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)