Buzzing off this mortal coil

Courier Countryside Column 3rd May  under heading:

Please bee  discreet over the fate of London hives

The first shaft of spring sunshine and the Bees begin to emerge from their hives.  It’s always a huge relief to see they’ve made it through the winter.  I’ve only lost three or four colonies in twenty five years bee-keeping but it’s extremely distressing when it happens with the hive floor piled high with little bodies. Even though pesticides may be to blame, you inevitably worry it’s your fault. Take off too much honey, or replace their winter stores with too little with sugar syrup, and they can starve.

The last losses were London bees.  In a city you have to be much more careful to avoid swarming. Neighbours don’t take kindly to twenty thousand insects buzzing loudly round their back garden – even though swarming bees are extremely unlikely to attack or sting you.

So friends in Crouch End had decided to part with two colonies and one evening at the end of October we blocked the hive entrances with foam rubber, screwed the supers together tightly, and wheeled them down the garden path into the back of the car.  It’s rather nerve wracking driving with bees.  However well secured, you always imagine one or two will find a way out and start buzzing round your head just as you’re overtaking an articulated lorry. So I decided to wear my full protective suit with hat, veil and gloves. 

It so happened that it was the 31^st, and the streets of North London were heaving with ghoulishly costumed children demanding sweets with menaces. I distinctly remember one little witch peering into the car and saying loudly “that man’s wearing a funny Halloween costume mummy”.

The journey was uneventful with not a single escapee.   I arrived at the Orchard in the pitch dark and did my best to make them comfortable in their new home.  But they clearly couldn’t adapt to country living, and the whole of the following summer they struggled to make up numbers.  I even bought a new queen when I failed to find eggs or larvae in one brood box. Despite plentiful autumn feeding, they were all dead by the following spring.  I still haven’t been able to tell my friends in N8.  But two new colonies are up in the Orchard now, so if they do visit I hope they won’t realise they’re different bees. They can be a bit hard to tell apart!