Beetime Traveller Chapter 3~

The bees new home back behind the veg plot

Well, a week has gone by since the arrival of my honeybees. Their presence in my garden is as magical as I had hoped. Their industrious ways can only be marveled at. The urge to sit outside the hives and watch them for hours is constant. Every morning at dawn, you will find me there, teacup in hand, gazing in awe. Every afternoon I go into the garden and weed to the sound of their hum. Every night I walk down behind the veg plot and watch them coming home from their last forge, the orange and yellow pollen on their back legs weighing them down.

My bees

They arrived in the night. My good Dad was here to help me transfer them into their sparkling new hives from the small, hot wooden boxes that contained them, their queens, and frames of brood, honey and pollen. After 4 stings and much careful attention, they were safely transferred. By the next morning at 5 am, they were hard at work, buzzing around the garden gathering nectar and pollen in their expert style. They wasted no time, they didn't hesitate, or stop to wonder what next.

Dad and I picking the bees up

As they adjusted to their new home, they appeared perfectly at ease. I have to admit, the neurosis was all mine. My desperate desire to take care of them to the best of my ability was taken to extremes. I was worrying about everything. I worried about the health of the queens, the honey supply, the heat of the day, my own beginner's clumsiness whilst working in a hive.

By 4:00 yesterday I was a mess, collapsed on the living room floor in tears, saying to Mark, "I don't want any of them to die. I want them all to be happy and healthy and whole. I want good weather for them, the right food, and the perfect conditions..." and as I spoke between sobs, Mark lending a kind ear (as men sometimes do when their wives are weeping uncontrollably), I began to laugh, and the harder I laughed, the more I realized the absurdity of my wishes and the gigantic metaphor that the bees were offering my whole life.

Oh, my desire to control, to be God, to take away variables, to eliminate disaster, to avoid death at all costs...how very human of me. Perfectly forgivable I think, but not the most Zen style.

And as the summer breezed through the door, and Mark and I laughed at my hilarious and honest human quest, a small part of my "need to control" went with the breeze.

What was left was a kind of relief, a recognition that everything is unfolding without my helpful interference, and beyond this, that it always has been. That honeybees have been doing what they do for millions of years and who am I to think I can make their world perfect. Who am I to think I can make anyone's world perfect. And as my swelled ego shrunk a wee bit, my shoulders dropped and my breath deepened and something dissolved both physical and mental, something let go, something that I can only describe, as me. I let go, and this, was the relief.

Indeed, beekeepers do loose bees and sometimes they don't. Bees, like us, live and then die. Sometimes bees are sick and and sometimes they are healthy. Sometimes there is lots of honey and sometimes there is not.

Yes, if I learn as much about myself as I did this first week of beekeeping I am in for some fascinating discoveries, and if I learn nothing more about myself, well that will be fine too. (Relinquishing control is task enough)

For this day though, sitting by the hive in the morning, with my tea,watching these buzzing winged ones work, is profound enough.

Beetime Traveller Chapter 2~

Four months ago, on a rainy wintry day, I called the local honeybee center, and registered for a four day long, "Basic Bee Keeping" course. The course was to be taught by a local Beemaster and would include both classroom and field study. The cost was 250 dollars, which I paid without hesitation.

A week later, I bought all my honeybee equipment including the veil and safari type hat. Of course, once I had those things in my possession, I tried them on every chance I got, and stood in front of the mirror dreaming of bee keeping, like a child does Christmas. I was on the count down. And as the blossoms bloomed in the garden, one after another, the way they do at this time of year, I knew I was getting closer to the course scheduled for the beginning of May.

You see I have this "way" of looking forward to an event that has to do with what flower, or vegetable, or fruit is in season, on the day that the event is scheduled for. It's a childhood ritual I simply cannot help but still do, and it goes like this: I knew that on the 1st day of my bee course the plum trees would be in flower, and so instead of looking on the calender to when my course would be, I waited for the plums to bloom before preparing.

I invented this planning style as a child when I couldn't understand calenders and time lines. I could however, understand what time of year it was when the violets were out, or when the pumpkins were ready. I knew that my birthday was just before violets and Halloween was sometime around pumpkins. My niece understands this logic very well, and she asks "when will I see you again Auntie, and I reply, "when the raspberries are ready to eat, or when your mom plants the squash, or when the sunflowers are out." And she gets this, more than she might if I had said in two months and five days. For, what does two months mean to a child?

( Funnily enough this is how beekeepers think too, as they respond to the needs of their bees based on what is blooming, and they ask themselves "are we in dandelion season or blackberry?")

But back to Basic Bee Keeping, a course due to start when the plum is in bloom.

Two weeks ago the plum tree's bloomed. A week later I got in my car and drove for an hour into the fields where I met up with twenty others who wanted to learn about honeybees. And I have to say, as far as I can tell, people interested in honeybees, seem like a pretty good bunch. These folks were the most down to earth, unpretentious, good hearted group I have met in long time. I think it takes a certain kind of temperament to be interested in such things. Opening a hive of 60, 000 honeybees is not for the angry impatient ones, it really isn't.

And so together, with our unbelievably knowledgeable and inspired teacher, we ventured into the land of the honeybee. We donned our bee suits and headed out into the Bee Yard, we opened hives, inspected frames of bees, lit smokers, counted eggs and larvae. We read books, we took notes, we watched slide shows, and we were tested, both on the field and in the classroom. There was an exam which I proud to say I did rather well on (little geeky grin), and a certificate awarded to all of those who past the test. It was one of the most informative and interesting things I have done in a very long time.

I learned more over the course of those four days than I can fully integrate, but I expect I will figure much of it out along the way. It's a bit like all things that way, gardening, parenting, getting a dog, buying a house, going traveling, falling in love, first kiss, loosing ones virginity, all daunting things in the beginning. You can only prepare so much for any one of them, and then, you just do it, and you figure it out. eh eh eh. ( I hope I haven't offended any bee keepers out there by comparing bee keeping to "loosing one's virginity," but you get my drift, I hope).

So that said, here I go, two weeks until my Bee's arrive! I know a little bit more now then I did last week, and I will learn a whole lot more over the many years that I hope to do this. I have no doubt that this is going to be a life long learning, but I am truly okay with that, cause let's face it, what isn't?

Beetime Traveller Chapter 1~

Image from Internet

Well, I think most of us in the northern hemisphere can officially agree that spring has at last come. There are flowers blooming and birds singing and seeds sprouting in all directions. If I had a favorite time of year ( which I don't) this would be it. Of course I feel like this at every turn of the seasonal wheel. I am like a child trying to decide my favorite color, at first I declare it's red and then swiftly change my mind to, oh no it's blue, and then, actually no it's green, before I say, "no it's all of them, give me the whole rainbow." Yes, I am somebody who loves it all, including spring, winter, summer and fall.

And speaking of loving it all, I will take this opportunity to share with you, my latest endeavour, Bee Keeping. Because, let's face it, spring would not be spring without adding BEES to the mix of birds, flowers and trees. Indeed, the earth as we know it, would not exist without these busy little pollinating friends, whose miraculous ways pollinate 90% of the earth's plants. In fact, if we really think about it, it is quite possible that we humans wouldn't exist without them. For, I believe it was Albert Einstein who said, "if the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years to live."

Image from internet

As many of you know, there is much discussion with regard to the decline of honey bee's. Indeed, this is a rather enormous problem on our planet at this time, amongst a very long and frighting list of other enormous problems. I don't know about you, but I could get very sad if I let my heart break for the present state of our Good Earth. However, after much thought on this difficult topic, I have come the conclusion that sadness is not the best style for me to adopt in an effort to make positive change during these troubled times. And so, Instead of cultivating sadness I am endeavoring to cultivate happiness and although this is not always easy, it feels like the best option. I, Nao Sims, choose to dedicate myself to loving the earth with nothing but joy in my heart and a radiant unwavering belief that we can indeed heal this beautiful world.

When I first learned about the problems with pollination I cried for two hours straight. And, when I realized that crying wasn't going to do anything for the bee's, I got up off the floor and got organized. Within a week I had ordered 20,000 honey bee's, two bee hives, and registered for a course with a Master Bee Keeper in a large field, under a big sky, an hours drive my house.

I spent the last days of winter cozied up with tea, reading books on back yard Bee Keeping, dreaming of my own honey, and remembering those long ago days when I was a little girl and my father was a bee keeper. There is nothing like the smell of fresh honeycomb, like seeing a bee on a dandelion after a long winter, or like the smell on my fathers hands when he'd come back from checking on a hive.

Yesterday, the boxes containing my hives arrived. After a song and a dance, Gus and I gleefully opened our packages. Gus was just as keen as I was to see what was inside, although his canine sense of smell gave the contents away well before I opened the lid, and the smells of honeycomb permeated the living room. What we found in those big cardboard boxes resembled a jig saw puzzle more than it did a bee hive. Apparently bee hives, like most things, need to be assembled. Our boxes were filled with parts of hives, and one poorly photocopied pink piece of paper, with very few instructions as to how to put the parts together. I laughed for a long time before I considered how to begin.

And then, without further adieu, I began...

I hammered.

And I painted.

And eventually,

I did it!

(This is Bee hive number one of two)

Gus and Mark cheered me on through my trials and tribulations and an old friend came over with lunch and together we shared the painting. All this said, my first day as a bee keeper, went very well.

The Bee's don't officially arrive until June 1st, but the preparations for their new life, in my garden, have already started. I shall keep you posted as to how it all goes.

To read more about what you can do to help support Bee's and the important work of these winged friends click here.