Everything was ready for the arrival of my new beekeeping lodgers, Yvonne and Sharron (see Plot Developments 26 July 2025).
The hive-stand had been cleared of overgrowing weeds and I had checked that it was straight, square and even, using a builder’s level. Paths were strimmed and rotovated and almost passable to walk over without risk of turning an ankle.
Crimmens, that rotovating was a back-breaker! I haven’t tried to use one of those machines for about 20 years and I had forgotten what a handful they can be. My wife warned me before I started that I was far too old for this job and she was right. Controlling the brute over rough ground while the tines mashed the soil was like wrasslin’ a ‘gator. I couldn’t keep going for more than 10 minutes without having to stop for a breather. Eventually, I asked our older daughter to lend me a hand or two. She took hold of the handle on the right-hand side of the machine, controlling the throttle lever, while I managed the one on the right with the clutch. Even though we were then side by side like a pair of pit ponies, the machine was still dragging us across the ground out of control.
“Isn’t this exactly the kind of effort that brings on a heart attack for a man of your age?” she asked. “Doesn’t it carry the same kind of risk as shovelling snow?”
“No, no, it’ll be fine,” I said, not entirely convincing myself.
A similarly cautionary picture took shape when the beekeeping ladies arrived with their new hive in the back of their car. I tried to help them carry some of the boxes up to the hive stand.
“Let me take that,” said Sharron, as I picked my way over uneven ground.
“No, I’ll be fine,” I said, just before staggering sideways like a drunk and almost losing my balance.
“Here, let me take it,” she insisted.
These younger hands seem to have arrived not a moment too soon.
It was touching to see how new and pristine were all their frames and boxes and how beautifully they had assembled and painted their hive. I normally lash on dark green Ducksback Cuprinol so sloppily that I deposit more on my overalls than on the wood. The ladies’ painting was as perfectly applied and completely drip-free. Is that what you get from a lifetime of putting on make-up?
It was also touching to see how fresh and ingenuous were their fears and uncertainties about the venture they were undertaking. “We’ve made the boxes,” said Yvonne “but we don’t seem to have provided an entrance for the bees.” They hadn’t realised that, when you put a brood box on top of a frame containing an open-mesh floor, it automatically creates an entrance.
They had also made an error, adding rounded bars to the bottom of the super (honey) boxes so that they would stand proud of the brood box rather than fitting flat. They couldn’t exactly explain why they had done this. “Oh dear,” said Sharron, eventually, “we are silly billies.”
Also in the back of the car was a pair of plastic chairs which they intended to set out in front of the hive to give them a leisurely view of their bees coming and going. This gave me the opportunity to regale them with the story, from my early days of beekeeping, of the time I set up a kitchen stool in front of my hives to watch my bees through binoculars.
Returning in warm Spring sunshine from my daily walk in the woods with our dog, I had stopped beside the hive to observe the activities. The entrance was abuzz with busy bees whizzing in and out. Many appeared to be bearing pollen in a yellow that I would describe as primrose-coloured, though I am hopeless at distinguishing subtle shades of colour beyond telling the difference between black and white.
Moreover, my eyesight is not so needle sharp as once it was and I couldn’t exactly make out which pollen the incoming bees might be carrying. I wanted to know if it might be early gatherings from the newly opened oilseed rape about a mile and a half from our house; or whether it might, perhaps, have come from the flowering broom around our garden.
Then I had the idea. If I fetched a kitchen stool from the house and a pair of pocket-size, low-powered binoculars, I should be able to focus down on the entrance sufficiently to see an enlarged image of my beloved little friends and their interesting burdens. I reckoned I would position the stool roughly at the same distance where I had been standing to watch – about 10 or 12 feet. Surely, from that far away, I should not need to protect myself with suit and gloves (in any case, how would I see through the binoculars if I wore my veil?).
I returned to the hive from the house carrying not only the stool and the binoculars but also with a couple of full bin bags to chuck into the wheelie bins which were then standing near the hive. Perhaps it was the loud bang of the dustbin lid when it fell which annoyed the bees. However, I wasn’t aware at that moment of any impending trouble.
Placing the stool directly in front of the entrance and with the sun at my back, I unwound the lanyard around the binoculars and then went to sit down and raise them to my eyes. No sooner had I lifted the binoculars, however, than the little demons were on me in a mass attack. One had stung me on the side of my nose before I could even leap off the stool, drop the binoculars and run away.
They came after me as sprinted for the safety of the house, wildly flapping and flailing. One got under my open collar and stung me on the collar-bone. They were so furious, I thought they were going to follow me into the house.
“So the message is….” I concluded to the ladies
“…we shouldn’t put our chairs in the way of their flight path,” said Yvonne, as if she might have heard the story before.
They didn’t quite roll their eyes but I sensed them thinking, “Is this the kind of thing we’re letting ourselves in for?”