Hi, I’m Stewart Spinks and welcome to Episode 71 of my podcast, Beekeeping Short and Sweet. The queen rearing is in full swing and I need to create more finisher colonies, stay tuned for more queen rearing chat and simple details of how to unite two colonies.

More rain, thunder and lightning this past week, the night skies were lit up brightly overnight midweek and we had some very short sharp torrential rainfall. Being Summer, it tired up very quickly and by the following morning the roads were dry and you would know it had rained at all. The bees on the field beans have done their work and it’s time to get them moved to take advantage of the Summer flow from Blackberries, Limes and Sweet Chestnut but as I was getting prepared for that I ran into a problem.

I’ve had to have another costly job fixed on the Ranger. My Ford Ranger pick up has been a real workhorse for me this past year but I guess it’s at the age now where parts and components start to wear out and need replacing. I noticed a bit of a strange metallic grinding sound when I was at the field beans last week and figured something was going wrong, remember I’m not very mechanically minded but it was obvious something was not working as it should. It only happened when I turned the steering wheel when I was in four by four so I ended up crawling under the front of the truck in my bee suit and discovered that the black rubber sleeve things near the front wheels on both sides had split all the way around and you could see all the workings inside, a bit like when you watch a hospital operation on someone's joints and you can see all the tendons and sinews. Anyway, probably too descriptive there but this is an audio podcast after all. I always find these things tend to get worse if I don’t sort them immediately and this did seem quite serious, balls joints and things exposed to the elements and me driving across muddy fields wasn’t going to help. I booked a slot at my local garage, I say local, it’s about five miles away but I’ve always taken my vehicles to this particular garage and like any of these types of jobs you need to be able to trust the people who do the work. So, my thanks to the Spixworth MOT bay team who have taken care of my vehicles over the years. So, back to the story, apparently, these black rubber sleeves are called CV joint gaiters and cover the joints that connect the wheel to the other more technical bits, Sprout, the mechanic who looked at it for me did one of those long but sharp, intake of breath things and then tutted a few times. I’m not sure why they call him Sprout, he’s a little older than me I would guess so 55-60 and I think he’s stopped growing so that can’t be it. Maybe he likes Brussel sprouts, I’ll have to ask next time I go over.

Anyway, after a quick consultation, the truck was booked in and the job completed on Tuesday this week. Another dent to the bank balance but it’s not a job I could do myself, changing the light bulbs seems a challenge to me at the best of times. Once sorted the various metallic grinding noises were gone and everything is once again protected. Sprout said the noise was because the grease had been washed out of the joint which made sense.

Anyway, the reason for recounting the story is just to say when these things crop up they are not likely to go away on their own so it’s always best to get it sorted as soon as possible even though I could have done without the expense.

Talking of expense you might recall I was trying to get hold of a reptile incubator to incubate my sealed queen cells, well, one popped up on eBay and I managed to negotiate a decent price so that’s arriving this week and is quite exciting.

It’s one of the reasons I’ve been chasing around trying to get prepared with the finisher colonies. It’s all been kicking off again this week, normal for this time of year and with so