Newbattle Bridge.

This afternoon I showed three tyro beekeepers the inside of a beehive. Our intake this year includes three schoolboys whose ages span the range twelve to seventeen(ish) and there are several other youngsters (under forty); it is great to see the more youthful members of society taking an interest as one of the problems the apiarian world is facing is that of the aging population of its members. The seventeen year old and his mother, who will be looking after the hive that I’ve been caring for this year were there and the third person was my protégé for the coming year; I couldn’t show them the queen as I can never find the blighter, but they saw eggs, larvae and sealed (pupating) brood as well as lots of friendly bees and about seventy pounds of honey. I didn’t say, but I’m not too keen on the honey, it’s nasty sticky stuff that spreads itself in an even layer over all of the kitchen surfaces when you extract it from the comb and, from there, gets walked into every carpet in the house. Raspberry jam is so much nicer and considerably easier to produce.

After that, I took Merlin for a walk around the woods in the Abbey grounds. On the way back I decided to blip the wooden bridge over the River Esk where I had the bonus of a Labrador retrieving sticks; he continued with his task until I thought I had enough pictures for my purpose.