David Evans makes a number of good points - especially about vehicle crashes.

Here in the UK Midlands we are just seeing the first fine weather this year - up to 18ºC today - and bees bringing in large amounts of pollen.  But everything is surreal.  The roads are empty.  The weather has changed from record high rainfall in February to no significant rain for 16 days - and no rain in the forecast for the foreseeable future!  Talking to a farmer today where I have bees, it was incredible how dispirited he was - soil in poor condition and no idea whether seeds that he is sowing now will ever produce a crop.  Other farmers wonder whether there will be any labour available to pick crops, even high value ones like asparagus.

We are doing our first 'proper' rounds of our bees - rearranging hives and putting on enough supers to cover a couple of months (assuming the weather co-operates); we do not know what the future holds, so can only do what we think will buy time.  Winter losses seem relatively OK, with most being down to queen failure due to the poor weather last year when new queens were mating.

As for driving, we do that slowly and carefully, taking zero risks (not much change there!); most of the few vehicles that we see on the roads seem to be doing the same, although a motorbike screamed past at probably 100mph as we were coming home - obviously the empty roads and almost complete absence of police is just too tempting for the brainless!

Honey sales are high with the shops that remain open (like farm shops) so we continue to deliver, usually leaving it outside the door so that they can come out and take it in; of course, all the tourist outlets are closed so quite a loss of trade there.  It is good that honey has a very long storage life!

Best wishes

Peter 
52°14'44.44"N, 1°50'35"W

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