I've been watching a great programme tonight: Jimmy and the Wild Honey Hunters.
Jimmy Doherty of Jimmy's Farm fame goes to Nepal to meet a group of ancient local people who hang 200 feet up the side of a cliff to harvest the honey of massive wild bees with nothing more than a knife on the end of pole, a basket to catch the honey comb and a net over their faces.
Of course he can't leave before giving it a go himself, but Jimmy being Jimmy and a bringer of chaos, manages to break the knife off the handle so he has to hang around for about 20 minutes in mid air while they fix it. Overall, it takes him nearly an hour to get some himself and only just manage to get some out of the basket when he gets to the ground before the hunters scoff the lot! But it's quite clear from the look on his face that the taste of that wild honey was worth enduring two million angry bees and three stings for.
I think a lot of people forget that Jimmy was doing a PhD in Entomology before he became a farmer and it's quite clear he has a soft spot for bees. He quite rightly points out that without them we would have no crops of any kind and he keeps a few hives on the farm to help pollinate his crops and sell a bit of honey in the farm shop.
I'd been giving thought to bees a lot lately. When Martin and I went to Barnsdale I ended up intruding on private honey bottling session in small log cabin hidden away behind some trees. Outside the hut were 4 hives behind perspex. I must confess I was intrigued. It looked like such a simple set up. And the women in the cabin enthused about how little there is to do with bees. You don't have to do a great deal except when you have to harvest. Ok there's the possibility of swarms so you have to know how to handle that and you must learn how to care for them properly when harvesting. But they do their own things, feed themselves and are generally congenial if you don't annoy them or nick all their food.
And that is the problem. If I was hesitant about chickens, which are generally harmless, I'm downright paralysed about the idea of keeping something that could swarm and kill me. Not to mention I'm sure Fleagle will be stupid and get herself stung to death as well. She likes to eat bees and wasps you see. Every now and then while you're out and about in the garden in summer you hear a little yelp, look over and see her struggling to chew something causing her pain and you know it's a stinging little beast.
Besides, I have it on good authority from Chas Griffin in his book Scenes From A Smalholding that there are not enough words in the dictionary to properly describe the different types of stickiness that honey presents. Ripping-stickiness of rubber slipper sole on vinyl floor. Gummy-stickiness of jumper elbow in honey pool on worktop surface. Coco-the-clown-stickiness that gums the newspaper to the floor and then newspaper to your shoe. Super-glue-stickiness that stops you putting a jug down. Finally there's the faint, etheral, miasmic stickiness that gently floats down out of the atmosphere and coats every surface in the house. every door knob, every handle and remote control. Yep, Chas has a way with words about honey and bees that just puts you right off.
I think it's safe to say that until the house is finished and I have a little time on my hands to really pay it the attention it deserves, bee-keeping may be one of those things that will have to wait.
