Tha Mark

I hope you never fell for the shell game - the sort of thing con artists were obliged to do to earn a living before the internet. Three shells or cups or containers; one pea; you see the pea go in the cup; the cups are shuffled; if you pick the one with the pea in it, you win. But you never win, because the operator is a genius at sleight of hand

Before we went on holiday, I organised a hive into three compartments - let's say top/middle/bottom. They were separated by two 'queen excluders' - grilles that have slots wide enough for worker bees but too narrow for queens. The top contained some queen cells; the middle was just a honey storage area; the bottom had a queen. I hoped the queen cells would hatch and create a new queen at the top, along with the old one at the bottom, sharing the same honey store and workers

I didn't make this up - it's a recognised procedure - and I've tried it a couple of times before but never successfully. "No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." (Samuel Beckett, at his bleakest and most acerbic). Today I've taken a second look at the outcome, just to confirm what I didn't believe first time. Top box: no queen; bottom box: no queen; middle box, the honey store into which no queen can gain entry: a lovely, plump, newly mated queen, laying enthusiasically. You win some, you lose some, but I have been conned

The poppy is growing in a garden path, over which I have spread limestone chippings to stop anything growing. The insect chose to be a photo-bomber, so its perfect position is pure fluke. I think it is a spotted thintail hoverfly, that I didn't spot until I'd taken the picture. As Beckett knew, even in our successes, the universe mocks us