THE allotment season started tough this year.

The rain has not helped. Lifting up great clods of wet clay on the end of my fork is like doing a course in weight lifting.

I had to replace panes of glass caused by gale force winds.

I’ve moved the greenhouse, the shed, built a raised bed from recycled wood and planted onions and two varieties of potatoes in it.

Allotmenteers are a motley crew.

There are the archetypical type, old men with flat caps.

Certainly things are changing. We have a lot more women, young and old, wanting to get digging and planting.

Allotments are an oasis of wildlife within an urban environment.

Bumble bees, wasps and solitary bee queens are emerging looking for a new home.

A few of us got together and keep honey bees.

We look at our bees to see whether they have enough stores to start to expand the colony and check if they are about to swarm.

If they are short of food we feed them with sugar syrup.

Honey bees reproduce by swarming.

Now is the start of the swarming season, so we have to look to see if the worker bees are starting to produce new queens.

If anyone comes across a swarm, don’t panic. The best thing to do is get in touch with a beekeeper, who will take it away for free.

The bees will be sending out scout bees to look for a new home and they will all disappear in a few hours.

A Runcorn allotment keeper

Name and address supplied