to bee or not to bee

I start with a confession. I am a wuss. I am scared of almost everything and this is particularly troubling because I am interested in almost everything as well. For instance, I like to go surfing....am scared of the water. Love to be making things.....terrified of power tools. So also it is with the bees. Bees are fascinating. What other activity gives you the opportunity to become so intimately acquainted with the life style and habits of an insect. More than that they give us honey, which is very nice. The one sting in the tail is of course the sting in the tail. Now I was always a bit scared of buzzy flying things but last year one of them (from what I like to call the hive of death due to their aggressive nature), managed to get inside my protective bee veil and though she didn't manage to sting me did send me running and flapping about in a frenetic attempt to divest myself. It's taking me a long time to get over the shock of being nose to nose with a chitin clad warrior and so in truth I haven't been able to work my three bee hives since.

Working bee hives is quite important. The idea is you open up each hive and go through it, essentially breaking up the colony only to re assemble it. you check for signs of disease and seeing how they are doing generally but of course the bees just think your trying to destroy their home and so they attack. Given my traumatic experience I hadn't been able to get more than half way through any hive so far this year before I lost courage and ran away. So it was that on a fine sunny day last week I looked up from where I was tinkering with a wind turbine suddenly aware of a loud background hum. I turned round and looked up to see the sky filled with a few tens of thousands of bees. One of my hives was swarming.

Bees are what is known as a super organism. This means that we don't think of the individual bee as an organism in it's own right (cause it can't survive on its own), rather we look on the colony of bees as the organism and like all organisms it wants to reproduce. This is achieved by swarming. Basically a new queen bee is produced and the old one buggers off with half the colony. usually more than one new queen is produced and each successive queen leaves the hive with a chunk of whatever bees are left. This can continue until the hive is abandoned and from a beekeepers point of view is highly undesirable. Fewer bees means less honey and besides with a colony of bees costing about €100 there is no point giving them away for free. Action had to be taken and so shamed by my inaction I donned my new bullet proof bee suit and went in. The problem was I'd let my bees build up their numbers far too quickly and they had run out of room in their hives. As I opened each one I discovered queen cell after queen cell all nearly ready to hatch and take flight. The hive that had swarmed I split to make a new "nuc" hive, the hive of death hadn't swarmed but was also full of queen cells so I broke them down (smashed them to bits), and hive number three needed no action. I patted myself on the back, I had finally managed to get through all my hives and do what I should have been doing since March. Unfortunately this was not the end of the tale.

Two days later coming in the driveway I noticed that the hive which had swarmed was very very quiet. There were no bees to be seen. I went round to the yard to look over the embankment to get a better look without the bother of putting on a bee suit. True there were very few bees outside the hive, but there was a curious hum in my left ear. I turned as if in slow motion and there in-front of me hanging from a branch of a blackthorn hedge was the biggest bunch of bees I have ever seen in my life. Studies have shown that at times of extreme stress, perception can be distorted so I think it's fair to say that the swarm in-front of me was not in fact three times the size of my head. Nor was it a mere six inches from my nose, no these were erroneous perceptions brought about by the fact that I was suddenly scared shitless. If I had run a mile it would have been in under four minutes but as luck would have it I only had to make it to the house. I donned the suit taking care to put extra duct tape over the smallest gaps in the Velcro fastenings. I calmly collected a large blue bucket, a sheet of plywood a ladder and a pair of hedge cutters. I took my time to position the bucket beneath the swarm. I placed and ascended the step ladder. Now I really was six inches from a huge swarm of bees and they were't entirely pleased to see me. Fortunately I'd seen this done on YouTube so it couldn't be that hard. They were suspended from two sapling branches which I cut. Snip, snip, frump, buzzzzzzzz. Quickly I got off the ladder and put the plywood on the bucket. I'd just caught my first swarm. Elated I left them to their own devices and went to inspect the other hives. It was then that I found swarm number two. Smaller and definitely more aggressive these lads I suspect had issued from the hive of death. They had chosen to lodge on a thick branch and so couldn't be snipped off with clippers. They couldn't be sawn off either as I discovered when I tried it. The vibrations drove them mental and they attacked with furry. I thought perhaps a good swing with an ax would break the branch but in the end I just gave it a thump and they all dropped off into a waiting box. Hot bee suit, high stress and just the hard work of it had left me exhausted so I called it a night and left them to settle down but I knew I had some hard work ahead. I had no hives for the swarms to go into and knew I would have to make an early start the next day.

Baby D provided the 6am start and so after a bottle and a nappy change (D not me), I went out to the shed and 4 hours latter had produced two "nuc" hives (a nuc hive is a small hive used for starting colonies off). Persuading my captured swarms to go inside was not however as straight forward as it is on YouTube. In theory you set up your new hive raised a bit above the ground with a plank leading from the ground to the entrance. over this you drape a sheet and then simply chuck your bees in the middle of the sheet. They then spread out until following their natural tendency to go up, they find a nice new hive and start signalling to the rest of the swarm to come inside. It didn't quite happen like that. I heaved them out on the sheet and they gradually bit by bit took to the air and congregated on the corner of a mobile home. I placed the hive on top of the mobile home but they pointedly ignored it and flew off once again to congregate back in the hedge, this time on a sturdy branch. It was about this time that I got my first bee sting. What a relief, I didn't drop dead from anaphylactic shock. It was about this time

also that help arrived in the form of Mark whom had been assigned to me as a kind of bee mentor. It has to be said the local association here is brilliant. With Marks help we housed both swarms and checked all my hives again for queen cells. As I stood beneath the hedge while Mark got up a ladder and shook bees down to the hive I was holding in my hands I took a moment to reflect that at the start of that week I hadn't been able to look at a bee hive and here I was with angry bees raining down on my head, crawling all over me and filling the air around me. I had finally channelled my iner bee keeper, gone from three colonies to six and I was still looking ok for getting some honey. What a week

Is it not better to surf than live life entirely on dry land due to an irrational fear of drowning? Is it not better to tinker with wind turbines regardless of the risk of arc eye or angle grinder injury? Bee keeping is tough work. There are stings and swarms and angry bees buzzing and bouncing off your head. Bee suits are hot and claustrophobic and exhausting to wear on a hot summers day. and there's allot of heavy lifting, smoke in your eyes and sore backs from all the stooping over to look in a hive. But despite all that it's a fascinating thing to do and you do begin to love your bees so I suppose the question is, is it not better to bee than not to bee?