Be Nice To Bees

Bee Beginnings

Circumstances kept me from keeping bees in the past, but things have changed for me and the bees, for me they got easier, for the bees they got harder. So I decided to stop being an armchair beekeeper and get on with attempting to keep bees, with the added bonus of a couple of jars of honey.

I have had an interest in bees since I was young, so had read books on keeping them, but theory is different to practical. “Bees don’t read the book”, a common statement in beekeeping circles I have discovered .My first visit to an apiary was as a guest of a beekeeper, who has mentored me for the last few months, and even given me a small colony of bees, or a nucleus as it is called. The local beekeepers association connected me with the beekeeper ,and this should be your first port of call if you have any ideas about keeping bees , the fear of getting stung is worse than the actual sting and I would suggest that if you have never been stung it’s something that you want to get out of the way before even going near bees, although rare, an allergic reaction to bee stings is not something you want to discover whilst going through a bee hive.

If you plan to keep them in your back garden neighbours can normally be won over with a promise of honey, a well positioned hive that does not aim your bees right over their patio, will also alleviate any fears of attack during barbecues. Or ask around for a small piece of land to put hives on, if you have no back garden.

Einstein has been credited with the quote that” If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants”, I can find no proof that Einstein actually said this, and as he was a physicist I doubt if he did, or if it is true that after the death of the last bee we will follow four years later, but at least eighty five percent of wild plants and most fruits are pollinated by bees, and the world would be a little less sweeter with no honey on my toast in the morning.