The winter of 1962/3

[sipa]

We were out collecting sloes today, what an abundant crop. I was struck by the amount of holly berries, rose hips, elderberry, hawthorn laden with fruit.

I remember the winter of 1962/3 as a boy spending Christmas in rural Dorset.

As it turned out that Christmas holiday was extended by 8 weeks as no trains were running up to London where I was at school because of the terrible snow.

One day walking through a wood with my father, everything was still and quiet, not a sound to be heard, everything was white except for what I thought were a few scattered leaves.
As it turned out, what I thought were leaves were actually dead birds of every kind scattered throughout the wood. You see, there was no food for them or water that wasn't frozen.

Does anyone know what happened to the bees that winter, I fear we may be due a winter of similar consequence this year.

 

[B+.]

We were out collecting sloes today, what an abundant crop.

Isn't it too early for sloes? I thought that they had to get a frost on them (or do you simulate that in the freezer?)

 

[sipa]

There were a lot that were ripe, but they will go in the freezer anyway.

 

[madasafish]

I remember that winter living in NE Scotland. Our house was cut off from the main road by 3 meter high snowdrifts and was not cleared for month iirc.. We were living in a house with no c/h - as normal then - and linoleum on the bedroom floors. Aluminium hot water bottles and ice on the inside of the windows...

The local river froze..

"I fear we may be due a winter of similar consequence this year." El Nino effect I assume..?

 

[Erichalfbee]

Precious little here; a few Haws, Blackberries the poorest ever seen, no Sloes or Elderberries at all.
Rowan berries were plentiful but the blackbirds and crows went with those long ago. There are plenty of holly berries to come.

I fear we may be due a winter of similar consequence this year.
Are the berries simply a consequence of your obviously ideal spring?
Last year all our trees were groaning with fruit and we had a very mild winter to follow

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Isn't it too early for sloes? I thought that they had to get a frost on them (or do you simulate that in the freezer?)

I think the frost thing gets confused with the old countryman's way of telling the changes in the season - they didn't use calendars much in them days - the sloes don't need frost and if we had waited for the first frosts last year we'd have been searching for sloes in February!

 

[B+.]

I think the frost thing gets confused with the old countryman's way of telling the changes in the season

So....we should get out and fill the freezer before the birds eat them all?

 

[Swarm]

Waiting for a chance to pick them, plenty here and blackberries were a good crop too.

 

[For want of a better word]

I remember the allotment bees survived... my grandfather would have given them a bag of caster sugar soaked in water on top of the quilt.. in a WBC hive.

I remember the milk freezing on the doorstep and having to go up to the dairy (UD) with a sledge to get the milk.. the greengrocer ran out of spuds, but we did have sprouts in abundance.

The breadman's horse and dray got stuck coming up Butter Hill..... the backstreets were impassible to all but the heaviest of lorries... my school closed due to lack of coal.

Hackbridge... Surrey


Yeghes da

 

[Hivemaker.]

Completely snowed in and cut off during that winter, the helicopters from RAF Chivenor were kept busy for over two months with various missions, like dropping in food, ect.

And bees....

The Anatolians seem superior to all other races as far as wintering goes, and in the cold winter of 1962/63 the coldest in the south west of England since 1750, he wintered nuclei of pure central Anatolian bees, up in the middle of Dartmoor, in nucs with only four combs with complete success,a feat which seemed scarcely possible.

 

[mintmoth]

I remember that winter the local pool (all 38 acres of it) froze so solid that people came from all around to skate and walk and sledge on it, until long after the snow had gone

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

So....we should get out and fill the freezer before the birds eat them all?

Yup - usually pick mine when the hunting starts in earnest - at the end of the fishing season (Beginning of October) got some good spots in Myddfai and Bethlehem - I may make a little this year to top up - down to my last few gallons now.

 

[Bryang]

I remember it well, was stationed at RAF locking W.S.M. Made it back to WSM after Xmas leave,(by train) and then had to walk through deep drifts up to camp, only approx. 2 miles but it took us 2 hours. There was ice flows on WSM beach. Later when thaw set in there was ribbon of dead fish on the tide line, among them some very large conger eels, some 6ft plus. The autumn of 62 produced a huge crop of cider apples, and I made a good bit of "readies" helping to pick them. Happy Memories!

 

[nantmoel]

Isn't it too early for sloes? I thought that they had to get a frost on them (or do you simulate that in the freezer?)

They are better with a frost on them but I pick them and pop them in the freezer

 

[B+.]

Yup - usually pick mine when the hunting starts in earnest - at the end of the fishing season (Beginning of October) got some good spots in Myddfai and Bethlehem - I may make a little this year to top up - down to my last few gallons now.

For some strange reason, people don't seem to pick them around here. I just pick them around my apiaries while I'm tidying up. There are usually lots of them

 

[Michael Palmer]

and ice on the inside of the windows...

Before insulated glass in the windows, we had ice on the inside of our windows every winter. We'd stick copper pennies to the ice on the windows. As the ice started to form on the bottom of the glass, we'd stick a penny. That was a one penny night. As the frost rose on the glass we'd stick another and another. A five penny night was truly frigid. When the temperature rose next day, the frost would melt, and the pennies would fall.

 

[Finman]

.
I do not remember that Winter. Perhaps we stole dynamite from highway work depots and we blowed them here and there. I was 15. First Winter as beekeeper and two hives, a Longhive and a skep.
The bee race was Local Black Devil. Nothing native.

.
.

 

[Erichalfbee]

It was the first winter I can remember there was snow on my birthday in early January. My father opened the front door to be met with a wall of snow top to bottom. We lived on a noisy council estate but there wasn't a sound to be heard.
School still opened on time and everybody walked there.
No central heating either. Mum used to light the gas oven in the cooker and open the door to heat the kitchen so that sister and I could get washed and dressed in the morning.

 

[stilllearning]

Dad had around 20 hives that year lost nearly all of them and what was left wasn't much good , mainly lost probably through suffocation as they were covered in snow and as fast as you dug them out it filled back in (I suspect the cold had something to do with it as well)got some nice pictures ...........on slides!!!
This year is going to be terrible.........it says it on Facebook so it must be true!!

 

[bontbee]

Before my time!