Transition Town Dorchester has been struggling with the hot weather lately, as the grass and the dock have continued to grow apace, but it has been too hot to do much scything.

However, we have met in the evenings several times, when after the glare of the day, the light is soft and golden and the smells rich and earthy.

We are still hoping to get the polytunnel built this summer but first we have to make sure the area where it will stand is level.

This is clearly not something which we can do ourselves, much as some of our members would relish driving a digger, so we have applied for grants so that we can pay someone to do this.

We have been keeping an eye on our bees. One hive is bursting with honey – we have already put two extra boxes (supers) on the top to accommodate the amount of honey they are producing and will soon put another one on, and then later we will decide how much we can harvest. We are hoping that they are so busy producing honey that they won’t swarm this year.

Over the winter, we cleaned up three empty hives and placed them invitingly under the apple trees, so that we were prepared in case of a swarm. One dirty hive was left, and ironically, a swarm rejected the lovely clean hives and has taken possession of the dirty one. They clearly like something that smells of home! It was heaving with wax moth larvae, but the bees had cleaned up a few frames on one side and we have cleaned up the other side as best we can.

If you would like to join us for our weekend workdays at our community spaces, email info@transitiontowndorchester.org

KATE FORRESTER

TRANSITION TOWN DORCHESTER