From A to Bee (13 page)

For every good day like Monday, there are some days you are just glad to get through, and today is one of those days. It was all going well until the final thirty minutes before I was planning to leave work and I spoke to one of the staff over in Spain (I work for a company that works mainly in the UK and Spain). He stated that more people were being made redundant today and others were taking a pay cut, some for the second time. We must have seen over 75 per cent of our workforce go now. This is a tough recession; this sort of thing obviously gets you thinking.

  As a result of this I missed my first bee association evening meeting due to consoling some of my Spanish colleagues and reassuring some of my English ones. The insecurity these situations bring is incredible. Thankfully, I feel that is where hobbies come in handy, keeping you focussed and as a result keeping you sane. This morning as dawn broke I went up to water my seeds and saw the little green heads of the broad beans poking out along with a couple of sweet peas. Seeing these little signs of life each year always gives me a boost. A sign of the year to come. I cannot wait to use my recently acquired willow poles to train the sweet peas up.

  In the past I have been guilty of being a workaholic, but I can feel a tide of change. These are tough times. Not only the worst recession for a generation, but also coming out of the worst winter in a generation, tends to change your outlook on things. For me it is a time to reassess my work–life balance. It has started with gardening and will continue with beekeeping.

I am feeling quite overwhelmed today after an amazing day. After the negatives of Wednesday where I missed my first bee meeting, today I did manage to attend a frame-building day, which involved about thirty new, slightly rough around the edges, theoretical beekeepers keen to hone their practical skills. I am sure it is simply a way to get new members building frames for the old members!

  It entailed a nice man giving a demonstration on using the basic elements of woodwork to put together a frame for the bees to lay the honeycomb on. Basically you need some wood, which looked like balsa wood, and eleven small nails which hold it all together. You also need strips of wax as well, which already has some hexagon shapes to encourage the bees (though without the wax they would still make exactly the same shape and size!). It felt a little like
The Generation Game
as he was able to build this frame in a little over four minutes and then said 'Over to you'! There we were, all keen and eager to compete for the cuddly toy, gathering the wood, nails and hammers to have a go.

  I did the first one in about ten minutes and felt pretty confident about it but then, on the second, realised that one vital tool was missing from my repertoire – pliers! I blithely nailed the wrong section and then got in a complete mess. I desperately needed pliers to pull out the wrongly placed and protruding nails so I could start again. As I was looking at the mess, I realised that I had also managed to put my hammer right through the wax and therefore left a gaping hole in the middle. Not all was lost however, as apparently the bees would fill in the gap with their own design. Amazing; but sadly I didn't think I would get any further in my quest for the cuddly toy. The other contestants just carried on unperturbed.

  It was quite a chilly morning, and they have been for the last week despite fantastically glorious sunshine throughout the day, but you could see a few bees flying around. The site for this frame-building day was just outside the Reigate Beekeepers' apiary, a fenced-off area containing about ten hives. Every time the sun made an appearance, I spotted a few of them flying down to areas with water – I suppose they were gathering some up to take back to the hive – a lovely sight.

  Towards the end of the frame-building it became evident that something I was wholly unprepared for was about to happen. It was suggested that we might actually pop into the apiary and see if the bees were all right after their long winter of cuddling up together to keep warm. I was completely taken aback as I thought today only my woodworking skills would be tested, not my comfort levels, being surrounded by hundreds if not thousands of bees. On reflection I am quite glad that I didn't know beforehand as I would have been quite nervous.

  Anyway, in for a penny, in for a pound… I saw most of the others had gone to get their bee suits. By that time there was only a small and medium left and they were all jackets, not the full-on body armour protection I had expected to be wearing. Being a not-so-slim 6 foot 5 inches tall, this wouldn't be the best start but everyone was already getting going. Richard, someone I had met at the training course back before Christmas, helped me with the veil which felt distinctly weird to have around my face, and then I was ready to go.

  I looked a complete idiot wearing the medium-sized suit and I felt slightly uncomfortable given the amount of flesh on show, especially the large expanse of back that was left exposed by my suit riding up. I had heard that bees love to land and then walk upwards into dark areas – that was all I needed with a sizeable square footage of rump back skin available for them. I was also wearing jeans which I have heard is a complete no-no when it comes to bees as they just don't seem to like them. Let me assure you that bees do not insist on a dress code, at least I hope they don't, but I hear that the fabric of the jeans is not great for the legs of the bees and they can easily get caught which is not good for either party.

  I was expecting to be given some gloves to protect my digits from attack but all I was given was some of those membrane thin ones akin to what surgeons wear. I couldn't quite believe that these would give me any protection and my hands felt very exposed, but these give you far more control than thick leather gloves, which apparently is far better for the bees.

  If truth be told, I felt a little like a teenager given a jumper knitted by their gran for Christmas that was based on a design for a five-year-old, but too polite to take it off.

  I was put in the same group as Richard, and we were introduced to our mentors, Tom and Maggie. As we were marched in like ants, I quickly took Maggie to one side, who looked less likely to judge than Tom, and subtly suggested that it was like taking a lamb to the slaughter with me dressed in the suit. Maggie, fresh with enthusiasm and bursting with energy, just told me that it would be OK and that, to be honest, it was usually the head and eyes that they went for. She rejoined the group as I tried to digest this last little nugget of information. At least I had a veil so I slowly, rather nervously trudged into the line and wandered into the apiary.

  The first thing that struck me as I entered the apiary was how small it was. There were ten hives in total, meaning that in the height of summer they would house over half a million bees in an area probably about 25 feet by about 20 feet – can you imagine if they all swarmed at once! It seemed almost claustrophobically small given the content within.

  Before I could go much further with this train of thought, Tom went right up to the first hive and took the roof off. Underneath the roof was the cover board, the small wooden membrane that separates the world from the bees. There was no time to be nervous but my mouth was getting slightly dry at this point. Would there be many bees? Would they fly all around me? Would they make a beeline for me? As I went into a trance-like state, Tom kindly asked me to move away from the entrance as I would be right in their way as they flew into and out of the hive. Needless to say I moved out of the way very quickly. Tom then lifted the cover board a fraction to puff some smoke from the newly lit smoker inside. There were a few bees crawling around. Then after a few minutes he lifted the cover board off completely and started to remove the frames. I watched, fascinated.

  Tom was checking the level of stores available on each frame; apparently this was necessary as we might need to feed them until they could start to regularly forage again. As he removed a frame to check it, hundreds of bees would fly into the air. It was an incredible sensation to see thirty beekeepers surrounded by thousands of bees that were coming out of the hives all around us and the sound was immense. The buzzing was incredible, and powerful is perhaps the only way I can describe it. Sitting in the garden on a summer's day and hearing a wasp or bee fly by or nestle into the flower next to you is nothing like the sound of thousands of bees flying around you. I suppose I have just come to terms with opening up one beehive and being surrounded by some bees. Seeing this multiplied by so much for my first time was both mesmerising and terrifying. I was struggling to keep calm and put aside the urge to make a run for it. For all of my thirty-one years I have become very apt at avoiding situations with bees or wasps as I was taught that anything looking vaguely yellow and black is going to hurt you. Here I was surrounded by them and as time went on I started to feel all right about it. I think it helped that everyone around me was in the same situation.

  There were a couple of times when the bees landed on my hands which felt a little too close for comfort. I suppose, on reflection, it is similar to having a small spider crawling over your hand with that ever so slight tickling sensation as they wander around. Like with the spider, it is only the visual aspect of it that makes the tickling sensation more apparent and, in my case I was very thankful when they decided to fly off elsewhere. Throughout the whole session I was convinced that I could feel something crawling up my back, which can only be because of my rather small bee suit and the mental tricks it was playing on my mind. I must have looked quite strange constantly pulling down my bee suit over my back. Another strange sensation was seeing a bee crawl right in front of me, across the veil, millimetres from my nose. I felt like that cartoon dog when the bee lands on its nose and its eyes go crossed keeping sight of it. I have not crossed my eyes since I was about seven years old, which was only a matter of fun and I was trying to impress a girl. Here I was, as an adult, staring cross-eyed at a completely different female form and feeling equally stupid in the process.

  The twenty minutes or so we spent inside the apiary, although uncomfortable at times, were utterly compelling and really captivated me. A lot of what I had learned on the course fell into place at that point. Suddenly I could understand the differences between the hives; we went through a WBC, a National and a polystyrene one – apparently these always get the bees started early in the year as they manage to keep the bees warmer in winter, but are a nightmare to clean, though they are a lot cheaper. It really helped me understand the fact that the bees all cuddle together to keep warm, to learn about the honey stores and where they are, about the capped egg cells, what a queen looks like… I could keep going and going.

  Once I had struggled out of my bee suit, relieved I hadn't been stung – in fact nobody had – we went through the crucial skill of lighting a smoker. If it goes out mid-inspection I can only imagine the chaos as the smoker is there to calm the bees down. It makes them feel that the hive is on fire and so they concentrate on gathering stores to leave the hive rather than attack whoever is entering their hive. After a while they realise that the smoke has gone and they go back to normal. However, if a beekeeper is still checking through a hive I would imagine it to be quite fun and the bees may get a little feisty. This is why it was a really useful skill to learn and one I will be pleased to get under my belt. As far as I am concerned, the smoker is as much a part of beekeeping as the hive and the suit. It is almost synonymous with the hobby and so I was glad to get the chance to light one. I thought it would be easy but alas, no.

  First of all you have to pack the smoker with paper and get it lit. This is all fine and relatively easy as long as the match stays alight. The fire can get going pretty quickly and is soon burning outside of the small stainless steel smoker. Then you have the skill of adding a fuel to the smoker to keep it burning for a period of time. The trick, however, was not putting in too much in order to keep the fire alight, but enough to emit this beautiful smoke which would be important for the hive inspection. Several people put in too much which extinguished the fire immediately despite desperate attempts to get the fire going. Others would only put in a small amount and never get it smoking. It was a fine balance getting it right and a real pleasure when you had done so.

  It is a wonderful contraption with bellows doubling up as handles which, when squeezed, force air into the chambers and puff smoke out of the funnel at the top. Whoever came up with the design deserves a medal. To get the small fire going we used cola nut shells, which smelled amazing and apparently when burned emit a 'cool smoke'. I never knew there was a difference personally – I thought smoke was smoke! Apparently a great variety of substances can be burned to make the smoke. These include cardboard and dry twigs, but these emit a hotter smoke and can even send out sparks as you squeeze the bellows. Not great I would think for the bees' well-being or temperament!