October began with a couple of grey, murky days before sunshine briefly broke through and allowed some photography.

The following morning dawned bright and clear, as a much welcome change after the gloomiest September on record here, if not the wettest – for once we had lower rainfall than many central counties of England in September.

A reflection of quite frequent Easterly or Northerly winds, which had also kept temperatures below the long-term seasonal average for the month.

One consequence of the recent weather is that we still have many flowers blooming which have typically finished weeks earlier, and also very little autumn colour has developed.

Even the usually early Cornus sibirica and Acer japonicum ‘Aconitifolium’ are barely beginning to colour up by the beginning of the month.

I’ve been taking advantage of any dry days, or part dry days to begin cutting the several hedges about the property which we manage with Li-ion hedge trimmers. Including the now quite impressive yew hedge viaduct/windows to the West of the croquet lawn – nearly 30 years to get to this stage after transplanting scavenged seedlings from our Bristol garden.

It’s also a good time to continue to thin out the Camellia foliage to allow more light through the windows and views out into the landscape beyond.

Sorbus berries of various forms are looking splendid this year after masses of blossom and a very successful pollination period in May.

As the month progressed, a generally benign range of weather continued.

Often still or light winds, with lots of fabulous evolving sunrises, and at last tree leaves began to colour up.

The latest new daffodil bulbs got planted up into a whole bed this year – to be lifted and moved next spring as they go over, and once I can see where the gaps in the main area in the Malus and Sorbus copse are.

With most perennial vegetation still active, the annual cut-back is being delayed a little.

An early morning frost, the first serious one of the year, hit on October 11/12th. Which is early for recent years, and together with wonderful golden early morning light, created some of the best views I’ve ever managed to photograph in mid-October.

After lifting supers from the only 2 hives which I ever enter, on a rare warmer day early in the month well away from a full moon ( when I find the bees can be tetchier), it yielded one full super, and a small amount of capped honey from the other hive which was crushed and filtered out through colander and sieve into a jar. A delicious flavour and more complex than the 2022 honeycomb which we’re still consuming – this having been harvested much earlier in the year. This might seem a poor harvest, but it exceeds our annual needs in what has been the worst (coolest, dullest) summer since at least 2015. And in addition the colonies have produced at least 3 swarms I’m aware of – each of the harvested hives has definitely swarmed at least once. Most colonies have also produced massive numbers of drones over a very long season to help perpetuate the genes and behavioural characteristics of these indigenous, un-managed honey bees.

The advantage of delaying harvest until now is that in-colony bee numbers have really fallen away – and the vast majority of the drones have been evicted. So this year’s event split over 3 sessions – adding bee excluder just after lunch; removing the by now completely empty supers around 8.30 the following morning; and finally taking off the excluder later in the day, went without any glitches. No smoke is used, just a light spray with tepid water onto the upper surface of the frames after removing the bee excluder – when the bees are still really active clearing up all the damaged wax and loose honey inevitably created once the super had been removed after being left for months in place.

After cutting the comb out of the frames – always a very messy business, the empty frames and any trays with residual honey, were left quite close, but under cover, away from their source origin hives. On a warm day it was extraordinary just how quickly each colony maximised outside worker numbers to collect and stash away this valuable resource back inside their hive – before any competing insects got in on the job. Everything is licked clean of all traces of honey within a few short hours.

But then, many mouths make light work.

There’s a single modest sized wasp nest, which I’ve found late in the year in the hay shed, (they always seem to build a nest somewhere in here !) very close to one hive. This still has some active small wasps which also soon smell and find any honey in the open and try to join the party – with inevitable minor conflicts. I give the area a wide berth until late in the day, when I retrieve the cleaned up items.

The month continued in quite benign fashion, with no more frosts, but some more glorious sunrises.

A few notable rainbows as well.

The first snowdrop ‘G.’Tilebarn Jamie’ emerged around October 22nd, which is one of the earliest days we’ve experienced.

Last apples were picked, the big clear up of leaves and cut-back of perennials began.

With the first named storm of the year, storm Ashley, arriving on the 21st, soon after the early frost, although autumn colour developed nicely, most leaves didn’t hang around before dropping.

The ram lamb tup arrived mid-month, and after raddling soon got to work, whilst I tried to photograph and record marked ewe numbers on a daily basis.

The Saxifrage fortunei put on a great display, thanks to the lack of any extended dry period through the summer.

The month’s rainfall of 149.9 mm was modest, if not low, and the PV inverter reading of 209.9 KWH shows how the month panned out with a few individual bright days spread fairly regularly throughout the month. The Met office summary for the month reflected this – very slightly warmer, sunnier and drier than the 30 year average for our part of West Wales.

It sits into my own record of October weather here since I have been recording such things:

2014: 224.4mm 5 dry days PV N/A

2015: 115.05mm 17 dry days PV 231.5 KWH

2016: 71.8mm 23 dry days  PV 242.19 KWH

2017: 129.6mm 6 dry days PV 166.31 KWH

2018: 233.5 mm 14 dry days PV 234.16 KWH

2019: 224.6 mm 6 dry days PV 189.96 KWH

2020: 274.5mm 6 dry days PV 166 58 KWH

2021: 288.7 mm 4 dry days PV 167.54 KWH

2022: 249.3mm 6 dry days PV 202.81 KWH

2023: 301.7mm 6 dry days PV 185.7 KWH

2024: 149.9mm 8 dry days PV 209.9 KWH. 1 Frost October 11th 2024