Bee swarms

[excoriator]

I read this piece, vaguely interested:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-essex-57148609

I was amused at the final sentence which ended "... the advice is to contact a local beekeeping society."

This is excellent advice, indeed! One cannot criticise it as such, but how?

Here's the chap with a car covered in bloody bees and like a fool he has neglected to memorise the phone number of the local beekeeping society! Personally, I never leave the house without checking I have the number properly memorised, along with lion tamers, snake charmers and other essential services. Would you go out without knowing the number of the beekeeping societies close to where you are going? Of course you wouldn't!

But I fear many do.

[jonjel]

The local fuzz will have the right numbers to call, but you have reminded me of something.

I used to have a neighbour who kept bees and he went on the course and got himself a couple of hives, and registered with the local bee keeping association and waited.

And he received a call that there was a swarm locally, could he deal with it. The swarm was in someone's garden and there was a small crowd, with a policeman holding them at a safe distance. He put his kit on and explained what he was going to do. Then got busy with his cardboard box and other stuff and successfully got the bees boxed. The policeman he then found was in his full uniform, in the greenhouse with all doors and windows shut on a hot day! He said to my friend 'do you know, that is the first swarm of bees I have ever seen' My friend did not like to tell him it was the first swarm he ad seen as well.

Happy days. I would sometimes go and help him and it was fascinating to find the queen and mark her with a dab of colour on her back.

[excoriator]

A friend who was a beekeeper invited me to accompany him to a meeting of his society. They had a well-regarded beekeeper coming to give them a talk. The man had many hives, produced a lot of honey and had written a number of books on the subject. One might reasonably suppose he was an expert in the subject.

From the moment he opened his mouth, he was under attack by the members of the society. I don't think there was a single thing he said that proved uncontentious. Every point he made attracted someone who had found the opposite. I have never been to a meeting where there was so little consensus. Often disagreements broke out between members of the audience. The views were always strongly held but nobody including the guest speaker seemed to take offence. I got the strong impression that there was no right or wrong way to do things, the bees didn't much care how you gave them sugar for instance. Only the beekeepers felt strongly about it. I did try to diplomatically and as a non-keeper make this point in the discussion, but was of course given to understand that I knew nothing about it, but as this accusation was also brandished between people who WERE keepers I felt quite happy about it.

In the pub after I remarked on the high level of disagreement and the strength of feeling to my friend and he said "Oh yes! It's always like that. We've had punch-ups in the past!"

I've no idea whether this was just the local society or whether it's general.