An afternoon with the bees

The beginning of a journey

I can now add another hat to my collection. Both metaphorical and real. A beekeeper’s veil no less.

I’ve wanted to keep bees since as far back as I remember, reading book upon book on the subject hoping that one day I’d be fortunate enough to indulge my interest. Today with buzzing frames in my hands, dripping with bees whilst transferring the little ones from their transport boxes after their journey from Surrey to Berkshire, to their newly positioned cedar hives that sit next to an old wall in the orchard here in the middle of nowhere, it struck me of the importance of never stopping learning and acquiring new skills. Mastering the knowledge needed for this incredible subject will be no easy feat. There will be stings, swarms and snags waiting at every turn and learning how to manage these will be a challenge, but I’ve never worried about things like that. Dropped straight into the deep end with the arrival of two colonies of bees with over twenty thousand honey bees in each hive, the two Queens have been named Maple and Scarlet.

Vibrations