Oh me of little faith

There’s a thing about bees.

Which I didn’t know until just now.

They can be dead as… well, as has been observed around this time of the year (given that we’re not at Candlemas until tomorrow and we’ve definitely established that we’re still in the season of Christmas until we are) there is no particular reason to assume a door nail any deader than any other nail, and a coffin nail might be more apt. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile.

As has been said before. (As I said before.)

Anyway, I had several hives full of door nails, as you know.

Then the snow fell, huddling the world in soft blanket.

Then the snow melted, swamping the world in wet swamp.

Then the me came out into the rather thin and naked winter sunshine, needing a bit of that free mental health we’ve mentioned already, which means you don’t have to go to the gym.

Though it does make me feel I must be perilously near middle age. I mean, it’s almost as embarrassing as jogging, isn’t it…

“Gardening…”??

You even have to say the word at the back of your throat, as if bearing down on it with detached contempt. GARRdening.

Not anything I’m ever caught doing, says your tone of voice.

(Almost as bad as cleaning. Shaun has just posted on my Facebook page – for those of you who haven’t come to this via my FBP – Anyone who has time to clean isn’t reading nearly enough.)

The stately and impressive Dean in the cathedral where our youngest daughter sang as chorister announced he was leaving and would henceforth “give far more attention to the roses”. 

Which means that now, every time I think of deadheading a few of my adored display, planted in my mother’s memory, as I walk past, I feel like a retired cleric.

Not a look that suits me.

So please don’t tell anyone that I do this.

But it is quite a decent work-out, if you go to it with attack. (Though you may find a spade more use, ba boum.)

And a lot more productive than jogging.

As we were, then: I decided to reorganise my beehives. Given that they were full of door nails. Which, whether we argue that they are more, or less, dead than coffin nails, I hope we are all agreed are less likely to sting me than bees.

And obv, the thing about door nails in the shape of bees is that there’s no point in putting all that anti-bee paraphernalia on, however allergic you are to them when they’re alive, if they ain’t.

I mean, is there?

You agree, right?

So I hauled those hives about and moved them hither and thence and changed their orientations and decided that wasn’t quite how I wanted them either and this one was wasn’t level and that one was too close to the compost and what about swapping the big one from the front to the the back wouldn’t that look better and I’ll just dig up all this cloggy, heavy soil all around so I can scatter the seeds for my summer wildflower garden – well, thank goodness they were dead, eh? Otherwise, I could have ended up looking like a cross between a very large beach ball and an outbreak of measles. If they’d been full of live bees, that is – until I noticed one or two dazed and rather undead scouts coming out to inspect at the door of the hive.

‘Ello ‘ello, they seemed to wave their antennæ at me.

(Looking a bit hungover, to be honest.)

This is winter.

Our seasonal lie-in.

So would you mind very much and very kindly not waking us up. On account of it gives us a headache. Specially what with you banging about like that and nearly knocking our house over and taking the roof off so it’s cold in here and hitting the walls with a spade by mistake.

And when we have a headache, what do we do? Like anyone would, we take it out on someone else.

You inviting us to sting you? Well? Are you? Are you?

At the point in the story, reflecting that this might be one of those rare occasions in life when discretion arguably has a bit of an edge on valour, I nipped to the back of the hive pretty smartish.

And hid.

And when they’d calmed down a bit and staggered back to bed, had a peek in the window.

Gosh.

Well, blow me down. That’s a turn up for the old thingamabob.

One colony still alive.

They’ll swarm at midsummer, with any luck, and then another hive can be populated.

So with luck, it might only take me about three more years to have four thriving hives again.

Because the others are all dead, aren’t they?

I mean, I’m not such a hopeless and inexperienced apiarist that I can’t tell a dead bee from one flying around, sniffing the nectar and stinging me.

On the other hand, I don’t normally go sticking my nose in my beehives in winter on the off-chance they might be expired and it is an ex hive of bees. I normally very respectfully leave them alone.

So I opened up another window, and… blow me down a second time.

Last thing I expected to see in my beehives at this juncture was bees. But there they were. All of them. Every one chock full of bees. (Except the one that was empty of bees in the first place.)

Just been having a little nap.

So the moral of this story is:

Bash your life about a bit and knock it around and nearly topple it over and change your mind again, preferably being as noisy and irritating as you possibly can, and you may find the situation not nearly as desperate as you thought it was.

In fact, the situation may just be huddling in the middle of itself for warmth.

Come the spring; come the first sunny day thereof; come the protective bee-kit in the shape of the Vaccine – here the metaphor is starting to break down a bit but I’ve started so I’ll finish – and it might all just buzz into life once more and go sniffing all the flowers.

Amazing what you can learn from bees.