Bees, ducks and knitting

I woke up in the small hours thinking about my bees and my friend's bees accompanied by a whole load of obscure geological and evolutionary terminology going through my head. So, after reading my Beekeeper's Field Guide and listening to a podcast about geo-engineering (scary) I managed to fall asleep. But, I did wake up early remembering that the bee colony by my front door doesn't have a queen so I donned bee suit and nipped out before they woke up and popped one of the queen-right hives on top with some newspaper for them to chew through:

I had thought, because it was really misty and only about 7 o'clock, that most of the bees would still be inside the brood box but there's nothing like uniting two colonies to make you realise just how many foraging bees you have just made homeless. So for the rest of the glorious day, the garden had rather confused bees roaming around trying to find their chums. However, I had chosen today as the weather was so good and there is still plenty of balsam around, so those workers returning back were welcomed by the occupants of the hive nextdoor as bees are a bit fickle and for all their defensive strategies are happy to wave in anyone with a crop full of nectar or brimming pollen baskets. There was quite a lot of looping the loop and general disorder:

They're all in bed now though and by tomorrow, the bees in the transferred hive will have munched through the newspaper and will be greeting their new hivemates without any fighting and hopefully I will have saved a colony from fizzling out. I had really expected them to make a new queen...

Anyway, since John the duck learned to jump out of the pen the other day, he helpfully showed his wife the technique so I came back from switching the hose off to find this:

Hmm. As I was going to be in the garden (dodging bees) I thought it would be ok to let them wander for a bit and with much trepidation and reassuring quacks to each other, visited the various areas of the garden:

Maud still picks on them a bit so I had to referee at one point but Mary (who has an unpleasantly violent attitude towards the minority) was shut in so it was fairly safe:

She wasn't very impressed though...I hope she doesn't pass on her xenophobic attitude to her chicks.

I have decided to enjoy the lovely weather as much as possible so the house is a bit of a pigsty, but if I avert my gaze I can get from the back door to my bedroom without too much guilt. I have finished the ribbing of Tristan's hat; it's quite an intriguing mixture of knit and purl even for me but I'm on to the Fairisle bit now! :-) Should be fun!

Two balls of wool at once plus counting and following a pattern...I can see me getting in a pickle. When I took in all my knitting, iPad, radio, teacups etc etc from the garden I did unearth my textbooks that I had brought out this morning in a fit of optimism after my head full of Bølling-Allerød interstadials and Hardy-Weinberg Equilibriums in the middle of the night. I did unwittingly sleep with The Cretaceous World next to me in bed after falling asleep whilst reading it (honestly, what am I like??) - perhaps its information tapped into my subconcious.....well, I live in hope!