The New Apiary – the rules
The new apiary is at the back of a private housing development. It is closer to where we live and seemed easier to get to. it is a beautiful setting with the hives facing a small lake along a row of ancient hawthorns and just past the old wall from a Victorian walled garden which is now laid to lawn. However the residents are very clear about the circumstances under which we can be there and require us to park in the visitors spaces – which are the furthest spots from the hives and to text one of them when we intend to come. They have all our details – car reg, numbers, names etc so they can check our cars against the list and be sure that our car is meant to be there. It feels a bit like the wearing of enormous white bee suits might be a give away but they don’t see it that way.
Not long in to having the hive up there, one of the residents called to say there were a-lot of bees going in and out of our hive and were we aware of this. Well, this is good news isn’t it? It did tell us however that they had been up having a little look-see at our hives, not sure what we thought about that but I guess if a deer had knocked it over they would have let us know that too.
It has been eventful in other ways. On one visit we had the boy beekeeper and the newest littlest bee-keeper too with us. Now there is something very sweet about a 5yr poppet in a bee suit and I agree with that. We were walking – the long walk from the visitors spaces to the hives – when we heard a lady calling after us. Breathless she approached to say we had been walking too fast for her to catch up with us, okay I am thinking now, who is this woman?
‘I just need to take a picture’ she says to us, ‘can you stand there?’. Well, we were too surprised to ask why or what she intended to do with our picture and stood in a line whilst she took our photo. I still think she cut hubby and I out to focus on the boy beekeeper and the littlest bee-keeper. Afterwards of course we realised we could have say no to a picture of our children but it all happened so fast we didn’t think at the time.
The beauty of bee suits is you cannot see the faces of the people inside them, they will be great Halloween costumes, so we are not that worried.
