It has been another very warm week and last weekend the excessive heat brought a surprise we hadn't anticipated at all. Apparently a colony of honey bees has been happily living in his church roof and on Friday they started to come out of their overheated home. At first we thought they would swarm but an expert told us they were 'bearding'. According to Google, this is when some of the bees leave the colony and cluster around the entrance in the shape of a beard, to help regulate the temperature and improve ventilation. It is normal bee behaviour and ususally caused by very high temperatures. He confirmed they were honey bees.
After some searchying we found the entrance very high up around an old slightly loose brick, so some bees were flying around that.
But many others had found a way out, indoors. Two windows, very high up in the church were covered in bees frantically running around and flapping their wings in an attempt to cool down. Sadly quite a few died, either from natural old age or from heat exhaustion, and the aisles and pews were collecting them.
Being an old building in the style of old churches, the roof is almost unreachable as were the two windows, so there was little we could do. Having sought expert advice, it was decided to leave them in peace and let nature take it course, with a warning to everyone attending services to take care, not intentionally touch the fallen ones, and to make sure they carried their epi-pen if they were allergic to stings.
They will have to be rehomed as their honey could potentially damage the roof structure, but it will need scaffold to reach them, and experts to handle them. In the meantime we are hoping the slightly cooler weather may calm dowwn their activity. Jim made a poster to warn folk as they entered and used a pitcure of this little crocheted bee to catch people's attention.
We look on them as welcome visitors in the short term, after all "All God;s creatures are welcome in His house"!
And while on the subject of insects, here is such a pretty moth that I spotted in the garden yesterday.
I looked it up and discovered it is a Jersey Tiger Moth. Here is a Google photo of what it looks like with its wings open. It was the flash of bright red as it flew passed me that caught my eye, So I followed it until it settled but it didn't open its wings again until it flew away.
On Tuesday I decided I needed to stretch my legs so I walked to Meyow Road Park. I found it on google maps but didn't know what to expect. It turned out to be a lovely area, with wide expanses of grass where dogs romped together and chased balls etc, lots of different trees providing shade and well layed out foot paths. The air was filled with screeches that I knew came from parakeets, but I never spotted one resting to take a photo. They were however, flying between the trees and flashes of green were everywhere.
I was amused to find that as well as a children;s play area, there were well-used tennis coutrs, and croquet lawn. The croquet club members were busy setting up the hoops. I associate croquet with "Alice in Wonderland" and had no idea it was still a popular pass-time.
In an open area I saw this tree skeleton. It is sad when a tree dies but I guess it leaves space for the others to grow. I just loved the shape the dead branches make and took this photo of it. When I am back on my computer I will convert it into a line drawing and make an svg of it. Then I can use it as the background on a scrapbook page etc.
On a differnt note, yesterday I spent the morning in the kitchen making a family-size lasangne. Normally this would have been portioned up and frozen for future meals, but there are eight of us living here so it was all gone by bedtime.
So now I will link with Annie's Friday Smiles and hopefully visit you all tomorrow. But next week I will not be posting as we are returning to Oswestry to have another look around the house we hope buy, and have a quick word with the man who is doing the structural survey on Friday. I will not have my tablet with me as we are travelling 'light', but I will still try to visit you all.
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