Vive la Reine Bleu

The nights are drawing in now and it gets too dark to share a beekeeping visit with Tom and Liz after they get home from work.  And I have rearranged my life to finish work early anyway, so I slip away at half past three and head home, ostensibly to study and go to gym but depression still has me in its evil grip, so mostly I go home to eat and grieve.

I take every opportunity I can to get out of the office now, too.  So today I have come to lunch with the bees.  They make me happy.  The last few times I've visited, I've stopped in astonishment - so much activity!  Each entrance is filled with bees rushing to and fro, in and out, out and away.  Their legs are full of golden orange pollen.  They march in rows, queuing to get in and out of the hive.  They whizz away, ignoring me in their flight path.  Their path is fixed and clear - you can watch them go straight up and away; I always wonder where they're headed.

Every year I forget that, in autumn, they tend to smash stuff onto their legs, stuffing as much pollen as possible into their baskets, hoarding and working and collecting and storing.  Brave bees.  They know what's coming ... the cold, the grey, the miserable.  How will we make it through!?  With every sweet thing comes the thought of the bitter.  Autumn is glorious, but winter is just round the corner.  The bees make me happy, but they're here and not there - at the bottom of my garden.   Tis hard to maintain a cheerful air; the autumn crisp, blue sky loveliness helps, so do the bees.

And a few weeks ago Tom helped too.  He's a bit like me - unable to contain his curiosity.  So while I was away, and he was inspecting his bees, he peeked inside the Death Star.  This is what I had taken to calling my hive.  They were so fiercely angry I literally couldn't get in there without being stung about fifty times.  They were in a difficult transition period because I had inadvertently saved the old Green Queen.  One afternoon I found Her lying on the ground in front of the hive - it was ridiculously amazing and accidental.  I just couldn't believe my eyes when I saw Her there and, because I loved Her so much, I scooped Her up and popped Her back in the hive.  Unfortunately there was a new Queen in there too, so they must have had a difficult time of it.  That is, until they finally managed to get the old Queen killed or thrown out successfully.  You know, when the Dumb Human Beekeeper wasn't around ...

Then Tom popped his head in while I was away, taking his life in his hands, only to find them as calm as kittens.  They'd killed the old Queen and the new Queen was laying, and all was well with the hive.  We call it Queen-Right.  And more than that, he found Her.  I bet he had a moment of hesitation, wondering whether to leave Her for me to mark.  But he did what I would've done; reached in, held Her gently and painted Her with a lavish and lovely blue mark.  

Vive la Reine Bleu!

Last week I suited up, lit the smoker and went in by myself.  They were not aggressive but definitely on the alert, so I didn't stay long.  I felt my heart leap with delight, and no end of pride, to see that they had drawn all the foundation in the super and absolutely stuffed it full of honey.  You beauties!  Set fair for the winter, then.

I met a beekeeper on the road to Khor Fakkan

He was Egyptian; he had three thousand hives back home in Egypt and over a thousand here in the Emirates.  He spoke of the hives in the mountains near Fujairah.  He spoke of honey that cost fortunes, rare, rich like toffee.  I tasted the honey he displayed on the shelves in his small, spare shop.  There were two flavours, one "summer" and one "sidr".    Bonita sat nearby, sipping Arabic coffee and tasting on dates.  She had passed by here so often and thought of me, and now here I was and she could share this place with me.


We had left Dubai late, engrossed as we were in the world of women.  We had spent the day in the Spa; manicure, pedicure, eyebrow threading, henna.  Outside the heat had become bearable and the blisters on the balls of my feet from the beach sand were beginning to heal.  We packed her car and made for the six-lane highway north to Sharja.  Then we turned into the heartland, across the vast emptiness to Al Dhaid and Fujairah, making our way to Dibba and then to Khor Fakkan for the night.

My eyes were on the high peaks far away in the distance when suddenly Bons pulled in to the right, to a small parade of shops in the middle of nowhere.  I was astonished to see a honey extractor standing out in the dust in front of the shop.  Bons hauled me out of the car excitedly and we visited two shops, close together, both selling honey.  And that is where I met the Egyptian.

She took a picture of us as we battled our way through the language barriers, to that place where beekeepers meet - talking about how we wire our frames, the global pestilence of varroa and how we treat it, and the joy of watching bees.  I never saw a single bee in the Emirates; I could not imagine where they foraged, but the Egyptian spoke of rich and verdant places in the mountains, where bees could thrive and make the best honey in the world.  There are never enough words, and always more joy than expected, no matter where we meet.

That night Bons and I sat on the beach, facing east on the Strait of Hormuz, looking out to Snoopy Island.  In the pitch darkness we reminisced and I could feel our connection return from so long, long ago, so many years and so many miles and experiences apart.   And as we talked and laughed quietly in the night, the ghostly shape of a blood-red moon rose from sea above the shoulder of the rock, and smiled on us.

I am so grateful for my friends.

Apis Mellifera Dramatica

 

"Oh," said V, "don't worry - we've all been badly stung these last few weeks!"  Bit of a relief really, considering.  So it's not just me then.  The last few weeks have been eventful.

 

Firstly, I've been getting used to working the bees with Tom and Liz.  They have been so nice, hosting my bees in their garden.  We have worked our bees together and the process has been a gradual one of getting to know each other, settling in to our different styles of beekeeping, accommodating each other's preferences and negotiating ways of working together.  It has felt like a tentative, careful process of getting to know one another, and becoming friends. 

 

The funniest instance was a couple of weeks ago; Friday night.  Now, Friday night is usually my great de-stressing time.  I leave work and I can feel stress leaving my body and a huge wave of endorphins, happiness and weariness washing over me.  This can be somewhat dangerous.  

 

The three of us decamped to the garden with our beesuits.  "Why don't we just have one glass of wine before we get going," was the mutual agreement.  Then Tom poured the wine.  Hahahahaha!  "Look," he said, proudly waving the (first) empty bottle, "if you pour it just right, you can get three full glasses out of an entire bottle!"  Oh dear.  Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.   I remember, much muu-uuuu-uuch later, waving my arms at the sky, going, "look! look! you can see meteors!"  Oh dearie me!  Not much beekeeping done that night, then. 

 

On other evenings though, we have hoicked on our suits, loaded up the gear and strolled down through their glorious orchard, down to where they've arranged the wooden chairs and table, down to where the hives are lined up together.  "Keep 'em straight," mutters Tom.  "No, no," say I, "keep 'em a bit off-kilter."  And so we go, learning to rub along together.  As we chat quietly, behind the hedge where the narrow boats moor, Susie the parakeet starts up.  She can hear us from her perch on the boat and she whistles and chirrups, enjoying the natter, part of the company.

 

But the last couple of times at the hives have been stressful.  Tom's bees are quiet and happy; mine are fierce and furious. The way they come out to sting me feels almost as if they are tortured by some misery I cannot see.  I wish I could help them.  There are various possible reasons but I feel it is too late in the season to make major changes.  If I do, I lessen their chances for survival through the winter.

 

It could be that they have two Queens in there.  One is the old Green Alpha Queen, the one we have been so loathe to destroy.  The bees are determined that she is old and failing and they need a new one, and who am I to question their age-old wisdom?  So there is a new Queen in there too - they have been indicating a need for supercedure and so it's in place now.  As far as we can tell at least one of the Queens is laying.  But we don't spend a lot of time in there.  The last time they launched themselves at me in waves so furious, I nearly threw myself in the canal.  I've never been scared by bees before but I was, that time.

 

So I am grateful to my friend C for a different kind of beekeeping experience yesterday.  I'd been for a wonderfully energising early morning gym session and I decided to drop in at the country park, where I used to live, to do some blackberrying.  When I lived there I found the best blackberries ever - so good you could freeze 'em and keep them through winter.  So I wandered off,  plastic packet in hand, blissfully happy.  The blackberry harvest has been odd this year.  Some ripened early, some ripened late and some hasn't even started yet.  Most odd.  Never mind, it was lovely to be back and I picked a whole lot and then meandered on to take photos of bees pollinating the Himalayan Balsam. 

 

It's a terribly invasive weed in this country, most garden-wise folk hate it.  Unfortunately for them, the bees absolutely love it!  There's nothing so lovely as seeing the bees fly in with that distinctive big white spot on their backs, the marking of the Himalayan Balsam pollen striped on them, a perfect process of pollination alive and happening right in front of your eyes.  I snapped away; I could've still been there if I hadn't run into C.

 

"I don't suppose ..." he said.  "It just so happens ..." I said, "I've got my beesuit in the car!"  And we proceeded to spend four glorious sweaty, grimy, grubby hours with his bees.  He's a bit of a renegade (sorry C!) but I was fascinated by his practice, his theories, and his vision of what beekeeping could be.  It matches with mine in so many ways and it infuriates other, more traditional viewpoints in so many ways.  

 

I experienced that afternoon on so many different levels.  First off, I just loved the bees.  They were quiet and happy and busy, not fierce and agonised and tortured.  Then, I enjoyed a different kind of beekeeping experience - one that involved many hives and many different objectives other than my own.  And also, I was fascinated by the peripheral creatures I found - the wasps, the hornets, the butterflies.  I took some grand photos, not technically perfect, but interesting nonetheless.  

 

But above all, I was interested in how this operation fits into beekeeping at a global level. C is something new in beekeeping, a phenomenon that many traditional beekeepers fear - he is trying to find a new way, a better way.  I like that about him.

And yet, there we are, doing different things, travelling in different directions and having such a powerful, potent impact on the bees.  As you probably know by now, my belief is that if all beekeepers everywhere could work in a unified manner, all practising in the same way, working to the same goal, we would have a more beneficial effect on the bees.   It is not possible; we are human after all.  It makes me sad.   I really wish humans could wake up to the terribly detrimental effect we have on all things natural on this planet, in time to stop it and save the planet, but I do not hold out much hope.  We are greedy, venal things - the greatest virus the universe has ever created.

 

But I have always been most fascinated with the stories we have to tell, no less the beekeepers.  Each one has a story, many stories.  Sometimes I feel like my purpose in life is to be the bard, the one who tells the stories of our times - the izibongo.   If I tell the stories well enough, they might help to change things.

 

If this is the only reason I exist, I am happy; I feel I have found my purpose. 

And that is enough, isn't it?

 

 

Temper, temper!

 

The way we talk about our bees must sound really strange to you.  "The bees were so docile".  "They're so good-tempered; well-behaved, quiet, such a good temperament!"  "Well-bred" is another term we use.

 

How odd, you think, you who do not work with bees.  Bees!?  Wild and fierce, they swarm across the countryside, aggressively looking for someone to sting!  Right?  Right?  Wrong!

 

Bees are wonderfully good-natured creatures.  They won't bother you, if you don't bother them.  Bees spend all their individual lives submerged in serving the needs of the collective.  They work endlessly for the survival of the entire colony.  They use precisely calculated geo-location to work their way back home to the hive and it's only if you happen to get in the way, or try to hurt them - usually by accident - that they will sting you.  They don't want to sting you; if they sting a human they die.  They don't want to die, anymore than you or I do.

 

And contrary to all the urban legends, and ridiculous horror movies, they are at their least aggressive when they swarm.  Swarming is a natural way for a single colony to reproduce and become two.  A group take off with the Old Queen when the Virgin Queens are being born.  Before they take off, they scout the surroundings, and everyone fills their stomachs with honey for the dangerous journey ahead.  So they are full - like you feel after a big meaty Sunday lunch - "burp".  They are focused on sticking together and surviving.  So there have been beekeepers who can even put their bare hands right into a swarm - and not get stung.  (Don't try this at home, folks!)  Panos has told me it feels warm, and ticklish, and magical, and he didn't get stung.  I believe him.

 

But more than this, bees have been bred by human beekeepers, generation after generation, season after season, to be docile.  The most structured breeding program to this end began with a monk called Brother Adam, at Buckfast Abbey at the beginning of the 20th century.  His strategy was simple.  If he worked at a hive, and got stung - just once - he would kill the Queen and replace her.  The temperament of the bees spreads from the pheromones of the Queen, licked by the bees to locate and bond with her.  They in turn lick other bees, and on and on the temperament spreads.  In the simplest terms, Brother Adam thought, if I control the Queen and her temperament, eventually the bees will "get it".  If you sting me, bees, I will kill your Queen, place your hive at risk, and replace her. 

 

And over generations, so they learned and evolved.  Urban beekeepers are able to keep beehives in suburban gardens because bees have become gentler by nature. Not every beekeeper agrees with this strategy because, after all, stinging is a naturally-occurring defensive tactic they use to protect themselves and the colony.  We humans are conspiring to remove that natural instinct.  We humans - we play a dangerous game with the balance of nature!

 

So yesterday a group of 8 beekeepers could easily walk among 20 hives, each filled to bursting with a colony at its summer peak of 50,000 bees.  We could walk among them without fear of being stung.  I didn't get stung once.  I haven't been stung once, in the last 3 years.  My bees are true aristocrats, bred in the Midlands, working under the Green/Alpha Queen - who is a queen of queens.  They are always quiet, good-natured, co-operative.  They might buzz around me worriedly while I'm in there, manipulating the frames or removing some of their hard-won efforts in honey, but they are really lovely bees.  Now you understand what we mean when we talk about "good-natured bees".

 

Last night, however, we encountered that fabulous phenomenon - The Feisty Bee Hive.  Hive No 8 has been affectionately (or perhaps not) labelled "Bomber Command".  Oh my word, how we ran, and then - how we laughed!

 

We first noticed what was happening when Caroline - cool, calm, level-headed Caroline - made a comment and we heard a faint note of hysteria in her voice.  "Blow me down," she said, "they're buggers tonight," or something to that effect.  A couple of heads turned from where we were working at Hive No 5.  Then we noticed Tom walking briskly away and were astonished to see him disappear into the darkness of the shed.  What?! 

 

Then we heard the buzzing ...

 

Then we were all overtaken by the roar of fifty thousand extremely pissed-off bees.  Oh my god, I'm laughing as I write this. 

 

There were beekeepers diving into hedges; two beekeepers ran right out of the apiary and took refuge - in the road.  The rest of us backed carefully away, all the while being followed by a halo of furiously grumpy buzzing bees whizzing around our heads.  A number of us got stung - not badly - but you can still feel it through the bee suit.  Perhaps I'm making it sound more dramatic than it really was?  No, no, they really were like Bomber Command last night. 

 

Definitely part of the learning curve.  You have got to respect the bees.  They may be lovely, they may be quiet - most times.  But every now and then, they will make a point of reminding you of what they really are - not just livestock to be harvested, but wild creatures who have succeeded and thrived in nature despite every obstacle put in their way by man and beast.

 

How I do love them!

 

 

 

Showing my new self to me

I've had such a crisis of confidence in myself as a beekeeper.  It has confused everybody - Tom, Peter, the Association, and me.  Why do I have so little faith in my own abilities?  Why do I always feel awkward asking for help?  Why can't I just accept it when people give me help and gifts, unasked, just because they want to? 

I have spent the past couple of years working with my bees by myself and it has been lovely.  I have loved every solitary, quiet moment alone with them.  But I've always known that beekeeping can't really be done alone.  You need people; you need other beeks to exchange knowledge, tools, bees and equipment - you need it to help the bees survive.

I have no problem with bees;  it seems that all my difficulties stem from my problem with people.  I'm so tangled up in my own insecurities, my mistrust of people's intentions, my defensiveness and my desperate need to be self-reliant, my discomfort in asking for help and appearing vulnerable and incompetent. 

So now I am out in the world again, no longer a lone beek.  I am surrounded by other beeks - experts, novices and amateurs like me.  I always knew it would be a difficult transition.  I never realised quite how revealing it would be - showing my new self to me - how I have changed in the past difficult years.  I never realised how difficult I am finding it to get on with other people, to socialise, mingle and share.  I have become more solitary than ever, more irritable, more shy, more ...  Well, perhaps it's more a case that I am becoming more me - the same as I ever was, just less hidden, more revealed.

It seems my bees have more to teach me than mere beekeeping.  As always, I am grateful for the sense of magic and revelation that they offer me.

Terrible, beautiful things

We just opened the top of my hive to replace some sugar water in the feeder, that's all we did.

 

"Is that a Queen?" Tom asked.  I did a double-take and checked again in the empty red round plastic container.  Blow me down, it was a Queen.  She looked strange.  Well, of course she would. She was a Virgin Queen; she was slow and thin and meek.   She was one of the new born Queens and she had managed to squeeze her thin long body into an inaccessible slot on the side of the feeder, into a space where no other bee could go, hiding in fear for her life.

 

Nature can be a terrible thing. 

 

A colony of bees is not just a group of 50,000 individual insects.  It is a collective; a Hive Mind; a terrible, beautiful thing.  It makes decisions, it manages the collective, it chooses who lives and who dies.  50,000 bees - most of them female - decide together how many babies should be male and how many female; how much honey to make, consume and store; where the honey should go; what pollen should be collected; where to forage; what time of the year to grow the colony and what time of year to slow down and sleep. 

 

Above all, they manage the Queen.  She isn't a leader in any real sense of the word.  She is their baby-making machine; she is the repository of future generations.  So they worship her, and protect her, and lick her pheromones from her body in order to know her and bond with her.  And when the time comes, if need be, they kill her.

 

From just one Mating Flight early in her life, a good Queen can keep laying eggs for up to 4 years.  But then she grows old, and her body produces too many male eggs and she becomes a liability, shortening the life of the collective.  So the worker bees begin to make Queen Cells in the honeycomb.  The unsuspecting Queen lays eggs in these specials cells, and her daughters work hard to turn these eggs into potential new Queens.  They feed her Royal Jelly, a special type of bee-bread.  This food accelerates her growth; her special cell is capped and closed for her birth in just 16 days - 5 less than a normal bee gestation.

 

In that time, the old Queen might realise her time is done.  Often she escapes from the hive in a swarm, taking with her  half of the mature, flying, foraging bee workforce.  The rest she leaves behind, those young enough to work inside the hive and protect the new Queen being born.

 

As is the way in all things, the collective does what it does best - it hedges its bets.  It makes more than one Queen Cell.  Then it keeps working, nurturing the babies, foraging for honey, building honeycomb.  The work goes on while the Virgin Queens lie in their cells, waiting to be born.

 

If you happened to be there on the day and you listened very closely, you might hear a magical thing - a terrible, beautiful thing.  You would hear the sound of Virgin Queens in their Cells "piping".  They make a special noise to let the other Virgins know where they are.  This is because they know that a hive can only have one Queen.  Each Virgin is born and the first thing she must do is find her competitors and kill them, so that only one Queen remains. 

 

On the day that Tom and I came to check on the hive - not interfering, just feeding, we found a brand new Virgin Queen, just born, who came to hide from her fight to the death.  Her fierce competitors were somewhere in the hive, either hiding or hunting. 

 

I look at her, so new, so young.  How can I describe what I feel - such a mixture of pleasure and pain.  She represents the success of our strategy - splitting the hive to make increase: a hive for me and a new one for Tom.  But she is so beautiful and so valuable, and such a magical creature.  I don't know her but I love her already, and I fear for her and I want to keep her and protect her.   I look at her for just a moment longer, then I carefully lift her up and drop her her back into the hive. I fill up the feeder and close up the roof.  And then I turn and walk away.

 

What else could I do?

 

By tomorrow she will either be dead, or flying out to mate.

 

Green Tippex

Pulling up my socks has been every bit as awkward as I expected.

The first time I went off to inspect the bees up at the Association Apiary, I had everybody and his mother hanging over my shoulder, agog.  There was Charles and Tom and Perry and Peter and Allan and Asad, and various others.  It was a circus.

Oh dear.  Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

I have grown to fear the peanut gallery far more than the beestings these days.  The banter pops out like a pinging bee and the stinging comments fly in like squadrons of hornets. 

"What do you mean, you haven't got a dummy board?!"

"Is that deformed wing virus?  There.  And there and there and there and there ...."

"When did you say you last treated your bees?"

"What are you doing with that extra super, then?"

"Why aren't you doing a Shook Swarm, then, hey?!"

I swear, by the time I left the Apiary I was a complete and utter gibbering wreck.  I had a bee in me beesuit, tea down me trousers and a flea in me earhole.  I felt more wobbly than a virgin on a first date.  It was worse in every way than I had ever expected.

But really, what COULD I have expected!?  I had let the colony go their own way for nearly a year; distracted by my own crushing grief in my other life.  And my neglect showed.  The bees were sick, the hive was a mess, and as for strategy - there was none.

The lads will never let me forget it.  I am the butt of every joke at the Apiary now.  Particularly the next week, when Alan walked out of the Hut and looked at me severely over his spectacles and said, accusingly, "there's been a swarm.  A SWARM."

I gibbered.  Of course the swarm was my fault.  Of course they were my bees.  It could only have been my fault.

Except, Dear Reader, it wasn't.  We went in to inspect my hive and there they all were.  None of them had left.  I did a little jig, and everyone laughed.  Oh dear god, having an audience has been the hardest thing that has ever happened to me as a beekeeper. 

But I know it has also been the best.  I have been pulled up short, and reminded of all my bad habits as a beekeeper, and I have been reminded of all the reasons why beekeeping might be a joyful solitary craft, but is also a delightfully social one.

As we've gone along over the weeks, the lads have begun to root for my bees; the interest of the newcomers has been inspiring; my new mentors have begun to bed in and settle with me.  A routine has developed and the worst of my neglect has been corrected.

We've reduced the double brood box to a single brood box.  We've changed most of the frames.  We've medicated the bees for sickness.

And oh gracious Goddessess, we have found my Queen.  And we have marked Her.  HOORAY!  I could have wept for joy when that little daub of green paint landed on Her thorax.  Hooray and Hooray and Hooray.

Although Peter did take the opportunity to look at me irritably and say, "what the hell is that green paint?  Is it nail polish!?  It looks like Tippex!  I don't think I trust that rubbishy looking stuff ..." 

"But, but ..." I replied, stuttering, "I bought at Thorne's so it MUST be good, right?"

They all stopped and looked at me.

And then they carried on.

I think I'm going to be alright, folks.  And what's more, so are the bees.

Predicament

Wheelbarrow - check
Battery-powered drill - check
Torches - check
Straps - check
Man with muscles - check

Time to go and rescue some bees!

It seems to me that all the strange and crazy things that one could experience have happened to me early on in my chequered career as a beekeeper.  Swarms, casts, house moves, calm Queens, angry Queens - I've seen 'em all.  But this is by far the silliest.  I arrived at my beehive a couple of weeks ago only to find they'd been fenced in.  Trapped.  I couldn't get in; I couldn't get them out; no way to bring equipment in or honey out.

The landlord had decided to put a fence up without realising the impact on the bees.  So now I was learning another dimension of beekeeping - the challenge of interacting with landlords who sometimes don't know or understand what it is to keep livestock.  Beehives need to be accessible by road.  Sometimes you have to carry heavy hive equipment in.  And on a good year, you have to carry honey out.  And honey is heavy.

I have kept them at work for the past year, down by the river and the weir, under the tall trees, right near the canal towpath.  A beautiful, beautiful place but I always knew it had its limitations.  It was a long way to walk from the carpark.  The landlord had a bad experience with wasps many years ago, and yes, you and I know bees are different, but people and perceptions rule how we see things.  So they saw the bees as a bit scary.  Which, well, I have to admit, perhaps they are.

Bees just like to be left alone really.  And here at work, they have been.  And they have flourished.  They have been so happy.

But as I clambered over the fence, sweating and cursing, I realised that - once again - it was time to move the bees.

A huge psychic sigh.  I am SO tired of moving!  I know my life is filled with constant adventure and I know that it keeps you lot entertained, but I am beginning to long for solidity and stability, and roots.  And settling down.  Really I am.  Stop laughing, you at the back.

I love the landlords, but they don't know bees.  They'd fenced the field in and made the bees completely inaccessible for me to work.  No way to get a wheelbarrow in, no way to get honey out.  I sat under the trees and watched a few hardy early bees flying in and out, peaceably working the early crocus, completely unaware of their own predicament.

The things about bees is this - you can't ever do anything instantly.  Everything takes time.  So I went away and spent a couple of weeks pondering the problem.  Could I move them to my new cottage garden?  Hmmmm ... tight.  Very tight.  I emailed my new cottage landlord.  I was rather delighted when he wrote right back and said, "hey, no problem".  I have never met him but I sense that he is a fellow gardener.  And he has friends who are beeks, so he knows the drill.  He said, "as long as the neighbours don't mind, go right ahead." 

Aye, there's the rub.  Neighbours.  Oh god, my new neighbours.  They're so sweet but the screaming child at 4.30am has taken some getting used to.  And where there are children there is fear.  So bringing the bees in would be tight.  I did think it might be a solution to getting rid of the 4.30am screaming child problem (fearful parents would move away from the bees, and that would be a solution, but then - who knows who would come in their place, hey!?).

When R & P Beekeepers' Association (RPBA) heard my problem they leapt in and instantly offered me a place in the Association Apiary.  I can't tell you how relieved I was.  I could just feel all the tension and worry leaving me in one long sigh of relief.  That was a weekend of miracles, that was.  I found the Best Hairdresser in the World, and the RPBA found a new home for my bees.  A weekend of miracles! :)

So all I had to do now was find a Tardis to whisk the hive out of the fenced-in field. Hmmm!  And that's how, on Thursday evening, Tigger and I came to be holding a Beehive Rescue Briefing at Sunshine Cottage in Ickenham.

Wheelbarrow - check
Battery-powered drill - check
Torches - check
Straps - check
Man with muscles - check

Time to go and rescue some bees, then.

Of course I'd forgotten all the critical stuff, like bee suits, sponge and tape.  Naturally.  This is me we're talking about, people.

So after we'd trundled the wheelbarrow down the towpath, past some mystified dog-walkers, I found myself running back and forth from my office to the fields, carrying bee suits, sponge and tape, muttering and cursing like a madwoman while Tigger brandished his drill and bashed down a section of the fence.

I did have a bit of a laugh because one or two bees popped out to inspect the noise and I leapt back like a startled chicken.  What a wussie I am!  I didn't bother with the bee suit this time though.  We all know the routine too well by now.  These bees have moved three times in three years.  No wonder they've never swarmed.  Every flipping year they pop out for spring and find themselves in a different part of the world.  What I think is that they think they've swarmed every year, actually.  It's rather funny.

The blasted entrance block appears to be too small for the hive so I couldn't stuff a sponge piece in there.  We had to tape up the entrance.  No matter; it worked well.  Straps around and I could hear the buzzing hum getting louder in there - whoops, mind those fingers underneath - they could sting through that open mesh floor, Tigger! 

And then it was time to lift the hive carefully and wedge it gently into the wheelbarrow.  Ease it along there down to the fence then lift it over the barely accessible step and we're up and out - onto the towpath.  Tigger stayed in the field and sealed up the fence, then ran around to the car park with the suits and tools and things in the gathering dark.  As for me, I held my breath and slowly wheeled the barrow down the towpath alongside the canal.  My babies!  My babies!  A dog walker stood watching as I came past the lock.  I stopped for a breather and she cocked one eye at the hive.  "Just a beehive," I said, "and 50 thousand angry bees."  (I do love a bit of melodrama.)  She cocked the other eye.  These dog walkers - they've seen it all, they have!

We slid the hive gently into the Tigger Van and so the bees left BJM.  How sad. 

An hour later they were settled, three miles away, in a temporary home nearby.  The two chaps stood well back and watched me remove the final piece of tape from the entrance.  A few rather bewildered looking bees came out of the entrance and mooched around quietly together.  They do make me proud, my bees.  They have such a lovely calm temperament.

They will have to stay there a few weeks to avoid going back to the field and then later they can be moved again.  Because the Apiary is so close to my work - less than a mile away - I couldn't move them straight there.  They would've flown back to the field.  Bees do that.  If you move them more than three feet away or less than three miles away, they keep flying back to the original hive location.  They get lost.  Well - they don't get lost, they geo-locate from 3 miles away to the exact hive entrance.  You need to move them more than 3 miles away from their original location, then they won't try to go back home.  They realign their geolocators to the new hive position.

Aren't bees amazing!?

So in a few weeks' time my bees will be in a new home and I hope it will be permanent.  I am excited but I am also nervous.  Because this time, dear reader, I will be beekeeping with other beekeepers around me.  They will see everything I do.  And I suspect I may have picked up some rather bad habits for a beekeeper.  Dirty tools, dirty suit, don't know how to do a split, lazy about medicating, slack on changing frames. 

I do believe I am going to have to pull up my beekeeping socks.  Oh dearie me, yes I am.

Wish us luck, dear reader, me and the bees.  Wish us luck!

The Bees are alright

I went down to the hive today. 

Since the end of summer, all I have felt about the bees is guilt.  I have bedded them down for winter in a double brood and a super - far too large, too much room and too much work for them to keep warm.  I stopped paying them attention far too early in the autumn.  My life just got in the way.

All winter I have avoided thinking about them.  Just another thing to worry about.  Guilt, guilt, guilt.  I made the odd rare visit and just seeing the fresh wax cappings dotting the floor underneath, like sprinkled sugar, was enough to reassure me that they were coping on their own.  Munching their way through their capped honey stores.  Doing alright.  I'd turn away and carry on through the wreckage of my other lives.

This year I did not visit them on Christmas Day to give them the annual gift of fondant food, as I have alway done with Tigger.   I just couldn't face it alone.

But then yesterday the lawns flooded, so I went to check on them.  A fresh, very faint sprinkling of cappings but otherwise, an ominous silence.  So today I went down with a fresh batch of Neopol, a delicious pollen-laced fondant food.  I warmed it under my coat, then sliced through the plastic wrapping and cautiously lifted the hive roof.  Thousands of beetles and worms nesting in the roof for winter fell out.  Yeugh!  I scraped them all off, and touched the inside of the roof with concern.  It felt damp.  My heart sank.  Nothing kills bees quicker than the wet.

Then I thumped the Neopol down on the roof hole and saw, with absolute delight, thousands of disgruntled bees buzzing about in the top of the super.

Hooray!

The bees are alright.