Time to get a hive! It's only very slightly addictive, honestly. (My friends have stopped asking me about bees...)

We get free use of a spot next to an apple orchard, so I guess pollination is our "rent", plus some honey. I don't know what arrangement commercial beekeepers have - near us they move 60+ hives in when the oilseed rape (canola) is flowering, then move them again when it's finished. A guy I was talking to said they reckon they can break even with 300 hives, because one person can deal with that many. More than that they have to employ someone else, and bang go the profits. Sounds like a nightmare. I struggle to cope with 7 hives!

No, you're helping all the other pollinators too! Keep a corner of your garden nice and rough, with tumbled bricks or rocks, twigs, dead leaves etc to make a wee nesting spot for bumblebees.

Councils are constantly cutting down trees. https://inews.co.uk/news/trees-felled-uk-councils-10-years-3229184?ito=link_share_article-top

Lol, I was the computer genius in my office job because I knew how to change the paper size on the printer from Letter to A4. Soak up the praise!

That's a swarm - get in touch with your local beekeepers group/organisation and someone will probably come and collect it.

Otherwise don't fret, the bees will do their thing. Scout bees will leave the swarm and look for a new home for the colony (the queen plus a third to a half of the original hive). They report back with details, and a collective decision is made on the best choice. The swarm will then leave. (Honeybee Democracy https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691147215/honeybee-democracy is a good read on this.)

Back home the rest of the colony have a new queen pupating. She'll eventually hatch out, go on a mating flight, and come back to start laying eggs.

People praise me up for "saving the bees". Honey bees don't need saving. It's the other bees that do, the hundreds of species of bumblebees, mining bees, solitary bees etc etc. Bees that are outcompeted in some areas due to the number of hobbyist beekeepers and commercial bee farms. I'm one of the baddies.

Scots is full of wonderful words - glaiket, baffies, birl, coorie - it's hard to pick a favourite. But I'll go for "thrawn" - it's a kind of perverse stubbornness, a grim grip on a point of view.

I vote for your comics to stay here. Not to my taste exactly, but variety is a good thing, and I do appreciate your art. I probably wouldn't subscribe to a separate community though. Stay!

#WhenTaken #501 (12.07.2025)

I scored 737/1000🎗️

1️⃣📍3.0 km - 🗓️2 yrs - 🥇198/200

2️⃣📍20.9 km - 🗓️0 yrs - 🥇199/200

3️⃣📍1.0 km - 🗓️10 yrs - 🥇185/200

4️⃣📍6.5K km - 🗓️18 yrs - 🥉75/200

5️⃣📍6.0K km - 🗓️17 yrs - 🥉80/200

https://whentaken.com/

I heard some of those NI rioters being interviewed the last time this sort of thing kicked off, and they were going "There's too many immigrants! But the Polish family next door are ok, decent people, and the Khans across the road too..." The people they were talking about had to board up their windows and barricade the door. How can you keep both those ideas in your head?

I had a lady in Cairo working my breasts like she was taking the lids off jars. Hornk hornk hornk. All behind a curtain so my modesty was protected.

I visited the cockpit once on an international flight. JAL Tokyo-London. Just asked if I could, and sure of course.

Me too -- oh no! 🫢😬😭

No, I'm a beekeeper, and did a course in microscopy earlier this year. I make slides of pollen and bits of bee. I have another microscope for dissecting bees. It is beyond thrilling to have my own wee lab, with bottles of chemicals and petrie dishes and dissecting tools.

I bought a new fridge freezer recently. It was tricky because of limited width, but I'm happy with the Bosch I chose (it was on special). Freezer's at the bottom, with drawers, which I've grown to appreciate. I was also dubious about the bigger veggie drawer, but actually it's great.

I use a usb mug warmer to heat microscope slides.

Cheap cat food. She turned her back on it, made scratching motions as if burying shit, gave me a "look" and stalked away.

Meanwhile in Scotland, I stepped into my garden for five minutes this evening and now have at least five midge bites on my face.

I'm still eating blackcurrant jam I made in 2013. I use jars whose lids have the pop-up seals. Pour hot jam into hot jars, screw on the lid and the little thingie in the middle should pop down as it cools, showing it's sealed. When you open the jar it pops up again, to show the seal is broken. Just about all my jars come from a particular brand of pitted kalamata olives I'm partial to. Perfect size for jam.

When I was a child mum sealed the jars of jam with a disc of cellophane that had been dampened in vinegar, fastened with a rubber band. Pretty good seal actually, it tightened as the jam cooled. But if the jam went mouldy we'd just scrape the mould off - no big deal.