It is what it is

Taking note of the clever system my fellow beekeepers had used to harvest their honey, I went out foraging for similar trays.  It was an expensive outing because I discovered I've been living near two superb Garden Centres.  I spent a fortune - on secateurs, gloves, wellies, plants, books and all sorts of accessories, before I actually found the £5 trays I was looking for.  Expensive but, dear reader, I gloried in it!  

And on the way home I found a Pick-Your-Own-Fruit Farm in Iver - how on earth did I miss that in the two and a half years I lived in Slough!?  So I came home with more plums than you could shake a tree at.  It was a glorious hour spent wandering through the orchards, and I took some gorgeous photos of bees and wasps squelching through the plums together with me.

 I drove the long way up to Paula's once more, and together we made ready for the harvest.  She bought the alcohol, I dressed up once more in my whites.  We tested the little wheelbarrow for weight by putting me in it.  Picture this if you can - two curvy ladies, a little tipsy, one pushing the other around the garden in a wheelbarrow, which eventually fell over and threw me out.  Yet another bruise to add to my magnificent tomboyish summer collection!

Then I made my way into the hive, and used Peter's great system to brush off each frame and plonk it into the empty super waiting between two potting trays used to cover the super top and bottom from the bees and wasps.  Paula took the pictures.  

The bees were magnificent; so calm and dignified in their bewildered defence of the stores they have worked so hard to accumulate through the summer.   

I've not been stung once this summer which has been hard for me in a way, because the arthritis in my feet and fingers has riddled me with pain and does not bode well for winter.  I keep saying to myself I should pick a bee and squeeze it to death on my skin, forcing a sting.  But I just haven't the heart to do that.  It seems so unfair.

Paula and I finally accumulated two and a half supers of honey and we trundled it out to my car, Miss Plum.  A curious neighbour watched us load it up.  The rich stench of honey swelled in my car for the next two days as I waited my turn to use the Honey Extraction Room at the beekeepers' association.  It hung low, hot and heavy with the smell of ripe old socks, a smell I recognise well as being pollen and nectar extracted from privet.  Not the best honey, they say.

A bee on privet

I met up with Peter on Tuesday evening and he was wonderful; a truly gracious gesture to spend two hours of an evening helping to show me how to use all the clever little innovations installed in the Extraction Room.  It made extraction easy - particularly the electric extractor.  

What a pity then, that I left the spigot open on my honey bucket!  We groaned as we looked down and saw a little pool of golden honey collecting on the newspaper spread over the floor under the bucket.  What a sad waste.

But we caught it in time, and found other buckets, and had finished extracting in 90 minutes.  At home I weighed what I had.  44lb!  

Forty-four pounds.  I had imagined more, but I was more than happy with what I had.   I tasted it.  Yes, it's honey alright.  I'm no connoisseur and find it difficult to discern the subtle differences in honey flavour but I could detect a slight sting at the back of my throat.  Perhaps I'm overly critical of my own produce.  I don't know.  I will wait for my customers to tell me ...

The slow and painstaking filtering process was done one warm evening in front of my sliding doors to the garden.  Sticky and sludgy and - of course - caused a huge row with my LSOH (long-suffering Other Half).  

It is what it is.

 Now I sit with a large container of honey and gradually, in the evenings, when the wont takes me, I bottle the honey.  It is taking me a while because other things distract me.  But slowly the harvest season is drawing to a close.  I will have honey, and already I have so many eager buyers I know I have already practically sold the lot.  It is a nice thought, and the money my hobby brings in will be most welcome.

In the meantime, I walk in the mornings across the Ickenham Marshes and collect blackberries and watch the bees working the flowers.  

I have taken many pictures of bees foraging on a wide variety of flora this summer.  

I've learned that it's easier to photograph them on the flat sea of sedum, upon which they move slowly and steadily.  It's harder to picture them on lavender, on which they have to buzz around quickly from stem to stem.  

I've loved the challenge of waiting for them to appear out of the bell-like chamber of the Himalayan Balsam, complete with that white spot of pollen daubed on their backs.  

But I miss taking photos at the Hive entrance.  Entrance - entranced; I've just noticed the word magic.  I used to spend hours entranced at the entrance; watching the bees come and go, with every little miniature drama giving an opportunity for me to focus my lens.  I miss that time out of time, those times I lay in the grass for hours and hours, completely lost and engrossed in their alien world.  I have missed, more than words can say, being out at midnight to watch the magic of the bees fanning the hive.  

I miss having bees at the bottom of my garden.

Sedum