Dressed To Impress

12th June
I haven’t seen the Maire since we went hive shopping a couple of weeks ago – he’d said that he would come and move our bees into the new hive - we’ve been poised for bee action, but we've also been busy with other things…

Yesterday we were all in the garden filming the hatching eggs of a swallowtail butterfly when hoards of winged ants started coming out of the earth behind us and climbing up the stalks of chili plants to launch themselves off on their nuptial flights. We’d just scrambled another camera to film the ants when the Maire’s car pulled into the drive and two men in futuristic-looking white overalls got out and walked towards us, the Maire was pumping bellows attached to a metal jug that puffed out smoke, it was like Gardener’s World had merged into an episode of Lost in Space.

The smoke calms the bees down, the Maire and his son set the new big hive next to the one already in the garden, they opened the lid of the new hive and put in a couple of frames of new wax, then they opened the top of the old hive and pulled out frames full of bee larvae and honey and crawling with bees, these were slotted into the new hive.

We wanted the frames spaced wider inside the hive for easier filming - we couldn't do this - the gap between the frames should be the width of a bee, otherwise they get stressed trying to keep the hive temperature constant.

The Maire left us with the smoke blower and his bee outfit, we will have to improvise more protective clothing from net curtains and the dressing-up box when we start filming.

Hive Shopping

Following our recent bee fiasco I went and threw myself at the Maire’s mercy.

Where can I get a bigger, empty hive so we can make holes, then put bees in it?*

The Maire is quite mumbley and said something that I translated as
hhrrrmmmhmmm … later mmhm…nhmmn are you at home?

I wasn’t sure what this meant exactly but I said yes then went and lurked around the house wondering if he was planning to turn up today, tomorrow, next week... I really needed to go off and buy bricks and more plastic sheeting. The boys had gone filming at a lake and were out for the day. I ended up trying to intimidate a feral cat who comes round and terrorises our cat Julie - the invader is white with a black pirate’s eye patch. I made monster-claw hands at her and hissed, she flattened her ears, and made low blood-curdling growls like in those devil films. Monster-claw hands obviously weren’t going to work so I turned the hose on her.

The Maire turned up after lunch and I got in his car (still no idea what the plan was). He took me to a commercial apiculturalist – a very short man who was quite severely disabled, he swung himself about on a pair of crutches and gave me a tour of a machinery-filled shed where the honey is separated from the combs, it was quite gruesome - all dripping sticky after the morning’s honey-processing, with a surprising amount of dead bee debris around.

Honey Man and The Maire exchanged money for new wax sheets and a big wooden hive. The Maire refused my attempts to reimburse him and put me and the hive back at the Lovely House. He say’s he’ll be round when the weather is suitable to transfer the bees.

*The bees that the Maire brought round earlier this month were a small colony in a half-sized hive, as the colony grows they can be put into a full-sized hive (like repotting a plant)

Bee Electricity

17th May
Until recently I’d dismissed our Maire (mayor) as a dreary sort of chap; hunched over, grey and lugubrious, he is renowned for his lack of interest in village issues. In the past when I have visited the Maire with the simplest request he has looked around anxiously for an exit and suggested that I return when his secretary is in.

Near our house there is a giant sequoia, it has been split by lightning and a large colony of honey bees live in it. Early in May masses of bees swarmed out of the sequoia and settled on a tree branch right outside our house. The Maire is a beekeeper, we would like a beehive in our garden, needing some advice I decided to give the man a go...

It turns out that bees are the electricity this man needs to function - when I told him about our swarm he was transformed, told me what the bees are up to, the conditions that they need to make a move* and offered to help me get a beehive set up in our garden. He didn’t want to use the swarm settled outside our house but he came over a few days later with a hive containing another wild colony that he had collected.

All we have to do now is work out a way to film them, drilling holes in the side of the hive to allow access to our lenses is on our job list (but we think that might upset them). The Director has insisted that we must film the bees this week. The holes must be drilled tonight…

*My shortened and very inexpert interpretation is that when the bee's nest gets too full, a queen (the queen thing is way to complicated for me to explain here) takes half the nest to look for a new home. They settle somewhere like the branch of a tree, all in a solid mass, while scouts go off looking at new housing possibilities reporting back to the swarm with information that they convey by means of a waggely dance. This can go on for days until a consensus is reached. In the middle of the day and when the weather is settled, they make their move to new premises.

Health and safety

17th June
I visit the Mairie to find out if there are any ‘dangers’ I should know about such as scorpions or bad snakes. The Maire’s sidekick who looks like the Bic Biro man is there and so is a man with a military haircut who, it turns out, is my neighbour.