Oh dear Graham, I read your latest forum entry with dismay,
Over the years we must have consumed many glasses of "insecticide" as a delicious, effervescent, drink we call Elderflower Champagne, perhaps not a p.c. title these days.
Sugar disolved in water with lemon slices, infused with a few elder flowers, has made us a drink to sit and sip while in the garden on hot summer evenings (whatever happened to those).
As for not being many insects on the flowers, no matter what we do to remove them, the infusion always seems to contain pollen beetles which have to be carefully strained out.
I do hope the insecticide view is an old wives tale.
Your Forum
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The weblog below is for naturalists to use to report interesting sightings, ask questions, report on field meetings and generally post pictures and any information or questions generally relevant in some way to the wildlife and geology of Essex. You will need to register and be logged-on to post to the forum, and you need to upload pictures first, for use in posts. Find out more
The weblog below is for naturalists to use to report interesting sightings, ask questions, report on field meetings and generally post pictures and any information or questions generally relevant in some way to the wildlife and geology of Essex. You will need to register and be logged-on to post to the forum, and you need to upload pictures first, for use in posts. Find out more