Invasion Of the Bees

How a non-examined life can lead to such happy build-ups of untruths!

One must be careful what one listens to; or one's happy castles are at risk of a crumbling.

Back in May, I found holes and a buzzing bee or two high up in my house's sandstone wall whilst re-painting windows. Desperate to patch up what I thought might be a nests, I rang for advice. It's always good to ask first; I was advised that most likely a solitary Red Mason Bee inhabits each of those holes for a few months of summer and I should be happy to have provided a home to such a creature.

I quickly climbed off my ladder.

Towards autumn an episode of Costing The Earth on BBC Radio 4 completely undid me - all the way back to my son-of-a-beekeeper childhood. Verity Sharp, a radio journalist, wants to keep honey bees - but should she? Then ten days later Radio 4's Today Program (22nd of Sept ~ 08:24) is down at the Lost Gardens of Heligan where Sir Timothy Bartel Smit KBE discusses his project to recover the native Black Bee.

It turns out that to run a colony of honey bees in small places like city gardens - far from being good old-fashioned environmentalism - is to release the equivalent of a plague on other pollinating bee species. Verity was conflicted, but what about me? I mean, are we honey beekeepers the dark lords behind swarms of ethnic cleansing? My father had had over 4,000 colonies going in his prime, and NZ has 28 species of native bee.

So much to unplay.

That old Brother Adam video - generated at Buckfast Abbey on the River Dart in the 80's - celebrating the gentle Italian Honey Bee! We played it for years at my father's honey tourism business in Taupo, New Zealand. Was it all wrong?

I need to keep on examining.