The Original Crew

- Wednesday 15th August 2018 -

A few years back a good friend of mine gave me a beehive. It happened to be made at Dartmoor Prison and was surplus to requirements. I'd thought about keeping bees before but because of the insanely high start up costs I couldn't justify starting. So this donation was very welcome and saved a huge amount of money.

The hive sat dormant for a long, long time. This was mostly due to work commitments...travelling all over the world! I happened to be heading on one of those jobs and decided to have a look on Gumtree to see if there were any bees available anywhere around the Southwest. My hopes weren't high because it was late in the beekeeping season, but I'd been putting it off too long. Another contributing factor to the delay was the problems bees can suffer. I read all these horror stories which can be off-putting and certainly didn't tell the holistic story of keeping bees and the joys and benefits it brings.

I was very fortunate that there was a beekeeper in Plymouth, named David, who was selling a nuc [a small colony on 5 or 6 frames]. Much to my surprise David was only young but had been keeping bees for some years, starting with his dad and a hive on a flat part of the roof of their house. I met him at his apiary on one of Plymouth's many allotment sites. He got his suit on and headed into the apiary. He returned with a little brown box. Who would have thought moving bees was so simple? Seal the box up when they are all in and move them. It's that simple. When we got them home we used a pair of Stacey's knickers to add some ventilation by using the mesh sides from the knickers below.

I took them home, placed box where the hive was going to go for a day or so and then moved the six frames from the nuc in to my very own hive. This was a rather exciting time. From that moment I was hooked. Although we only have a small garden, the hive wasn't a problem and added some life to it. We have cats, which I thought would be a problem, but it turns out cats and bees can live in harmony! Check out the picture below.

My partner, Stacey, painted the hive. She did an amazing job. She is definitely more creative than me and gave this otherwise bland box some character. Me and Stacey like to put our stamp on things to add a little character. Stacey certainly did that with the hive. I painted the white using Ronseal Shades because this was widely accepted as safe for the bees. This followed with Stacey and her tester pots of Shades and some small brushes for the detail. She did such a great job that she will be doing any future hives!