Bees and Books

The bee news isn't so good. One of my hives seems to be queenless. It was a strong colony, too. I'm hoping the queen is still there but has packed up laying because the foul weather stops the bees flying. Has any one else had this problem? Meantime I've taken a frame with uncapped brood from another hive and put it into the seemingly queenless one. In theory the workers are meant to make a new queen from the uncapped brood, and I've known it work in the past, but seldom. An e-mail has come round from OBKA saying there's a lot of robbing going on because food is short, so I've put on mouse-guards with entries restricted to three or four holes.
One or two upcoming book events: on 12 September I'm introducing Roger McGough at the Woodstock Festival and on the Friday (14th) having a discussion with two bee-keeping authors. On 22 September I'm doing an event with Claire Tomalin about her Dickens book at the Budleigh Salterton Festival, and on  6 October I'll be talking to Michael Frayn at the Cheltenham Festival about his new novel Skios and how it fits in with the philosophical themes in The Human Touch - at least, I think that's the way the discussion will go.