There was only four mm in the gauge this morning which was a bit disappointing. But so far today there has been another 11 mm, and apparently more to come. Good thing too - I had started bailing out the shower cubicle for handwatering the garden which was getting onerous.

I darted out in the rain and brought in some dry and not so dry wood to cut up and lit the fire and have been keeping close to it all day. The break in proceedings was to build a pair of bee-ramps for the fronts of the hives. Basically just a sloping landing board to go in front of the horizontal landing board to help them find their way home.

The three books from the library were of varying quality, but one was great - so much so I have decided to get in touch with Petrarchs and have them order it in for me, so I can use the book voucher my sister gave me for Christmas. The book is called A practical Manual of Beekeeping by David Cramp. I hated it at first as he starts of with this Americanised 'you can rule the world and make billions' line of hard sell which I hate. But he gets that out of his system early on and then lapses into a more anecdotal style which is pleasantly self-deprecating, but confident nevertheless.

It has all the recipes for things like pollen cake and so forth that you need to be able to make up for your bees to get them through the harder weather. And since this has been a cool summer and I have one very weak (if not completely moribund) hive, I am going to need some supplementary feeding if anyone is still alive in there. Will chase Graham up to see when we can next take a peek inside. Since I still don't have a smoker I am unhappily dependant on his good will. Hope he has bought one for me from that chap who was clearing out his stock. If not, I will need to get one pretty darn soon so I can be a bit more independent.