Bees and Books

The bee news has got better. There has been some rain (not much, but enough to make a difference) in the last two weeks and it seems to have got the nectar flowing, In the last week I have extracted 100 lbs of honey from my two hives and they are still going great guns despite the current dull and overcast weather. So what seemed a bad season is turning into a so-so one. Ali reckons she has got 75 lbs so far from her national hive and they are still piling it in. Pretty good for a beginner. Hers are rather fierce bees and she got stung on her ear through her bee hood last week so now wears a white woolly hat inside the hood for added protection.
Next Friday I shall be at Hay-on-Wye to do an event at the Book Festival with Judy Golding and Tobias Hill. I'll be talking about Golding from a boigrapher's angle, Tobias about Golding and the sea, and Judy about her memoir The Children of Lovers. In the evening (6.00) I'll be on a panel at the HowTheLightGetsIn philosophy festival, discussing utopias and dystopias with the environmental journalist Paul Kingsworth and the scientist Kevin Warwick.