The day began with me walking back across town after dropping of my work car for a service..I could hear the wind very high up whistling like you hear again if you’re on the coast - that high pitched whooshing of air moving fast in the upper atmosphere yet almost nothing at ground level.
By the time I got home it was raining but with blue skies suggesting the water was being carried miles horizontally from the actual rain source before hitting the earth.
I worked from home all day - bottling honey, levelling, keeping an eye on the garden which was getting a battering.
I also lashed down a tarpaulin that had come loose on a vehicle parked up which took some doing on my own.
Today I headed out to all the apiaries to survey the damage. To be honest, it was worse than I expected in two apiaries that had whole hives knocked flying, but they were very exposed. Poly hives were by far more the casualties than cedar ones, although a few stacks of cedar supers got hit.
At one site, I lost two poly roofs - they had been held in place by some large bricks. The roofs were nowhere to be seen, so I called the estate owner and said to keep an eye out for them on his travels but not to worry too much as they were probably in Norway by now.
This evening I had a positive text from the old fella saying he’d spotted and retrieved them from his parkland a mile away from the hives and had them for me to collect another day.
In many apiaries I was surprised by the amount of water that had fallen - the ground was well saturated.
The wind picked up again this afternoon but all is quiet now. Tomorrow it’s meant to get to 40 mph but that’s well down on the 80mph+ recorded locally.
Even though the hives were on their side the bees seemed none the worse …. Hopefully we won’t see another storm like this for a while.
Oh, as I travelled around I counted 9 trees on their sides, two fences flattened, one bus stop sign on its side but no visible building damage. I think we were lucky up these parts.
KR
Somerford
By the time I got home it was raining but with blue skies suggesting the water was being carried miles horizontally from the actual rain source before hitting the earth.
I worked from home all day - bottling honey, levelling, keeping an eye on the garden which was getting a battering.
I also lashed down a tarpaulin that had come loose on a vehicle parked up which took some doing on my own.
Today I headed out to all the apiaries to survey the damage. To be honest, it was worse than I expected in two apiaries that had whole hives knocked flying, but they were very exposed. Poly hives were by far more the casualties than cedar ones, although a few stacks of cedar supers got hit.
At one site, I lost two poly roofs - they had been held in place by some large bricks. The roofs were nowhere to be seen, so I called the estate owner and said to keep an eye out for them on his travels but not to worry too much as they were probably in Norway by now.
This evening I had a positive text from the old fella saying he’d spotted and retrieved them from his parkland a mile away from the hives and had them for me to collect another day.
In many apiaries I was surprised by the amount of water that had fallen - the ground was well saturated.
The wind picked up again this afternoon but all is quiet now. Tomorrow it’s meant to get to 40 mph but that’s well down on the 80mph+ recorded locally.
Even though the hives were on their side the bees seemed none the worse …. Hopefully we won’t see another storm like this for a while.
Oh, as I travelled around I counted 9 trees on their sides, two fences flattened, one bus stop sign on its side but no visible building damage. I think we were lucky up these parts.
KR
Somerford
