From A to Bee Read online

  JUNE 5

  The bees seem pretty hungry, I have to say. In only twenty-four hours they have been through 1.5 litres of sugar syrup. That seems a lot to me but this is quite normal and still a good sign, as is flying with pollen sacs, and apparently I just have to keep feeding them. Therefore I gave them another 2 litres this morning. It will be interesting to see how quickly they get through that.

  One event today made me realise I have a long way to go. I went up to the allotment for a couple of minutes to see how they were getting on; it must have been about midday and so I knew they would be a little bit busier than during my morning visits.

  There I was standing there in my shorts and T-shirt – it was a beautiful day, the warmest this year so far – and I was just watching them fly in and out. There was a lot of activity and yet again there were a few flying in with pollen sacs, which again was reassuring.

  Every time I have approached the hive I have wondered just how close you should get before you should consider wearing a bee suit. I have come to the conclusion that if you are just watching them you should be OK, and I have also taken the decision not to wear a suit when adding more sugar syrup as there is no direct contact with the bees.

  Today I had a small warning and I think I need to be a little more careful. I was there watching them, about three feet from the hive entrance. It was relatively peaceful until one particular bee decided to fly at me. It is quite disconcerting when this happens, purely because of the sound. Usually it is said that bees buzz at a tone equivalent to a middle C and you can tell when they are a little bit touchy as the tone changes. This little bee stopped about eighteen inches from my nose and just hovered there for a bit pitching at slightly over middle C as if sussing me out. I still wasn't too concerned but this all changed when it decided I was a threat and flew directly at me.

  It was similar to those cartoons when a wasp rears up before then flying straight at the victim. Its speed caught me off guard a little and made me stumble backwards over the loose ground of my allotment. For some reason I also instinctively swiped at the bee with my right hand while trying to stay balanced with the left. I wasn't very successful and this small bee, probably no more than 5 millimetres in length, floored a rather tall human being.

  It didn't stop there and made a beeline (literally) for my head. I immediately jumped up and started running as I heard her go at me for a second and then a third time; my arms were both pumping and wildly flailing as I tried to run away from what I now know to be a guard bee. Their job is to guard the entrance of the hive, which this one was obviously doing very well. It was quite scary, though it must have been quite funny to look at from a distance.

  Suffice to say, I learned my lesson but felt a little bit of a wimp having not faced up to a duel with a bee. I hardly even stood my ground. So we all know who the boss is now!

  JUNE 6

  I paid a visit to Farmer Ray today but took Sebastian for backup. Being the scary guy that he is – in spite of being very nice when I asked if I could keep bees on his land – I felt that he wouldn't verbally or physically abuse a guy with a child on his shoulders and may take pity on me. It's bad, isn't it, that I use my child as a human shield; but then you haven't seen the gun that Farmer Ray carries around with him.

  We approached his gate, which I can just about peer over, and there he was, fast asleep in the sun. I was gutted, I had spent five days building up the courage to walk up the road to speak to him and there he was fast asleep. I needed to discuss the delicate matter of him cutting grass in the field near the hive. The last thing I would need is Farmer Ray allowing me to have a beehive in his field only for them to attack him if he got too close with his tractor. Though they wouldn't hear the tractor they would probably feel the vibrations of it going past and might come outside to investigate. I was going to suggest that I use a strimmer while wearing a bee suit and cut the grass near the hive so he didn't have to.

  I didn't dare wake him and so had just started to tiptoe away when Sebastian, who was about two feet above me and could see considerably more of the garden, shouted 'Woof, woof!' at the top of his little voice. As much as I love his fascination with animals at the moment I have to say that this was not one of those endearing moments.

  In a flash Ray jumped up, grabbed his gun and looked around. I quickly looked away, but not because I didn't want to be seen – there was something altogether more worrying. Farmer Ray spends all day dressed head to toe in blue overalls and a flat cap. I have never, in four and a half years, seen him in anything different. He was now standing there, dazed, flat cap on, but evidently before he fell asleep he had undone the zip on his overalls and the resultant view was something I will never forget. His blue overalls were around his ankles and he was wearing a rather fetching string vest and the most beautifully decorated and colourful Bermuda shorts. In an embarrassed rush he dropped his gun to the floor and quickly pulled up his overalls and then strode over saying, 'Ah, just the man I wanted to see' in a slightly less scary way than ever before. His imposing aura had been quashed. This was now Farmer Ray the 'floral-shorts-wearing farmer'.

  All went well and he was more than happy to see I had taken delivery of the bees, and wasn't too concerned that they would be close to him when he was cutting the grass. It was a great result on many levels. As I was about to leave, Sebastian ran through his gate and started chasing his chickens around the garden. Ray and I started to laugh and I really feel we bonded at that moment. He is really a very lovely man and as I was learning, if you are honest with him, he is more than accommodating. All in all a worthy meeting – and one I shan't forget for some time.

  JUNE 7

  It's pretty horrible outside today now that the weather has turned after three days of absolutely stunning sunshine. In a way, though, it is quite nice as it means that the garden gets watered for you and also gives me a little bit of time to ponder things. With Sebastian put to bed I have a chance to reflect on what it is I have done this last week. There is one problem, however; I have no real memory of what it is exactly I have done with the bees.

  Now this isn't as daft as it sounds because everything has happened so quickly. I know I went to get the bees exactly eight days ago and that I messed up pretty badly giving them the wrong sugar but aside from that I cannot remember exact details. This is why beekeepers always need to fill in what are called 'hive cards'. For people like me who have a memory like a sieve and cannot retain important information for more than an hour, these little cards are imperative.

  I first saw a hive card on the course in the winter and within the hour had forgotten about them. I then saw them again during my practical sessions when I realised that they were actually quite important documents if you wanted to have any record of what was going on. It was dawning on me how important it was to document aspects of an inspection like whether you had seen the queen, how many frames the bees were on, whether you saw any eggs, was there any sign of disease; the list was endless and hence the need for a record. I had, of course, completely ignored their importance and just got on with it. Considering I had received the call last Sunday and then within the hour I had my bees, I was quite underprepared.

  Today I downloaded a hive card and printed a few out and started to use them immediately. You can also get online hive cards that you fill in using your phone, which sounds pretty clever but to be honest, I am not sure of their practical application. I am also not sure what the bees would make of a beekeeper tapping away furiously into his phone in one hand while holding a frame of bees in the other. Can you imagine what would happen if any honey got on the keypad; it would take the term 'sticky keys' to a new level and rather than recording '1' queen I could end up with '111111111111' instead.

  To my knowledge, despite my cock-ups with 'light brown' and 'golden' caster sugar at the start of the week, I think they have gone through at least 5.5 litres of sugar solution, which sounds quite a lot. However, I suppose, if you break it down it may not be so much. Let's assume I
have approximately 5,000 bees now in the hive; that means they would each have taken about a millimetre of sugar solution each… Doesn't sound as much then, does it?

  JUNE 9

  What an interesting evening. Tonight I attended the 'Big Buzz' event hosted by the organic people at Abel and Cole, deemed an 'eccentric bunch' by the founder Keith Abel. Eccentric they may be but I have to say they pulled it off exceptionally well.

  I approached the venue, in the shadow of the beautiful Battersea Power Station, and was met immediately with a choice of Prosecco, white wine or rosé. As I walked through with a nice chilled glass of Prosecco, I was struck by several factors. Firstly, the average age of the people in the room was easily twenty years younger than I was used to at beekeeping-related events, none of them looked remotely like a morris dancer and there was even a jazz band in the room. I have a feeling my association comrades would have fainted by now at the shock of it all as this was hardly the demographic of beekeeper or style of our local meetings and events. It just shows the difference between rural and urban beekeeping trends as well as the scope of interest that the hobby is receiving at the moment.

  It felt slightly weird arriving on my own especially as the others around me seemed a pretty cool bunch – something I had not been expecting – but I was fortunate to bump into a Twitter friend of mine @helpsavebees, otherwise known as Damien, and his guru in the design world, Liz, otherwise known as @mizzlizzwhizz. Damien, in his free time, runs a charity to 'Help Save Bees' and is passionate about everything to do with their plight; he is concerned with all bees from honeybees to solitary bees and, a particular favourite of his, the bumblebee. He therefore raises money to help other charities like the Bumblebee Conservation Trust and generally raises the profile of the plight of the bees to others like myself.

  Being passionate about the topic he really opened my eyes about the situation they all face with regard to the diseases, which are so often discussed at the moment. He also taught me a lot about the problems we are facing with pesticides and neonicotinoids in particular causing great problems with bee populations. There is a thought that neonicotinoids, which are chemical nerve agents used on our crops to control insects, have an indirect effect on bee populations. You could see that Damien was especially passionate about this topic telling me that the pesticides were working their way into the bee ecosystem by infiltrating the pollen and nectar of plants and as a result being taken back to the hive. It is said that neonicotinoids interfere with bees' ability to navigate, which is obviously catastrophic. It was so different hearing it first hand from people that deal with bees and beekeeping everyday compared to reading a book or newspaper article about the problems.

  Anyway, the talks got underway, introduced by the charismatic founder of Abel and Cole, Keith, who started the evening mingling with a glass of wine in one hand and a bottle in the other, filling up glasses as he went, good man. He gave a basic welcome speech and introduced Steve Benbow, the founder of The London Honey Company, a pretty successful business with 850 hives dotted around the country. Steve recounted his own experience of starting out as a beekeeper, including a very funny story about why, in his second year, putting a hive on a barge on the River Thames was not a great idea. Tidal movements caused havoc with the bees' natural GPS systems, it seemed. Imagine arriving home and discovering that your home was 10 metres below where you left it! He discussed his hives that are now placed all around country, including those situated on the roof at Fortnum & Mason, not to mention the roof of the Tate Modern. Hive inspections must be amazing from up there.

  One of the highlights of the evening was the honey tasting. Being a slight 'honey-phobe', this was most interesting because I haven't tasted very much honey, but here Steve had presented four different types on a plate for us to compare and savour.

  I had never really considered honey much before I started all this and certainly hadn't thought about the amazing variety available. I suppose you just get used to seeing honey on the supermarket shelves or at the back of your kitchen cupboards. Before tonight I just thought honey was, well, honey. In front of me were oilseed rape honey, lavender honey, 'urban' honey and heather honey, and the difference in consistency, colour and smell was immediately apparent. Despite the fact they were all on a paper plate and I was about to taste them using a wooden lolly stick, I couldn't wait to jump in.

  Having had a small taste of each of them in turn, in between explanations from Steve, the one that I was most amazed with was the oilseed rape honey. It was the colour and consistency of lard; most unusual and not entirely palatable, and not at all like the taste of honey that I remember so vividly from childhood. The urban honey was far more reminiscent of what I remember honey to be like. As a child I didn't really have a lot of honey but I will never forget the sweet smell as I opened the jar. This urban honey definitely had that distinctive smell I remember, but there was also its consistency. It was a runny honey and had a beautiful golden yellow colour that only added to its appeal when I went on to taste it. I was instantly reminded of the honey I had put on my toast as a child and with all my nostalgic memories flooding back; it couldn't fail to be the winner in my book. I may not have particularly liked honey when I was younger but the memories of putting a knife into a jar of runny honey and seeing it spill out onto the toast, and everything else around me, were good memories. That one taste of urban honey on a wooden lolly stick brought all of these fond memories back to me. I never expected honey to be quite so evocative, and this one moment made all the effort of going to London tonight well worth it.

  Some were treating the event like a wine-tasting evening with discussions all around me along the lines of, 'Oh yes, I get the taste of lavender in there but George, do you get the subtle aroma of lemon as well?' I don't know if it was just because we were in London and whether it was all for show or if they really did detect these tastes but either way it was quite funny listening in.

  Both the urban and lavender honey were surprisingly very runny, like water. By comparison, the heather honey was practically a granular sugary mass but had an incredible taste and texture to it, something I wouldn't have associated with honey previously. I have rarely experienced such an explosion of taste and it was divine.

  Given all the different flavours and textures it left me wondering about my own honey. It is lovely to think I will have honey derived from my own garden. Given the variety of flowers I would think it would be more like an urban runny honey but I am not sure. Maybe another road trip is on the cards at some point to really see what my bees will be foraging on.

  All in all, it was a very entertaining evening and all the more so for meeting up with a few friendly faces. One of them was Alison Benjamin, a columnist for The Guardian and co-author of A World Without Bees, which is a really great resource for anyone who wants to know about the problems bees are facing. I felt a little in awe when I bumped into her but she had seen my blogs and Facebook page (with my review of her book which no doubt helped) so it was a great discussion in the end with someone who is obviously all about helping the bees.

  Suffice to say, well done Abel and Cole. I am going to bed now as it is far, far too late.

  JUNE 13

  I am a man of integrity and honesty and therefore I have to admit I am writing this piece with a glass of rosé to my right (yes, I know, not very 'beekeeping') and a leftover piece of cold pizza (with a bite taken out from a cheeky breakfast this morning) to my left. These are the leftovers from last night's World Cup match between England and the US, a rather disappointing result I have to say. Therefore I thought I would write this watching Australia beat Germany; sadly this is not proving to be the case, however, with Australia 4–0 down and with only ten men left on the pitch!

  What a momentous day. You are meant to leave the bees for a couple of weeks to allow them to start building the colony with the only intervention being constant feeding. After all, they have to build a new home and get the queen laying eggs as soon as possible to keep th
e colony going. Therefore I have done what I am told – there is a first time for everything – and today was the day earmarked to look inside.

  I wanted to film the event for posterity but decided early on that asking Jo to pop up to the hive would not be a husbandly thing to do. Richard from the beekeeping association stepped in. He agreed to help out and film this exciting first inspection of my own bees and generally hold my hand through the experience – absolutely needed, I have to say.

  There are not many things that scare me, and I've been fortunate to have grown up with the confidence to give everything a go. There are two things that have never sat comfortably with me, though. Firstly horses. I am particularly scared of horses. When I was a child, one decided my mop of blond hair looked far too inviting and bit off a huge clump of it thinking it was hay.

  Aside from horses, bees have always held a slight fear and here I was about to open up a hive – and on film. That made as much sense as touching a horse's rear end as I walked behind it.