Ha! Then you are the kind gentleman who donated stock to the Claverhouse Group last year. I should be grateful that your stock has a tendency to be swarmy as Forida and Wendy in their first year had more swarms and casts than boxes to receive them, so I made good some of my losses from the 2009-10 winter with bees ultimately from you. They are noticeably more swarmy than bees I've had before.

I should get my head around the Snelgrove system sometime (Forida did try to teach me - it was lovely to see the tutee become the teacher) but for now I have enough to learn about Apideas and grafting. We were given a donation of two Smith Snelgrove boards by Marsh Croall for the association apiary so we'll probably have a go with them next year.

The Amm-looking stock we bought recently was in double brood boxes and made it into June with no queen cells. That's my kind of bee! One of the pair didn't mind being inspected in the rain. I'm not sure about the early season build-up yet - we'll see that next year.

Gavin