From A to Bee (10 page)

It has been two days and I still haven't heard anything! Not even one miserly hello! Have the bees disappeared? Has he not picked up my 'tweet'? I feel like I have taken one step up the ladder of being a beekeeper only to have fallen off and landed on my backside.

  I have to get in contact with him somehow. I mentioned it to a local beekeeper that I have got to know, Adam, who incidentally came to my attention by commenting on my blog and later we found out that he will probably be teaching me the practical side of beekeeping with the Reigate Beekeepers: a nice coincidence. He said that gaining a nuc of bees from people you don't know can be a dangerous thing to do because you won't know their history or what type of honeybee they are.

  What type of honeybee? I thought it was quite simple. There were honeybees, bumblebees, and solitary bees. I now find out there are hundreds of different varieties within this set-up. Note to self: must read up on this pretty quickly!

As a tall, spotty youth, frustrated by the fact that my mum still cut my hair at the age of fourteen, resulting in a rather embarrassing kiss-curl in the middle of my forehead, Valentine's Day was always a tense occasion. There was always a nervous wait as the postman walked down the path and I would secretly watch him each year. This did stop after the year I got overexcited at a card actually being delivered to me which wasn't from my Nan. I opened it in a fit of joy as only a teenager could who had never before received a real Valentine's Day card. Imagine my additional excitement when it wasn't signed with a question mark but a name. I could work out the word 'Tiger' in a scrawl which temporarily got me even more excited until I realised that this was the name my best mate gave to his three-year-old sister. I made a pact never to look for a postman on Valentine's Day ever again.

  I will admit to a little twinge of excitement yesterday though as the post dropped through the letterbox. I saw a large A4 envelope with my name on it and the small postmark of the BBKA (British Beekeepers' Association) but have only just had the chance to actually open it and peer in. I applied for membership a few weeks ago now and so this must mean that they have been mad enough to actually accept me as a member. The welcome pack included the following:

Now I have to say that it was lovely to receive this through the post but, if I am completely honest, I feel a little let down by it. Now that may sound harsh, but I mean it from a constructive perspective. It is obviously a very historic organisation (founded in 1874, it states on the paperwork) but the impression I get from this information is that it is still run by those historic methods.

  The indicators of this include: photocopied sheets of paper, advertising leaflets that you can send off for (they do state it is available on the website but only small and at the bottom) and the
BBKA News
, which is simply words and no pictures. The information is fantastic but it isn't particularly inviting.

  Now, we are all aware of the explosion in beekeeping at the moment. Surely this is the time to update methods and publications. I am sure that the new member coming forward will be like me, a slightly younger demographic (based on the evidence so far it stands true) and one that is not yet experienced in the art of beekeeping. Therefore, the
BBKA News
especially needs to be more inviting and readable, and ultimately needs to look after the new beekeepers that won't have the faintest clue what they are doing.

  I am thrilled to be learning how to be a beekeeper and I am sure there are many others out there who are as well, but let's bring it up to date and introduce it to a new generation. It is always better to start at the grass roots, isn't it?

I am sitting here in the study, looking outside and feeling a little bit guilty.

  This weekend was 'cut the willow' weekend. We have had a huge, beautiful willow dominating our garden. It was beginning to look like Sideshow Bob from
The Simpsons
and needed a haircut. My guilt is due to the fact that honeybees (and other foragers for that matter) love willow for early season nectar, something I never knew before. I didn't even realise that trees were a really important part of the honeybee's diet! My only justification was that I haven't any bees yet so next year they will love some new, fresh growth.

  I had got some quotes before Christmas from local tree surgeons which were extortionate for what I saw as a small job: reduce the willow by a third. Looking back on the day, I now realise why they charge so much money. In my infinite wisdom I instead called on Bob, my next-door neighbour, a legend of a man who all men strive to be like. Every weekend he is outside with his chainsaw cutting up wood and alternating every so often with his gigantic axe. His downtime is spent fixing his equally humongous Land Rover with a V58 engine or maybe just tinkering with his runabout tractor (he doesn't own a field but just loves tractors). He goes to the pub for a Sunday afternoon pint at 4 p.m. every week and is the genuine article: a 'bloke'.

  He very kindly offered to help me out as he knew a bit about trees and so he would do the difficult bit – climbing it and chopping it back – and I would do the easy bit, the clearing up down below. It all started well, though Bob started to get 'wobbles' three-quarters of the way up, which put me at ease a bit while doing the real job of raking up the fallen branches.

  Anyway we made good progress and got most of the job done before Bob could go on no more and it was getting dark. He did work ridiculously hard. So 90 per cent of the tree is now cut. If the bees are quick, they might still get something. I put some money behind the bar at our local pub for Bob's 4 p.m. pint by way of a thank you and now I just have to finish all the tidying up.

  Willow is not the easiest thing to tidy up. As soon as it sees a bit of open, bare skin, it decides to whip you – invariably across your cheeks. Not exactly a pleasant experience especially as there is so much of it. I hope I survive the clear-up without too much pain. Bob, chainsaw in one hand, other manly equipment in the other, sloped off to the pub and a nice open fire. I gently put my rake in the shed, sat in its doorway, looked up at the stump of tree and, while having a cup of tea, contemplated the honeybee and the fact that I had just said goodbye to their spring forage. Sorry, bees.

  It was only then that I saw Jo carrying Sebastian out of the front door, woolly hat firmly in place as it wasn't exactly warm outside. As she turned to walk towards me sitting there with my cup of tea, I could see Sebastian wildly gesticulating towards the front gate. It became apparent given the very evident noises of a chainsaw that he was making, along with his frantic waving as he approached the gate, that it was Bob he was after as he walked down the road in the general direction of the pub. Fathers with rakes just don't cut the mustard against neighbours with chainsaws, even to toddlers. Having my last, slightly cold sip of tea, I went to join them bidding Bob farewell.

It was a proud moment for me today. I returned home from work and as I opened the door to the house I could see Jo and Sebastian waiting for me at the top of the stairs. Jo had a lovely smile on her face and just said, 'Go on Sebastian, what noise does a bee make?' Sebastian looked up at Jo a little bemused as if not sure what was being asked of him. You could then see a little light bulb moment as he turned to face me. A little discernible 'buzz, buzz, buzz' came out of his mouth and his face lit up with a gigantic smile. Funny, isn't it, how small things can make a parent so proud; here was my sixteen-month-old son making a buzzing noise and no matter how bad a day I might have had I now felt on top of the world. I rushed up the stairs to give him a great big slobbery kiss and a longer tickle than normal.

  Something else happened today: Steve Freeman wrote back to me, and I now feel incredibly guilty for hounding him. The reason he wasn't getting back to me was because his eldest child was in hospital and it's also the reason why he wants to give up his bees. Despite the fact there was no way of me knowing this, I still feel terrible and I have to take my foot out of my mouth. I apologised as I think Steve took my enthusiasm (and looking back, frustration) the wrong way. My naivety has shown through like a beacon of light especially in the online world of Twitter where all your comments can be seen by everybody and 140 characters doesn't give you a lot of time to explain your comments! I don't suppose messages like 'Hello Steve, are you there? I am dying to hear from you' or 'Hello Steve, have you disappeared?' are too rude but when you put them in context with what he is going through, it probably wasn't the most sensitive of things to write. I think I can rule out getting bees from him now as I could tell from the text he had written that I had really annoyed him. I didn't dare ask him if I could still have his bees.

  Even so I go to bed a very proud father.

One of the lessons I was taught during the beekeeping course was to speak to your local beekeepers. At some point, because of the fact that your bees will be flying up to 3 miles to collect food, there will be the inevitable mid-air collisions, turf wars and bees getting jealous of each other's queens being prettier than theirs. Perhaps, more seriously, speaking to local beekeepers is out of politeness, communication and support networks. However, the most important reason is to know the local issues that may affect your bees and what their bees are doing – whether there are any local diseases, what the honey flow is like – and simply to avoid any surprises. I might also ask them to tell me about the local crops to avoid another field spotting road trip.