Friday 20th September-Day 3

The 20th of September is my older son's birthday. Today he was 19 and, as he goes away to university tomorrow we spent the day together at home. After the grand opening of the presents we looked out of our loft bedroom window to see the early autumn sun spilling over the wall and at the low angle it lit the cloud of bees circling the hive beautifully. You could clearly imagine why the Egyptians thought honey bees were made of drops from the sun. 

I had heard that the way bees orientate themselves to a new location is to fly in ever increasing circles round the hive. From our second floor room you could really see it in action. The ladies flew in a lazy ever increasing spiral around the hive before eventually foraging further afield. A gentle humming bee vortex. 

The day was warm and soft, a perfect illustration of Gray's Season of Mellow Fruitfulness. Having secretly worried I might be unnerved by a hive full of bees I find myself entranced by them. As you approach the hive  it feels as though they come to meet you. They are a particularly gentle hive according to an experienced bee keeping friend. Bob was working on the chicken run in the garden and during the day he had frequent inquisitive visitors but never once felt any concern about their presence2.

We have also discovered that from our loft bedroom window we can track where the bees go using field glasses. I'm starting to worry that we'll be accused of being peeping toms! A neighbour two gardens over has a huge bank of marigolds and hundreds of our bees were drawn to it. You could see a little cloud of them dotting about together in the sunlight.

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About 10pm we still had a house full of guests but having seen how empty the sugar syrup feeder was last night I thought I'd better check how it was doing. Our guests were highly amused by the sight of me in my slightly too tight bee suit but when we got to the quiet night time hive with a torch and lifted the lid I was very glad I hadn't allowed vanity to change my mind. The feeder was completely empty and bees were congregating around the vent. 

Very slowly I poured in nearly a litre of sugar syrup with thyme. It smelt delicious-I'm wondering about trying  to make a thyme sorbet. The flavour would be delicious. Evidently they could smell it because as soon as it was available bees poured out to gorge themselves on it.

As an aside we found a HUGE bumblebee in distress on the floor by the back door earlier in the day. We put it on the deck handrail outside and put a few drops of the thyme and sugar syrup near it thinking it was probably a goner. After a while quietly sitting in the sun it sniffed out one of the drops and sucked a drop about the size of it's head down in seconds. Then it gorged itself on the other two and we put more down. Later on my husband pointed out that it was happily buzzing round the garden so we can regard our resuscitation protocol a success.

Sadly during the course of the day we found quite a number of dead honey bees in the area. Tomorrow I'll go and clear up the fallen. Hygiene is an essential part of bee keeping and keeping your hive healthy.

Now having cooked for 12 people and several thousand bees I'm ready for bed.

Sleep tight.

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