The Bond Between Us

When you start out in beekeeping, you think in terms of weeks and months. You think you'll get bees within weeks, honey within months, and lots of other immediate results. As you go along all your time horizons change as you begin to realise (sometimes with a bit of a sinking heart, other times with a joyful sense of lifelong commitment) "oh my god, this is going to take years!"

In general it takes 18 months to 2 years' working with your first colony before you can expect to harvest honey. It takes at least 3 years before you have experienced a single full cycle in the life of a bee farm. It takes a decade before you can truly say you have some knowledge and experience as a beekeeper (well, that's my perspective - from where I stand, after nearly 3 years of this stuff). And there are people I've met who have been beekeepers for thirty years and say they still have things to learn about bees.

So as a novice, part of your learning is the acquisition of patience. When I lost my bees earlier this summer, I truly expected I would not have bees again until next year. But I reckoned a year of waiting would be only a blip in the life of this beekeeper. I was resigned to waiting; content to work on cleaning up the gear, restoring a bit of order to my equipment, realigning the space I work in - my "bee space".

But once again I have been confounded by the magic.

Off I went, four weeks ago, to do my bit as a volunteer in the Bee Hut. This is where we gather once a month in the summer - ostensibly to stock up on supplies - but actually to get together and have a good old anorak-y sort of catch-up, like a bunch of gleeful trainspotters in green overcoats with grubby notepads firmly clutched in soiled paws. When beekeepers get together we just can't stop talking.

Because beekeeping can be a solitary old sort of activity, when you get two or more beeks together in a room, you'd be hard put to get a word in edgewise. My LSOH (long-suffering-other-half) says we remind him of a bunch of "high country farmers who've been snowed in on their mountain farms for the winter, and just got together down in town for a catch-up". Good one, that!

So there we all were, all the old friends from Enfield, seeing each other again after quite an absence (on my part, anyway, being so far out in Slough now). The volume of chatter completely overwhelmed the lovely low warm buzz of bees just outside. It was marvellous! I do miss them ...

What I love the most about beeks are the stories they bring to the gatherings. Each one has a wondrous new tale about the amazing things their bees have done (or not done). I follow the narrative of each beek's travails - successes and failures, losses and gains - with real pleasure. You kind of lose something of your own ego in your wishes and hopes for other people's successes. Definitely a bit of Hive Culture rubbing off from the bees :)

So it's been great to learn that - where last year I had bees and P had none, this year he has three (three!) hives while I have none. Last year I had honey to bring to the Country Show, this year it's his turn. I'm heading off tomorrow to go and see how he has fared; whether he wins the Cup this year. I do hope so!

And when M heard I had no bees, he told me he had a spare nuc; a tiny little start-up hive that he had split off from one of his larger ones, where he'd found a beautiful extra Queen Cell and didn't want to waste it. So he'd taken the QC, and some bees, and set them up away from their original colony in a new little box, to try and make a go of starting up a new colony.

A nuc is a miniature colony - the nucleus of a new one. This one has been created very late in the summer season, and is very small - only established on two frames. So it will have to fight very bravely to be able to survive all the way through winter and begin to thrive again in the summer. It will be a real gamble. "But take it" said M, "take the box and the frames, and only make sure you return my box to me, because I made it myself and it's sturdy and useful."

The generosity of the gift has taken my breath away. If you non-beeks only knew the size of the gift, and the value!

He took me to his secret hideaway, his apiary, and we looked through the nuc. And it is more than I could ever have hoped for. He has marked his Queen - a rare prize for a new beek. This means she has a dab of white paint on her which makes her much easier to spot, and therefore less difficult to kill. Useful for old Regicide-Me! She is marked, clipped (so she can't fly away, either), mated and a proven layer-of-eggs. A gift worth more than gold.

How does one repay something like this? Hard to say, other than to understand one's own role or purpose in the colony - which is to be there the next time someone else needs help, so that I can offer my own resources back to "the colony". I truly hope I'm able to do that, one day.

So the nuc came home with me - there are bees back in my garden, a whole year before I expected it to happen again.

My time horizons have changed once more, and only the Wheel of Fortune can tell whether the bees, well-looked after, will survive the winter; whether P wins the prize; whose colonies will thrive or die in the spring.

Fortunes change as the wheel turns. The only constants are the bees and the beeks, and the bond between us.