Goose Fair Weather.

Every year in Nottingham we have the Goose Fair. This dates back 700 years and is regarded as one of the most prestigious fairs in the country. Originally it was where folk went to sell and buy geese for the Christmas table. Now it is a fair of rides and candy floss and excess where teenagers reeking of cheap perfume and excess hormones go to consort in what can only be described as Goose Fair Weather.

It matters not what went before or what comes after but the first weekend in October will always be damp. It may be mist, it may be drizzle it may be torrential pouring rain resulting in flash floods and knee deep mud but the one thing you can guarantee is that you will return from Goose Fair wetter than when you went out.

It's actually fairly warm at 17 degrees but the damp seeps into your bones and the bees are finding the same. They're busy but the lack of sunshine means that what flowers are out are perhaps not producing as much nectar and pollen as they would like. The temperature is also fairly constant through the day and the night. It's muggy and a a little warm. This means the bees are having to work very hard to keep the hive at a constant comfortable temperature. 

In the evening when we go out to feed them there are serried ranks of them standing on the entrance platform facing in desperately using their wings to ventilate the hive. I have not seen but am told that one lot stand outside pointing in and another lot stand inside pointing out and this helps to regulate the temperature. There is another issue of course and that is damp. The colony produce moisture through their own metabolic processes but so does the nectar and sugar syrup which they then need to reduce so that it stays in the wax cells. Damp is more of a killer than cold and promotes disease in the hive. I may need to call upon my mentor Alex as I'm a little worried that the 18 odd litres of sugar syrup that have disappeared into the hive may be causing damp that in the current climate they are unable to dispel. As I did not put the hive together I don't know whether we have a mesh bottom and if we don't, ventilation becomes an issue.

When we went out to check on the girls last night the feeder was again empty. We were a lot steadier in pouring the syrup so there were no unfortunate losses this time. Its astonishing how upsetting it is to know you squished or drowned a bee.

Now I need to decide whether or not to subject myself to goose fair this weekend.

Enjoy the day

Katherine xxx