Hi, I’m Stewart Spinks and welcome to Episode 83 of my podcast, Beekeeping Short and Sweet, and this week I’m returning to the topic of Sugar Syrup and the various types available out there if you choose not to make your own and I’ve also been continuing the apiary clean up at the fishing lakes.

The distractions continue and caused quite a disruption to my planned workload over the weekend. Late last Wednesday I finished tweaking the podcast, yes, I do in fact attempt to polish it by editing and adjusting it, anyway, I scheduled the podcast for release to my Patreon page for Friday and then jumped in the truck to head out to move a couple of beehives from the fishing lakes apiary so I could continue cleaning out the brambles, and again the truck let me down, this time as I turned the key to start up all I got in return was a very loud, fast clicking sounds like those clacking toys I remember from way back, you know the ones, two plastic balls dangling from a handle each attached to a piece of cord. The idea being you shake them violently and they hit each other bouncing back and forth making a kind of castanet type noise only most of the time they would smash you on the back of the hand, anyway, that’s the noise I was hearing from my engine. A little research initially had me thinking it was going to be an expensive starter motor replacement but eventually it turned out to be an almost flat battery. The only problem was that the research had taken a while and after a couple of days of tinkering and cursing I finally gave up and called in my brother who fairly quickly got to the issue. I don’t know why the battery had failed, it’s never happened before but it seemed I needed a new battery. I popped down to our local battery specialist store, a place called Multicell, I’d called earlier in the day to make sure they had the right battery in stock and when I visited spoke to the same guy that I’d chatted to on the phone. He offered to test the battery for me rather than simply swap it out as a new battery was going to cost over a hundred pounds.

He used a really neat, handheld computer gadget which tested the voltage and capacity of the battery and discovered that all I needed to do was give the battery a good charge and he said it would be fine. It’s always nice to find a company that isn’t just out to sell you kit that you don’t necessarily need, I’ve used Multicell before, they supplied me with the battery for my ProVap Oxalic Acid sublimator and were really helpful with that as well.

Back home, I used the same battery charger I use on the ProVap cell and left it overnight to charge and all now appears to be sorted. It does leave me feeling slightly nervous each time I get in the truck to start it but so far, touch wood, it’s been fine. I think I might get a cheaper version of the tester that he used so I can keep an eye on the capacity of the battery every week or two, just until I feel confident with it again.

All of this meant the recording schedule went out of the window too, and my aim of swapping out all of the floors in the apiaries is a long way off. The very good news is that Tony, the fisheries manager at the lakes apiary has very kindly taken his brush cutting tractor through the Number one apiary and finished in forty minutes what would have taken me at least a day to do. I’ll probably have posted some pictures on my Patreon page by the time the podcast is released so do take a look there at what has been happening.

Unfortunately, my back problem has reappeared,  some of you will know I suffered two prolapsed discs a few years ago, I’m 6’3” tall and have always struggled with backaches but the prolapsed discs were another level up. It’s meant that every year or so I seem to have a couple of weeks of stiffness and pain which once rested seems fine again and the Doctor said, once you have a wea

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