Bees and Books

The bee news is mixed. one of my three hives failed to survive the winter. the queen must have died in the horrible pre-Christmas freeze. On the other hand the hive that had the little late swarm has boomed and is now bursting with bees and working hard. I just extracted a super of honey (the oilseed rape has been in flower for three weeks here - which is three weeks earlier than last year when it flowered on 1 May) and there are two more supers filling. The third hive has been slower starting - I think they have concentrated on filling their spare store-space in the brood chamber. But they are now filling their first super. With luck my queenless hive may attract an early swarm. Hope so. Ali's national hive next door to mine is going great guns. She extracted a super yesterday. There's a cold north-east wind, which the bees hate, so they're not in a very good mood.
This week I go up to Glasgow for a one-day conference at the Glasgow School of Art on Thursday (5 May) which will be looking at questions raised in my book What Good Are The Arts? A bit daunting.