Bees

My life of leisure and being lord of all my domain got a jolt the day the bees arrived.  My sunning platform at the end of the garden had arrived a few weeks earlier and one day I caught Mr B and a stranger, wearing funny spacesuits, dismantling it.  They were putting something inside.

                    

Ahah – it’s a box.  Tremendous.  Wooden box, but still a box, and mine.  Now it was my box with human stuff inside.  This needed closer inspection.  I discovered it had a slit at the bottom and there was some movement in there.  Something small.  No, some things small, lots of them and they zzzzzzzzzzzzz.  And .....Ow oooowwwww.....ow!  They’re hot, hot hot hot ooowww  on my nose oww  oww  oww!

Mr B calls them bees.  I have learned a lot about bees since then. I have kept them under close observation; not quite as close as that first day but the bees and I have come to an accommodation: I still sun myself on the top of the box, and they come and go at the bottom.  If in a languid moment I hang my head over the edge I can watch them flying out and arriving home.  I can hear and feel them humming inside my box.  Mr B calls my box a beehive.  It’s still my box.

Bees are small, as small as my smallest toes, and nearly as furry.  My bees are quite dark brown with just a hint of gold.  Sometimes bees with bright yellow stripes come into my garden.  I know those ones aren’t my bees.  There are bigger bees in the garden but F said they are bumblebees.  They don’t live in boxes like mine.

Bees have more legs than I do – 2 more - and they have wings to fly with.  They also have shopping bags attached to their back legs and they arrive home with their bags stuffed full of something yellow; it’s pollen.  They get it from flowers (along with something else called nectar, but you can’t see the nectar). 

When a few months had gone by I realized that if Mr B was wearing that space suit thing he was going to open the box. Yippee.  This is the really good bit.  Inside that box is just seething with bees – squillions of them (Mr B says don’t exaggerate, there’s only 30,000.  That’s squillions.  It’s more than I can count to.)  They are all moving about, wiggling and vibrating and doing busy.  I can look at them really close up.

There are slices of something inside the box.  Mr B lifts them out and shakes the bees off and I can see it is yellow and has lots of holes joined together – like net is holes joined together.  Everything around the bees smells sweet.  I’ve discovered that humans call it honey and it is stored in those holes.   It tastes strange and really glues up your fur, but it is why humans keep bees in boxes.  Yeap that right, so they can steal the honey and eat it themselves.

Mr B has been stung by the bees – yeah that ‘hot’ that got me on the nose is a sting – and it’s in the tail.  (Hah!)  So he wears that crazy suit and he has tin can thing that puffs smoke at the bees.  Smoke makes them eat honey and they get like you do after Christmas dinner – stuffed and lazy.

Mr B makes smoke by setting fire to dry horse shit.  Oops!  I’m not meant to use that word – F insists it is ‘manoore’ (but she doesn’t call it that when I leave some in the potting mix).  Well call it what you like; it comes from the end of horses.

You have got to feel sorry for bees – horse shit pooh smoke.  (I have other reasons to object to horse shit dung.  F puts it round the rhubarb; round MY rhubarb.  It’s not attractive stuff in which to set up your sun lounger.)  They even go on special outings – van, bags, shovel – just to collect horse shit poop.

Another box has arrived in the garden.  More bees?  It is still empty but I’m going to need more staff - full time staff - to help me supervise 2 boxes of bees.  I will need to get them trained.  There’s a lot to learn about bees.