Trial by Bee

It seems only fair to admit that with the highs come the lows. And since that last blog I've been feeling very low :( San-shi is a blissful little colony; the Queen is laying, the bees are busy - every bee is gentle.

But Itchy Knee has just dissolved into turmoil and utter rebellion. There has been no Queen that I can see, no Queen activity, no rice-grain eggs, no larvae. Only stripped-out torn-down Swarm Cells, lots of drones, dwindling brood and increasing honey. But above all, the hive is constantly boiling over with furious angry grumpy mad zipped-up zonked-out mad-as-mustard worker bees. Millions of 'em.

And every time I come anywhere near them they try to kill me. No, no, stop laughing, I'm serious.

I'm their Number 1 Target for Assassination.

Yesterday it got so bad they spent the afternoon chasing me out of the garden. My own garden! I couldn't sit down and relax, even hours after a distressing afternoon Hive Inspection. They followed and followed and followed, and hung around and looked threatening, and just simply intimidated the bejesus out of me. My bee suit looked like it had been peppered with little stings all over. I had to wash the venom out of everything later on ...

I know that these are the times that beekeepers must stick it out and be brave and, above all, be patient. I know the weather has been dead against us all so far, with little summer to show for yet. I know, I know.

But it's getting me down, I tell you.

There are a few things that have helped me keep my chin up in these times of Trial by Bee;

• My mentors' comments by email keep me ever-grinning
• Chatting on the Beekeeping Forum, and
• This quote:

"Most beekeepers consider themselves adept after their first three years. The first year of beekeeping is a complete mystery (I'll say!). The second year things are beginning to fall into place. In year three you are on top of everything and you wonder why every other beekeeper has been going wrong for so long when all you have to do is ... Sad to say, after the third year you will find that you will become less confident until you realise that a single lifetime is rather too short to ever become an expert." (Practical Beekeeping by Clive de Bruyn)

So there's more humiliation still to follow, I see. Really, I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Balance

What a lovely evening it was yesterday. The sun was shining, the sky was blue and I could see, down at the bottom of the garden, much activity among my bee hives.

Yes, bee hives, plural.

It appears I have an apiary now.

So I wandered on down, suit on, smoker in hand, just wanting to check the new hive, San-Shi (that's "three-four" in Japanese, thank you very much). I had placed the Queen Excluder under the Brood Box to keep Her Majesty in place for a few days, to resist the temptation to swarm away again. And I was aware that, with two Supers on the Brood Box of Itchy Knee Hive, I was one Queen Excluder short. I need to place the QE under the very top Super, so that I can start harvesting honey proper.

So I ambled into the apiary, but I felt loathe to interfere too much with the bees. And they were very gentle. Busy, distracted, almost welcoming. So I puffed one very soft cloud of smoke and then set the smoker aside. I popped the top of San-Shi open, curious beyond anything as to what I would see. I guess I was a little shocked actually, to see how small the gathering of bees is inside there. Only two of the 11 new frames had any activity showing; most of it honey. But on closer inspection, yes, there was the Queen. And there, clearly showing on the new foundation, very new rice-grain eggs. She has been laying.

I took the QE off, and ran back to get a blue cokie pen. It's a year ending in "0" so the frames should be coloured blue. I quickly etched in blue arrows on the frames (there is one green-marked one in there), and closed up the hive again.

Then I went across to Itchy Knee, and looked only in the top two Supers. In the top, nothing drawn by the bees. In the one below, a lot of comb, a lot of honey, and one Play Queen Cell. I did not go further into the Brood Box. I will leave that either for tomorrow morning, or Sunday evening. I gently slipped the QE between the two Supers, and closed up the hive again.

As I walked away, it worried me that San-Shi looked so small and under-resourced. "They need a feed," I thought to myself. Quickly and efficiently I made up a 1:1 water:sugar mix in the Feeder and, hoping it would fit, took it down to the hive as I usually do, fully dressed in bee-suit, with the feeder on a tray, feeling all the world like Jeeves the Butler on a movie set.

I took off the lid once more and carefully slid the Feeder into place, then placed the roof back on top. Yes, it fits and covers the hive and leaves no gap. It is a perfect fit.

Now the thoughts that fill my mind are those of balance; I must balance the challenge of Itchy Knee's possible Queenless state with growth for San-Shi, or a merging of both to ensure their survival through next winter. I spent this morning on the train, staring across the veggie allotments, thinking, planning, weighing up options. It was delightful.

And, oh, how good it felt to have completed such a calm, gentle, positive, ambling Inspection! I sat for a long, long time on my chair between the hives, watching all the work going on at the entrance to each hive. I felt so confident, sure of myself. I knew what to do, how to do it. All my movements among the bees were calm and assured. After a long year of bumbling around, at last, I truly felt like a beekeeper.

As my housemate, Kate, approached for a chat, it was lovely to see her in the sunshine, surrounded by bees flying in back home. And to see her so unconcerned by their proximity was another pleasure.

What was even more lovely though, was to see how she shared my suprised and fierce joy in honey - our very own honey, from our very own hives! It's truly amazing that we've become so urbanised that we've forgotten the intense satisfaction and pleasure we get from harvesting our own crops, from seeing how the honey makes its journey through nature, through the flowers and bees and wax and comb, into our jars and onto our dining tables.

It reminded me poignantly of my promise to myself so many years ago, on coming to the UK, on journeying to a new life. I made a promise that I should know where to look for joy - I knew that I had to look for simplicity and authenticity in my life, in my every experience.

I seem to have found it in this simple, pleasurable craft, full of complexities and mysteries, filled with challenges and achievements. Here is the life I wanted for so long. It crept up on me and when I turned around, I fell into it without even noticing.

Here it is - peace and happiness, and balance, at last.

... And AGAIN!

Gazumped again!

I came in from shopping and all was quiet in the garden. I turned away to make a cup of coffee and when I turned back, tray in hand, all ready to go out into the garden with my newspaper and coffee and put my feet up for a well-earned rest, the air was filled with thousands of swarming bees.

Not again!

I went into the Itchy Knee hive and brutally destroyed every single Queen Cell I could find. I felt savage and cruel and terrible and sad, but resolute. I cannot afford to lose the goodwill of my next-door neighbours.

I left the swarm to settle, knowing that the best time to collect it would be in the evening. When I came back I heard a tiny scratching noise from some of the Queen Cells I'd removed from the hive. As I watched, I saw a young Queen trying to emerge from her cell. I watched her for a while, then destroyed her. It nearly broke my heart, but what else could I do?

I stole a brood frame and a super frame, and spent most of the day clearing honey from them. The brood frame offered up beautiful rich dark honey that tastes of toffee. The super frame yielded lighter honey, delicate and wild-flower flavoured. Some of the jars have gone to 4 of my neighbours, and the others will be for us at home. There is one client I've promised honey to, who shall have his on Monday.

This afternoon Guy and I went out determinedly to rescue the swarm by ourselves, just the two of us. We didn't do quite as neat a job as Ron did, but we achieved it nonetheless. Guy's karate instructor is a new beekeeper, and he and his wife came out to fetch the swarm, neatly wrapped in a box and fabric. They carried it away like a newborn baby. I remember that feeling :)

I've had so many phone calls offering support and help; lots of calls to take the bees. Everything about this craft seems to be about timing; when they swarm, when to call, following the feeling in your bones. Everything at the right time.

Gazumped!

D'you ever get that funny feeling that you're being managed? You know the one - where events conspire to reveal that really - it's not you in charge, but someone (or something) else entirely.

And what about that odd gut feeling you get when you know something's happening behind your back? If you could just peer closer, behind the curtains, you'd see that you're being subverted somehow. And because your timing is just, just infinitismally off, the days and hours slip through your fingers and before you know it you've been most Royally Gazumped.

Well, yes. That's happened to me.

My bees swarmed.

Not only did they swarm; they achieved it in the most spectacular fashion. Let me tell you the story. If you're seated comfortably I'll begin ...

It has been unseasonably cold over the past month. April and May have been filled with rainy patches, cloud, gusty winds and shivering temperatures. In between, here and there a warm moment but in the main, it has been cold. So I have stayed away from the bees. I didn't want to worry them. I didn't want to expose them to the chill. And of course I knew they wouldn't swarm - because everybody told me so.

However I never realised how dangerous this particular time of year can be in beekeeping terms. It seems that now is the time for healthy colonies to expand at a massive rate. And quietly - covertly, sneakily - that is what my Itchy Knee colony has been doing, completely unbeknown to unsuspecting innocent little old me. Under all those hive layers they've simply boiled up from the brood box into the brood-and-a-half super and birthed babies at an alarmingly fast rate.

Now don't get me wrong, I've been worried, alright. On Tuesday evening after work I snuck down to the hive and lifted the roof carefully. A satisfying ZUMMMMMMMMMM response was heard and I thought "ah, ok, all is well. They're not planning to swarm." Ha bloody ha! That day - that VERY day - those little tarts were planning an exit; were ready to go; were in fact probably already on the way out. Did I notice? Did I deign to look right at my neighbours hut or apple tree? No, of course I didn't. Silly me, after all. Why would I?!

On Wednesday morning I sat blithely in my tiny attic room looking down with naive satisfaction at the garden, at the neighbour's tree, all over the place. Revelling in the early morning sunshine. Just like those sneaky little girl-bees. Already out on the town, they were.

But let me tell you, I was STILL worried. I had wondered - all week - if I shouldn't just sneak some time off work and come home to do a Hive Inspection in the heat of midday. But I didn't . Mea culpa.

Last night I came home after an earth-shattering day at work, in which we had to do a partial evacuation of 46 shops because of a bomb alert which closed the whole of Piccadilly in Mayfair. Earth-shattering I tell you. And because I've been feeling quite ill - just slightly off my game with a head cold - I just climbed into my pyjamas and headed for bed with a bowl of Curiously Cinnamon and an Artemis Fowl comic book. 15 minutes later the front door bell rang.

When I opened it and saw Anu and Vic standing there, my heart sank. "Oh no, the drains have gone again" I thought. They looked incredibly tentative and Anu said, "I have this little problem." Vic said, "come and look at what is in our tree." And then I knew. Oh dear god! Of all places to go, they chose my delightful; my favourite; my nicest of all my neighbours. The ones with a little child - a young daughter. Two weeks before, when I discovered that Guy had told them we keep bees, I was seriously upset. But without a doubt,it was the best thing that could've happened.

Because last night when they came to tell me they had a swarm of bees in their apple tree, they weren't angry. They were a little frightened, to be sure, but on the whole they were genuinely intrigued and fascinated. Vic had spent hours watching the bees crawl in their thousands across the top of their garden shed, mould into 4 separate and distinct "balls" of bees then gradually morph into a huge, tight column of bees hanging from a thin branch on their tree. His young daughter too seemed fearless and filled with the wonder and magic of it all.

At first I thought, "perhaps it's not my bees" and rushed down to look at my hive. But the hive told me nothing. And when I stood in my garden and looked over at the weird phenomenon hanging in the tree, I knew. Of course they were mine! Of all the thoughts rushing like hurricane waters breaking over the levees of New Orleans, the largest looming were "Oh dear! Oops! Oh no!" Except there were swear words. Lots of 'em. Big ones. Rude ones. I felt mortified. I'd let 'em slip by me; slip past me, get away to do the one thing I'd feared the most. Upset the neighbours. Except - through all the shenanigans of last night - it appears that they weren't too upset. I have been blessed with awesome neighbours. Lucky, lucky, lucky.

And lucky above all else that my bees had the sense to settle close by, so I could catch them, retrieve them, leash them, and bring them back to where they rightfully belong - in a new hive box at the bottom of the garden next to Itchy Knee.

Of course my first call was to Ron, my mentor, whose first worry was a ladder. "A ladder!?!?" I remember thinking. "That's the LEAST of our worries!" Ha! Thank God for Ron and his ladder. He made the whole retrieval process so simple and so quick, he had the bees down in a beer box in about 10 minutes flat. He had a fascinated audience that comprised:

• 4 fascinated neighbours peering out from their kitchen window. My photos show them all smiling huge white teeth grins from ear to ear, absolutely fixated by the amazing things going on in their garden,
  
  
• 2 papparazi (my parter, Guy and my housemate, Iurdana, who is a professional photographer) yelling "Margo, Margo, over 'ere Margo; give's a wave for punters!"
  
  
• Quiet Kate, also grinning from ear to ear,
  
  
• and me. Boy, I bet I was the most entertaining Busy Bee of the lot. I flapped, and I flitted around, and I panicked, and I fretted. I remembering running round in circles thinking "right, we need a super. Ok, wait, frames first. Oh wait, hang on bee suits. No wait, what happened to my hive tool?! Oh dear, the smoker. Where's the matches? Calm down, Margo, think. Wait hang on ... aaaaaaaaaaargh!" I managed to spread the contents of my Bee Cupboard throughout the house in the space of 15 minutes in an absolute panic. It took me 2 hours to gather everything back into place again after things had quietened down.
  
  It seems, dear readers, that I'm not very good at dealing with bee-stress :)

However, as you will see from the delightful picture gallery below, with the help of my good friend Ron and my beloved partner Guy (who built a roof for the new hive in 3,25 minutes flat in time for the bees' arrival in their new hive), this story has a Happy Ending.

It just goes to show that - with bees - You Never Can Tell, But You Can Always Expect A Surprise.

The second hive is called San-Shi, in the grand tradition of Japanese Counting and Margo Illogicalisms.

The swarm in the apple tree next door ....













See the swarm in the tree behind him?



















This box is no longer for BEERS; it's for BEES


















With a hop and a skip under the fence we go












Margo trips and nearly drops 10,000 confused bees














We are all beekeepers now












THUMP! Into the new hive they go ....

.... rummaging around down through the crownboard

Bad Day?

Had a bad day with your bees? Consider then, poor John Cleese, trying to deal with Rowan Atkinson in this delightful sketch:

On Beekeeping

Moi? Oh, just another crap day at the office, thanks