Summer review

Podilia · 2024-11-13T18:50:31+0000

Many times wanted to write about my affairs but it's like to write a composition at school.
So, the season is over. Usually November is a gloomy month with gray sky. But a week ago the weather was fine, I walked in a valley where I live and made photos, some are here.

20 years ago when I was a kid it was so-called Little Clay Pond, with the yellowish soil and clear water. Kids liked to swim there, the pond never dried up in summer. Now it's full in spring but then water evaporates and sometimes in autumn it's dry completely. Now willows, shrubs and cane grow around the pond.

Today it was snowing in the morning but the temperature is positive. I still have fruits in the garden, persimmon, the first crop - four apples! My grand dad whose old apple tree you can see behind could not even dream of that.

pargyle · 2024-11-13T19:35:53+0000

Glad to hear you are OK Podilla ... your valley looks lovely - But climate change seems to be affecting you as it does for the rest of the world. Hope you had a good season with your bees, I often think about you when I see the dreadful news of the war situation over there. Keep safe, you know you have all our good wishes behind you.

Podilia · 2024-11-14T09:38:47+0000

As for honey the season was not good. There was a heat wave in July. The temperature reached unbelievable 40C when sunflower flow started. Sunflower likes hight temperatures, 30-33 is good, but it was too much even for sunflower. The bees worked in the morning and in the evening, not effectively. It was like an oven outdoor. The first part of summer was wet so the soil contained some moisture and the sunflower was alive. Somehow the bees filled the hives with honey, not bad for those conditions. I exctracted it during 10 days, living in a cabin at the apiary. Sometimes wild deers visited my location, pretty animals. I never lived in the wilderness so long.
The situation here is weird. People, I mean men, stay home if they don't have a special military ID. Since december 2023 there was a lot of discussions as "they" were preparing a new mobilisation law. Too much nerve wracking, depression, speculation etc. Media exploited that issue, for example the possible punishment for draft dodgers. I think they all must pay for their stupidity which impacted mental health of the entire population. The law was voted in May, so during those months "they" were eating our nerves (I don't know whether you use this idiom in English

). Since then men have been staying at home. If you leave home you have high chances to be detained by the police (black uniform) or by the special military staff (green uniform). Those men having uniform, guns, high wage and social care given by the government, are hunting so-called civilian draft dodgers. It's like a weird version of Hunger Games or something like this.
For this reason I lived in a cabin sometimes because couldn't travel back and forth every day. Actually the work with the bees was minimazed as much as possible. Only God knows how many swarms left my apiary this summer. However, I managed to catch some of them and even presented 4 swarms for other people who decided the bees were something they needed very much.

...

pargyle · 2024-11-14T13:52:29+0000

Goodness Podilla, we have no idea about what you must be going through over there. I find my bees and looking after them is a welcome relief to the stress of modern life and hopefully your bees have the same effect on you. We hear a lot about the Russians targetting your power supplies - as winter encroaches do you have heat and power ?

Podilia · 2024-11-14T17:16:36+0000

pargyle said:
Goodness Podilla, we have no idea about what you must be going through over there. I find my bees and looking after them is a welcome relief to the stress of modern life and hopefully your bees have the same effect on you. We hear a lot about the Russians targetting your power supplies - as winter encroaches do you have heat and power ?

Sure, the same effect, nature itself gives that relief.
The last my visit of the apiary was in October 22. Varroa treatment and fast observation. The colonies have enough honey which they harvested in dry conditions of August and September. This harvest was provided by late buckwheat, very useful plant. Almost all colonies have one full store (half dadant frame) and some honey in the brood chamber (dadant frame) which I didn't examine. Never use this winter scheme, preferring one brood box filled with honey. In peaceful life I'd probably extracted something from the stores.

Electricity outage was very severe in May-July when one of the nuclear power plants was beyond repair. A few hours of electricity per day. Russi have broken all coal stations and hydroelectric stations which provided peak load operations. Now peak load is covered by European sources while nuclear stations operate in the basic generation. That nuclear station was repaired in August, so now electricity is avaliable for people but some restrictions have been put on businesses.
For heat we use natural gas, it's ok yet, it's more affordable than electricity.
Now Russi don't target energy - either no reason because everything is broken or maybe some unofficial agreements considering attacks on russian oil plants. They have changed tactics: swarms of drones, some of them are false targets, and several missiles. This is almost every day and night, mostly above big cities where they destroy residential buildings and kill civilians. Obviously, this terrorism Russi-Pussi use to make the pressure at our politicians. For example they killed a mother and three kids two days ago - the effect is more profound, isn't it?
Many times I watched the attacks at summer nights. Sometimes it's spectacular, when the crews of "hunters" - mobile groups - use a searchlight and machine guns against drones. Sometimes the air defence have to use very expensive foreign missiles against that cheap trash. Seems like instead of eliminating the source of the disaster they are fighting consequences because... this is politics.
...