From A to Bee (4 page)

  I will compare the National hive with the oversized, brightly coloured freezer box. Everyone seems to hate it and so I have to give it a go and see if it really is as bad as everyone makes out. Apparently it is based on an old design called the Dartington hive, but is made out of plastic rather than wood. One thing that is attractive about it is that it is actually two hives rather than one, side by side… But then there is a temptation to have three colonies, rather than two… Help! This is getting addictive!

  The other thing about this Beehaus is its marketing. I have to say I have fallen for its tag line: 'With a Beehaus in your garden, you'll soon be saying "Show me the honey!"' How can I deny a space in my garden for this hive if it promises to produce that single jar of honey I am looking for? I can only imagine the bemusement of my neighbours next year when I am shouting to the bees 'Show me the honey!' at the top of my voice like Tom Cruise in
Jerry Maguire
. As if beekeeping wasn't bad enough, imagine a beekeeper who tries to entice his bees into producing more honey by quoting famous movies at them. Do gardeners do this to produce prize courgettes?

I am sitting here with a nice glass of red wine reflecting on how I never quite realised the long history of beekeeping. At the last session, it was evident that we still use equipment that was introduced back in the 1850s. But man was dependent on the honeybee well before that.

  Back in Egyptian times, the Pharaoh himself was the god of honey and honeybees were seen as teardrops from the sun. Honey was also used as currency by the people of ancient Egypt in payment for land rents, and detailed reports were kept of production and payment: the first evidence of organised apiaries.

  With reference to the UK in particular there is documented evidence dating back to Roman times and then Anglo-Saxon and Norman times of widespread beekeeping. In a rather cold schoolroom we are learning a hobby for fun that for a long time was very, very serious business with large financial, religious and social considerations. I feel a little bit humbled and think that I should be taking this a lot more seriously than I have started out doing.

  It is also quite clear that honeybees have been around far longer than us. And yet now, after many years of exploitation and manipulation to extract as many resources from the hive as possible, the bees are suffering. It makes me feel a little sad to be honest.

While browsing around the Internet for bee-related things, I came across architectural plans for all sorts of beehives and it has got me thinking. Hives aren't exactly cheap and so maybe I could just make myself a hive rather than buy one. It doesn't look too hard to do; after all, essentially it is just a wooden box. The difficult bit looks like it will be the joints – quite fundamental, you might say – and then what they call the open-mesh floor, the bit at the bottom of the hive that the box sits on. It is an open mesh to allow ventilation through the hive but also has some beneficial disease prevention reasons behind it.

  I can be quite sentimental at times and so am thinking about trying to get my father involved; that way all three generations of Dearsleys could be involved in my bee exploits. I have fond memories of helping Dad when I was younger. There he was in his workshop, otherwise known as 'the cold bit at the back of the garage', working bits of wood using an elaborate collection of hand tools – never the newfangled electrical gadgets. He would always have his pipe hanging loosely from a corner of his mouth, smoke just dribbling over the sides. Every so often he would stop, stand upright and, while looking up through the only window, remove his pipe, cupped in the palm of his hand, and exhale a dense cloud of smoke. I loved those times and I thought Dad was the world's leading woodwork expert.

  Well, despite his knowledge of working with wood, if you look up the word 'bodge' in the dictionary, my father's name is there enshrined in history, and so it may not work according to the plans.

  I seem to have inherited this 'bodge' gene, if there is such a thing, but I am working on the principle that two negatives make a positive. Therefore our two bodge characteristics might work together well and we will produce a fabulous-looking hive.

  Note to self: broach this idea with Dad. It would be great fun to do this together.

The hive-building day is on!

  Having loosely discussed the idea, Dad is willing to help out. I wouldn't say he was jumping-over-the-moon keen, but I suppose it isn't every day your son rings to suggest building a beehive together. I have a feeling he is still in shock that his son is becoming a beekeeper. His dreams for many years of me becoming the next champion morris dancer must be slowly ebbing away as I don a different kind of uniform, with no bells in sight.

  We have set a rather random date of 6 March to have it all built as I figure my bees may arrive around that time, since that is when the season supposedly gets going, or so I have been led to believe. It should also give both my father and me time to order some of these plans which are readily available online and then order the appropriate wood to have a few trials. God knows what wood I will use, as again it seems there are many different options and nothing is straightforward. No doubt most of the trials will be complete bodges so I just have to get to a competent level of bodge before Dad and I attempt a final sample over that weekend. It's all very exciting.

It has been dawning on me for a while that beekeeping is a little bit more involved than I first thought. Tonight's session reinforced this as we discussed the beekeeping year. Who would have thought it all revolves around a cycle, the same each and every year?

  It was fascinating to learn that at the peak of the summer there could be 60,000 bees in a hive and yet a few months later these numbers will have reduced to around 5,000. By my own amazing mathematic ability it means that there are 900 more bees dying than being created every day for nearly two months.

  Gradually, as winter turns to spring, the queen will begin to lay eggs and the colony gets going again. Soon she starts to lay towards 2,500 eggs a day; her maximum capacity and more than her own bodyweight in eggs every day. Obviously as a result, the colony expands rapidly.

  As a beekeeper you need to tend the colony once a week, usually about half an hour per hive from May through to September in what is called the peak season; you may check more sporadically in the months of April and October, but only on warm days, and during the winter months you are allowed to enjoy yourself and put your feet up while having honey on toast, under beeswax candlelight while enjoying a glass of mead. Must find out more about mead as it sounds delicious!

  David also mentioned that if beekeepers are really lucky there could be two honey extractions per year. So it's not a constant stream of honey, as I had thought. There could be one in the spring if you have a strong colony coming out of winter and you have a good amount of early flowers or fruit trees nearby. The usual and more expected harvest is in August after the main 'honey flow'. He also said that it was very rare for a first-year beekeeper to have a good crop of honey as the colony may not be strong enough.

  Hmmm… I wonder if I will get any. Just one jar, please!

I ordered some hive plans over the Internet today – all easy to do and very cheap. Something tells me though, having viewed the document online, that it might not be as straightforward as I had previously thought.

My hive plans have arrived. I love the way that the first line says 'competent woodworker required'. I have to say, looking at them, they are not particularly easy. Essentially, all the plans do is provide very exact dimensions, rather than actually telling you how to put the parts together. That is like giving a cook all the ingredients, and then letting them guess how to cook it all. I am not sure how successful I will be at this.

  Having put the plans on the sofa I then watched as Sebastian crawled over and pulled himself up to grab the plans before plonking himself back down on the floor with a thump. In a way that only babies can, he then proceeded to read the plans upside down while trying to eat one side and tearing the other. The bemused look on his face as he was attempting this major feat of childhood mirrored my feelings for the plans themselves. His face was a picture and I knew exactly what he was thinking.