"Mary Fisher" wrote in message . net...
"Rob Graham" wrote in message
Last week I dismantled equipment which was occupied by a swarm last July.
the colony had died, I found a small cluster which obviously couldn't travel
across the comb to access the large quantities of honey. It was, I'm sorry
to say, convenient for me that the bees died but it could be said that if
they were strong enough to survive they would have done. There was one wasp
in the pile, dead. That's meaningless!

Where abouts are you -

Inner city Leeds. I'm just west of Edinburgh.

As you talk of an
apiary, I take it that you have a significant number of hives; I think
in my enthusiastic youth I got up to 8 at one stage but 3 or 4 is
quite enough now.

No, I don't think we ever had more than fifteen but more than two would have
been too many to keep in our garden with unsympathetic neighbours. A friend
who has an organic goat farm wanted bees on her land and invited us to put
them there. It was idyllic. But I've developed arthritis and because
sometimes my fingers are too weak to turn the page of a magazine I know that
it would be dangerous for me to handle frames. I sold or gave away almost
all my equipment and some of my books, the bees themselves went to an
enthusiastic and intelligent man I met on a newsgroup.

I've seen too many old beekeepers neglect their bees through infirmity, it
does no-one any good (including the bees) and I was determined that it
wouldn't happen to me.

I'm so sorry to hear about the arthritis - suffer a bit myself but not
seriously. Really damning when it destroys your interests. Just
about to get new neighbours ourselves - hope they aren't going to be
the difficult type. I've kept bees here for 30 years and it would be
just my luck if some poser with a 4x4 gets stroppy about them.

I started with bees in my early twenties - a friend's father had moved
his bees to a derelict house near Fort William that we used as a
climbing base. I still have a vision of one of the kids we were
looking after retreating very rapidly one day with some bees in
pursuit. But it was enough to kindle an interest and the father later
became allergic and had to abandon the hives, so I got all the
equipment (full of wax moth and muck !! :( ) and then a couple of
nuclei from somewhere. Curiously another previous beekeeper came into
give me a hand and discovered he had become allergic in the
intervening years as well.

Going to get a dose of rape this year as the nearest field is just
coming into flower. Will build the hives up quickly but it's no real
use otherwise and will have to be extracted very quickly.

Regards

Rob