FOOD OF THE GODS

Kate overcomes her nerves and has a lesson in beekeeping

IDO SOMETIMES feel a bit like Bridget Jones, off on assignments for the magazine. Thankfully I’ve never had to slide down a fireman’s pole in front of a camera crew, but somehow I landed the beekeeping gig with ichard ri n of Clematis Cottages in the medieval hamlet of Aunby near Stamford. I didn’t think too much about it until the night before when I tried to remember exactly what a bee sting felt like. I’ve only been stung once, when I was very young, but I do remember it’s painful. Thankfully

I didn’t react badly, so we decided I was the best person to go as Mary does react strongly to stings.

A couple of friends kindly assured me I would definitely get stung. According to them anyone working near a hive always does, so I began to feel a little apprehensive and packed a packet of antihistamine tablets as a precaution.

An old friend who is also an apiarist suggested I take a pair of extra gloves to pull on under any gloves I was given.

Thankfully I hadn’t seen the episode of Jeremy Clarkson’s

Farm where he was ignominiously stung somewhere tender. But as soon as I met ichard, his very calm demeanour instantly put me at ease and he also presented me with his wife aye’s bee suit and wellies to put on, as we’re the same size. He reassured me that as the suit is baggy any bee sting wouldn’t touch me underneath it and it wasn’t a given that I would be stung anyway. I tried to exude confidence too, you can’t show fear because the bees will smell it.

The magic of bees

It’s di cult to explain beekeeping it’s a science, an alchemy; it’s magic and it’s ancient. Beekeeping (or apiculture) is very on trend now, probably something to do with there being no planet B so many people are keen to do their bit to save the bees and the planet. But it’s certainly no new invention. ecords of people collecting honey from wild bees date back 10,000 years and the domestication of bees is reputed to have begun in gypt around 4,500 years ago. Honey was found in Tutankhamun’s tomb, and apparently it was still edible. In the 18th century scientists discovered there is always a ueen bee who is the mother of all the female workers and male drones in the colony. They designed glass walled observation hives so they could observe the full process of honey production from start to finish.

Originally when honey was collected in the wild the whole colony was destroyed including the honeycombs, eggs and larvae so nothing survived. Over time, honey gatherers realised this wasn’t sustainable. In the 18th century Thomas Wildman introduced sliding parallel wooden bars over the top of the old skeps or straw hives where the bees could attach their honeycombs. He also pioneered the use of different layers to a hive so each layer could be removed when it was empty of eggs and full of honey, leaving subse uent layers untouched. There are different hive designs often named after their inventor, and ichard works mainly with ‘nationals.’

I was about to have my first look inside one and begin to learn the process of honey production and harvesting. Beekeeping would take years to learn from a book, it’s very much a hands-on process. And even when it’s right in front of you, it’s complicated. I looked at all the different elements of a hive the different frames including foundation frames, the brood box, the ‘super’, the thickness and positioning of the combs, the variations in colour of the honey, nectar and pollen, whether the bees have ‘capped off’ the comb, and so on. There is so much to take in in one go, I’m not even going to try and explain all the mechanics, I’ll just try and capture the spirit of it.

‘In the 18th century Thomas Wildman introduced sliding parallel wooden bars over the top of the old skeps or straw hives where the bees could attach their honeycombs.’

Beekeeping etiquette

A bee can recognise its beekeeper using sight and smell. So, according to an old Celtic saying a new beekeeper taking over a colony must always tell the bees if their old keeper has died, and ask their permission to take over. They settle and work much better if he does. And to be courteous he or she will always give their bees a cheery greeting when working on the hives.

Richard’s father kept bees from the age of 14. As a child Richard used to stand in the greenhouse and watch him working the hives but it was only when Richard’s son Charles started beekeeping as part of his DofE gold award at Stamford School that they introduced bees to their farm.

Richard keeps his colony in the gardens of Lodge Farm and Clematis Cottages, the holiday cottages he rents out with aye. It’s a beautiful spot, full of owers and vegetables providing an array of pollen and it’s also surrounded by fields of crops, providing further sources of nectar. Bees will typically y up to 6km to find food. ichard’s honey varies in colour and avour depending on the season and where the bees have been to forage. His spring honey consists mainly of rape seed blossom; his summer oral last year had lots of lime, honeysuckle and clematis avours and his early autumn harvest was made up of more woodland plants like ivies. It is raw, pure and unadulterated honey, just as nature intended it to be.

I visited on a warm summer’s day at lunchtime so the bees were at their happiest. They don’t like the cold or the wind, they become agitated, so Richard doesn’t tend to open the hives from October until possibly April if there’s a cold spring. By opening the hive in the sunshine in the early afternoon, Richard estimated that about 15,000 bees would be off foraging leaving perhaps 35,000 in the hive, giving us more room to work.

Richard and Kaye always garden using the biodynamic calendar, sowing and harvesting their crops for their range of preserves, chutneys and relishes according to the different phases of the moon. This is supposed to be good for the soil and for the results of their labour. There are leaf days, fruit, root and ower days and, depending on the time of the month, they choose the tasks. Fruit days are recommended for working with bees as they will be gentler then. It’s not advised to disturb them on leaf days. Thankfully Richard had chosen a fruit day for my visit and I didn’t get stung once!

An apiarist keeps bees to pollinate the crops, owers and vegetables around him, and also to collect the honey the bees produce. They also produce beeswax, royal jelly and propolis. The latter is made from waxes, resins and other woodland ingredients collected by the bees and is used for sealing the inside of the hive to help contain the heat and protect from predators, hence its name being derived from the Greek meaning ‘defence of the city.’ All these products have incredible health and medicinal benefits they’re a natural antiseptic for cuts, grazes and burns and we’ve all heard of honey and lemon to soothe a sore throat and tickly cough. Honey can also even be used as a rooting compound for plants, and beeswax candles are very e cient, burning ten times slower than man-made para n wax.

Nature’s wisdom

Apart from the actual products they make, bees are amazingly clever in the way they produce them. Who hasn’t wondered why honeycombs are uniformly hexagonal The bees make the combs first then fill them with honey and eggs, and hexagons are the most e cient shape to create equal sized units and not waste space. How do bees instinctively know that? Or how do they decide who will become the new queen? (They make the cell larger than all the others so the ueen grows to fit the space). And how do they know if the hive is overheating and it’s time for the worker bees to sit at the entrance and fan cool air throughout the structure? Or why do they decide to divide the colony and swarm to another location? (Often an ageing queen will leave the hive just before a new queen emerges, taking about 20,000 bees with her). As with everything in the natural world, they just instinctively know what to do, and it’s immensely fascinating to watch.

For people keen to understand more about this aweinspiring process, Stamford and Bourne Beekeeper’s Association are currently holding virtual meetings. You can become a member even if you don’t keep bees and it’s a great forum to listen and learn. According to Richard, if you have four beekeepers in a room and you ask them a uestion, you’ll get five different answers, and they’ll all be right!

Richard runs Beekeeping for Beginners courses lasting approximately two hours at Clematis Cottages, for a maximum of two people from £45. For more details about the courses, cottages and the Country Kitchen Creation products visit

www.clematiscottages.co.uk www.stamfordbees.weebly.com

Fascinating facts

• A female worker bee makes about 1/2 a teaspoon of honey in her lifetime of approximately six weeks

• If the queen bee leaves the hive, the rest of the colony knows within 15 minutes

• Bees have to fly 55,000 miles to produce a pound of honey, visiting 2 million flowers

• The worker bees ‘dance’ to point out good sources of food and water

• The honey bee’s brain is the size of a grain of sugar

• The drones (males) and the queen mate far away from the hive, high in the sky

‘Apart from the actual products they make, bees are amazingly clever in the way they produce them. Who hasn’t wondered why honeycombs are uniformly hexagonal?’