’t read them anyway.
 
Later in the evening, Mrs TD noticed me going out into the garden armed with camera and tripod and commented, “Ah! It must be Flower Friday again.” She’s obviously getting used to the Blipping routine. Today’s flower is a decrepit aquilegia, there must be a dozen different varieties in our garden; perhaps it will qualify for derelict Sunday as well.

Thanks are due to BikerBear for hosting Flower Friday and to Serpentine for Derelict Sunday.