Glance back through garden views of May over the years and you’ll find wonderful blue skies, a riot of flowers and an explosion of fresh tree foliage in a vast range of greens and olive hues.

Unless you check back on the views pages for February, March and April, you’d be unaware of what a dreadfully dull, wet and generally mild end of winter and start to spring we’ve had in 2024.

May began similarly with lowering grey skies, drizzly rain and wind. Not weather for picking up the camera. However, after what seems like ages we then had a fabulous, and not forecast, sun-filled day on the fourth, which saw me grabbing the camera and even sitting up in The Hut and writing some words for the first time in 3 months in ‘The Thought Box’.

Even better, I was up before sunrise around 5.40 am and repeated the climb up Longevity Hill, to take in the scenes and sounds on a glorious still morning. Before rain returned around midday. But heck, we don’t want to end up with sunburn, do we!

The honey bees finally had a chance to do some serious foraging in this short period and took advantage. But with very few drones visible yet – an indication of how far behind colony development is, compared with most years, at this time.

Mayday Bank Holiday was equally still, but we were back to grey mizzle first thing and the very odd experience, once more, of walking around the garden trying to record a few scenes with wonderful dawn chorus birdsong, almost completely devoid of any background sheep noise. This is both extraordinary and unique for us here. By now the hills are alive, not with the sound of music, but the sound of ‘lost’ lambs and ewes trying to relocate in the hill and valley fields which surround us and make up the natural amphitheatre.

I’m sure this is the start of a trend towards the gradual (sheep) depopulation around us which seems to be the current political aim and the consequent eventual (human) depopulation of many of the upland areas of rural Wales.

No matter, it provided a very still, if misty and damp May Bank Holiday morning.

The month continued in what I’d say was fairly average weather conditions for May with us – completely unlike 2023’s sunny, dry conditions which saw me watering incessantly to keep plants alive.

Yes, we’ve had rain, but enough sunshine to cheer us up, and although generally cool conditions, it’s suited our Rhododendrons and Azaleas, which have given us our best-ever displays.

It made us realise how fortunate we planted a range of cultivars with an extended flowering season and colour interest to take us beyond the end of May and into early June.

Around the middle of the month, on a slightly warmer day, scout bees suddenly began to appear around the 2 empty hives, which I’d minimally spruced up last month and ‘baited’ at the entrance with a smear of homemade bee attractant. Within a day it wasn’t just a few, but vast numbers – way over the quorum of 100, which is deemed to be the number at which a swarm cluster will be certain to choose this as an option. I staked the hive out for much of the afternoon.

No swarm moved in, though simultaneously some wonderful beards of honey bees literally ‘hung out’ for days on the front of our most vigorous colony. I was certain this heralded a swarm, since the weather changed within 48 hours to cool rain, and the bees didn’t retreat inside.

Within 36 hours, the bee numbers diminished at the Larch ‘hive’ and appeared in similar numbers and with similarly excited exploration at the other vacant box. Again nothing happened, though the presence of bees continued at both boxes right up until we left for a week’s holiday in Pembrokeshire from the 17th of May.

On our return, it was immediately evident that bee numbers had reduced dramatically from the ‘bearding colony’ – it must have swarmed – and a swarm had moved into the Larch trunk hive – evidenced by bees already carrying pollen into the hive entrance, and much more wax debris appearing on the landing board, a sure sign that cleaning up of the old comb was well underway.

Bees were still vigorously investigating the other empty box, but I was certain from their behaviour that no swarm had moved in.

The morning after our return was a lovely still, sunshine and clouds morning, as is our custom, we took our Saturday-cooked breakfast onto the terrace table to enjoy. Halfway through eating it, we both simultaneously picked up on increased bee noise, over and above that of the many workers foraging on the Cotoneaster growing along the low wall outside the front door. We immediately spotted bee activity around the base of the hawthorn tree, and by the time I’d grabbed the camera from upstairs the air of the terrace was filling with bees.

Once again, a fantastic opportunity to experience the natural marvel that is a swarm of honeybees relocating. After perhaps just 15 minutes, the terrace was growing quieter, so I relocated to somewhere I could view the front of the Swedish butter churn hive, located below the hawthorn. Sure enough, the front of the hive was completely covered with bees which were already beginning to march down the front of the hive, and in through the 2 new holes I’d created in the lower front of the hive, after realising my design flaws which the previous colony successfully put up with for their 2 years, in situ.

Within another 15 minutes, the drama was over, and the casual observer may not have noticed anything had changed. A real treat for us both to have witnessed this, the natural spring reproductive force of the honey bee colony, uninhibited by human interventions.

Another seasonal mini-drama played out for a few days before we left when another queen wasp began to build not one, but two nests above our bed. A bit of selective opening of Velux windows allowed me to influence which nest it worked on, and eventually end up with them at different stages of construction before we closed the windows and left for our break.

We were amazed on our return, at how wonderful both garden and meadows looked. With huge numbers of orchids already emerged by May 29th as I wrote these words – I suspect there will be close to 1,000 this year, in many different clusters across the field, and new singletons popping up.

They’re also beginning to flower in our lower hay meadow, too. Pignut is much more widely distributed, and the yellow rattle and buttercups have finally colonised the very edges of the field, which will prevent the issues with rank wet grass growth we’ve had in previous cutting seasons – this I’m sure is partly because both critical Southerly and Westerly hedges have now been properly laid, and trimmed, allowing more light into these margins.

A real treat was spotting a pristine Common Blue butterfly, resting up beside one of these early orchids, on May.

May finished on a dry but cool note, and although it’s been a lovely, mixed month with plenty of dry days (16) and no frosts, there’s been much less sunshine and light than normal, as my 10 year record demonstrates – the dullest May since 2014, in fact.

2013: 110 mm, 17 dry days, no frosts, PV N/A

2014: 140 mm, 10 dry days, no frosts PV 406 KWH

2015: 142 mm, 10 dry days, no frosts PV 441 KWH

2016: 114 mm, 17 dry days, no frosts PV 492 KWH

2017: 112 mm, 16 dry days, no frosts PV 478 KWH

2018: 58 mm, 19 dry days no frosts  PV 512 KWH

2019: 51 mm, 20 dry days no frosts  PV 501 KWH

2020: 23 mm, 25 fry days, no frosts  PV 609 KWH

2021: 291mm, 6 dry days, no frosts,  PV 440 KWH

2022: 71 mm, 10 dry days, no frosts PV 436 KWH

2023: 28 mm, 24 dry days, no frosts PV 577 KWH

2024: 81 mm, 16 dry days, no frosts PV 400 KWH

2025: 46.85mm, 22 dry days, no frosts 572 KWH

We also had 81.1 mm of rain during the month, which is just below the average for the month. Whilst I don’t measure temperatures, my impression is that daytime temperatures have been quite poor: because of the poor light, and fairly frequent Northerly or Easterly winds.

Confirmation of my own records for May, and indeed the 3 spring months of 2024, can be found on the detailed Met Office summary page, here. 

The warmest spring ever recorded, and one of the dullest, smashing 30 year average temperatures by significant margins, and mainly because of high overnight temperatures rather than daytime excesses. This weather pattern has now continued for 3 consecutive seasons, which in itself must be a record speel for poor light, warm temperatures, and above average rainfall. Will summer buck this trend? Let’s hope so, although the forecasts for June don’t currently look promising.