To Bee or not to Bee. A.E. Staniforth.

To Bee or not to Bee.

A.E. Staniforth.

I don’t know when I first became interested in bee keeping. I know it was before I started senior school, probably about the age of ten, but with school work and not knowing a bee keeper it got forgotten.

I was probably in my late twenties when the interest reappeared; I found a book in the library, Me and the Bee, or how not to keep bees, and that was it. With the return of my interest came a problem, how do you start beekeeping, I knew nothing about the subject or where to find out what I needed to know. Idea, find the local Bee Keepers club, after all there must be one. After enquiring at the library and various other places, I eventually found that they held a meeting once a month at the YMCA.

I arrived at a meeting, and discovered not only was I welcome, but I was almost dragged in. Membership had been falling, and any new convert was welcome. Not only that I had come just at the right time, ‘Spring’. The Bee Keeping year was just starting.

I was introduced to the secretary, treasurer, chairman, and the rest of the committee, and then to about a dozen other members. Had I any bees’, and if so how many colonies. No, I was a complete novice, and being so I was immediately drowned under a flood of advice, including the fact that a local beekeeper was selling up.

Well talk about striking gold, there was three colonies for sale, and was I interested? Of course I was, but first where did I get the rest of the gear. Hat and veil, smoker, hive tool, just what was for sale?

As it happened most of it from the retiring beekeeper. The only problem was the colonies were in WBC hives. (That’s the type you see on adverts.) Not the best sort for transporting, as my wife found out. We had blocked the entrances and strapped each of the hives down so that they wouldn’t come apart in transit, but loading them into the car, one did, and guess who got stung, not me.

Once in the car it was amazing, the bees lost interest in us and took a great interest in looking out of the windows. (I’m glad the police didn’t stop us, though I rather think one look, and it would be keep the window closed and on your way.)

One hour later three hives sat at the bottom of our garden, and I was a bee keeper looking for somewhere else to put them.

An out apiary away from the public was what was needed, and a local farmer provided the required site. (At this time I didn't feel my neighbours would appreciate three colonies of bees’ flying from my small garden.) Now it was a case of moving them again. Where I was working provided the answer. There was a fully equipped joinery department, and the manager was persuaded to provide three National hives. (These are the square box types, easier to transport.) Now the bees could be safely moved to their new homes in their new location.

Once settled in their new location I was able to have a proper look through my new pets. The old beekeeper I had bought them from had told me as due to ill health he had done very little with them the previous year, and now looking in the first hive one frame of bees at a time I could see the result. It was obvious that the bees had struggled to survive over the winter, but there was a queen and she was laying. The second hive was in a similar state while the third looked to be queen-less.

With no queen laying eggs, the colony was doomed, Left as it was and it would slowly die out. Action was required; this colony had to be combined with one of the two others. Never having done this before, and not having anyone experienced in beekeeping with me I resorted to what I had read in ‘Me and the Bee,’ and it worked, I now had one reasonably strong colony.

Being new to beekeeping and enthusiastic I was once more looking around for another colony to replace the lost one.

An out apiary meeting. (Where the owner of the bees goes through some of their hives while others watch.) Solved my problem. She had put to one side a hive that looked to be working well, and as she told me, it was for sale.

£15 a lot of money in those days but the way the bees were working it looked worthwhile so £15 exchanged hands on the stipulation that she delivered it.

Right on time she arrived with the bees on a trailer and then it was a drive out to my out apiary where we suited up. (I assumed just in case of accident.) And from there we proceeded to carry the hive the hundred or so yards from the lane to set it on the milk crate I had provided. (Milk crates were very useful for standing a hive on.)

I should have suspected something was wrong when as she pulled the tape off the hive entrance she said Run, and she did, and so did I. Those bees came out of that hive like treacle, circled the hive once and followed us en-mass back to the car, and then another two or more hundred yards down the lane before we could stop and get out to take off our hat and veils.

“They tend to get a bit stroppy when they’re locked in to move them.” She told me. “They’ll be alright when they settle down.”    

Settle down? The next weekend when I went to see how things were working out those bees met me at the car door. Not just met me but landed tail first. They were stroppy, no not just stroppy they were permanently angry.

Those bees taught me a lot, like suit up before you get out of the car, and that nasty bees are productive, or at least these were. I say nasty, they were on a farm possibly a hundred yards from the lane but within ten feet of the field. The farmer walked his dogs along that lane, he worked in the field and the bees never bothered him or his dogs.

I took another beekeeper to look at them, we were in his car and by the time he shut his car door after getting out he had been stung. Not once but three times. I had those bees for three years, until one week arriving at the apiary I found the hive on its side and empty. Something, a fox or possibly a badger had knocked it over and that was the last I saw of those bees.

Taking my bees out of my garden produced an unexpected problem, my neighbours were upset. As most had at least one fruit tree in their gardens, and the man next door had taken up most of his back lawn to grow veg, and now they all found their crops had diminished. I had complaints, not that I had bees’ in the garden, but that I had taken them away. I brought back two hives that spring, and the neighbours were happy again.    

Things settled down, I was persuaded onto the committee, and then to take over the retiring treasures job. My bees were all doing well, and then I changed jobs. With the change of working hours the bees suffered, and so reluctantly I put them up for sale……. but all was not lost. Some years later after I had retired to work for myself, a customer who I was due to visit in the afternoon rang up to say. “Don’t park where you usually do, as there is a swarm of wasps hanging in the tree.” That phone call rekindled the old spark. After all Wasps Don’t Swarm, so armed with nothing more than a cardboard box I took up beekeeping again.