A fire near apiary number 2.

Hello readers,

A bit of news today, old news, as I'm running behind on this blog... 

20th december 2018:  a fire broke out in a company that uses chemical substances to produce latex.

Here's the mayor of my town talking about what happened (Dutch)

Several explosions were heard during the fire, barrels with chemical compounds exploded, but the fire was contained and the fire-fighters let the company burn down prohibiting the flames from spreading to nearby structures.
Some latex got spilled into a nearby river with a thin sheet of latex covering the entire waterway as a result.  At first the firefighters tried to build a dam to contain the pollution, but the water building up broke the structure and the latex got spread out.  It is said there is no danger to the public health and no threat to the lands of farmers near the stream...

Now as it happens that river flows near my apiary, thank God it's winter and the bees don't fly out, I can't imagine what they'd have to endure collecting water from that polluted river.  I went to take a look at the damage, expecting some soot on the hives, but the wind blew in another direction, so I was spared that trouble.  Here are some pictures:

Helecopter view of the fire.

Stream to the right of my hives

Stream behind my hives, righthand side.

My hives with the stream in front. The stream is making a left turn)

Stream in front of the hives making a right turn

The pictures may not say much looking at them without knowing how the water normally looks, but I assure you, that white water is not normal.  It looks like a milk-stream instead of a waterway.  It smells of plastic too.  Let's hope most of it is washed away by spring.

That's all for today folks!

Bob Out