I’m not quite sure where that week went. If you look at my camera roll, it would appear I spent it watching dogs and trying not to be too envious of holidaymakers.
But today I know what we did, namely:
✓ checked on the fledgling hive
✓ replaced the temporary gate from barnyard to front paddock because it was no longer operating as a gate
✓ fashioned the Cool Cats Hideout – a job bumped up the list by our cat-fixated house guest
Whether the colony survives the winter or the cats make use of their new digs is now out of our hands but I know for sure that gate is going to make life a whole lot easier. The time saved by the absence of my daily that-bloody-gate tantrums alone makes it well worth our efforts.
Union Homestead 
I think there is a certain smugness which accompanies having your honey produced on site by tireless bees. Good luck with keeping them going over winter. My brother provides supplementary feeding for his bees when flowers/nectar are scarce.
That’s one of the things we were sorting, but it’s a very new colony that decided to move into the hive quite recently so anything could happen
Have you had a bee hive before this?
Yes, several times, our last colony lasted three seasons. This is a wild swarm but seem very laid back (no need for a suit!) and are disease-free. Of course, they could just as easily decide to move on. Fingers crossed….
I hope that your colony survives. Good gate wrangling.
The gate was such an easy fix it embarrasses me it took me so long to sort
My son-in-laws bees seem to have survived our non-winter just fine…although he is worried about mites now because of the non-winter. Can’t win. There does come a point where functionality cannot be achieved even with duct tape and binder twine, and sounds like you hit that wall with the gate. I’d be envious of the holiday makers too…except I don’t like hot weather anymore, autumn and spring are my kind of temperatures.
The gate was no longer “gating” despite renailing and binder twine wrapping. I’d taken to going the long way round to avoid having to reassemble it at each passing. I take the back seat in bee keeping; there’s just so many things to keep an eye on!