The adventures in beekeeping began. It all started with the gift of a beehive, a very good friend had considered keeping bees several years ago and was bought a hive as a present. His bees never arrived and when he was moving house, the empty unused beehive needed a new home. It came to Bluebell Cottage.
The hive sat in the corner of my office for several months whilst I wondered what to do with it.
“Did I really want bees? Did I have time? Did I want to get stung?”
Eventually, I signed up for an online beekeeping course to find out if beekeeping was really for me. After six sessions we had covered what bees were, how bees worked and importantly, how to keep those precious bees alive.
Now theory is all well and good, and you can learn a lot from pictures on a screen – when asked what I could identify on the screen during one of the lesson tests I had answered bees, then when pressed for more detail, lots of bees?, but I still didn’t know if when confronted by thousands of bees buzzing around my head I was going to remain calm or run a mile. I was about to find out as part of the course meant going into the apiary and spending time with the bees. It also included my very own beesuit, an item of clothing that can never be described as flattering.
Off I went to the apiary, excited and terrified at the same time. It was at this point I wondered if I was allergic to bee stings. Oh well we may find out later. I felt slightly sorry for these very experienced bees going about their daily business unaware that 10 complete novices were about to invade their space. Our beekeeper mentor approached the hive and said “right somebody take the top off”. The first volunteer eagerly stepped up remove the top and stepped back again. So far no bees apart from the few a buzzing around wondering what on earth were doing. Next came the removal of the crown board, essentially releasing the bees. Another volunteer was requested and you can imagine my surprise as I realised everyone else had taken several steps back leaving me nearest the hive, so in I went. It was at this exact moment I started my new habit of talking to bees.
After we’d all had an opportunity to remove a frame, describe what we could see and carefully replace it, we closed up the hive, job done. And best of all nobody got stung.
As we were leaving the apiary we were told to go away and decide if this was for us and if so we could arrange to get some bees from the group in the next few weeks. As I sat in the car ready to drive home I had decided…
I was going to be a beekeeper
