Apiarists and Other Eccentrics!

OK, Dear Reader, this was a bit harsh. Calling beekeepers eccentric is not something we should be doing when bees are in crisis and we need them now more than ever.

It was a few years ago now when I had a message from Irene, my wife, and an instruction not to allow Angus and Isobel, our two cats, out into the back garden. When I arrived home my gaze was directed upwards to the neighbour’s large evergreen which hangs over our back fence. There was the buzz of a chainsaw. Looking up I saw that it really was the rasping of a hornet’s nest. Fearful for our pets we called out the pest control people. They were there quickly. The man in charge had barely looked up when we noted he was shaking his head with a very British sucking in of breath. They weren’t hornets they were bees. No pest control person was going to exterminate bees ‘cos they are not pests. We were asked to call the district beekeeper’s society. He gave us a number. No sooner had we called than an over caffeinated husband and an exhausting wife arrived. (We hoped for the A Team but got the B team! Ha!) They looked up and nodded wisely. Yep, they knew that this was the swarm that had escaped from Edgemont Village, a mile or so up the hill from where we live!

So, Irene and I looked at each other in disbelief. How could they possibly know where these bees came from? Did the Queen Bee have a scar above her right eye, crutches for a gippy knee, for example? Was the buzzing caused by worker bees arguing over a map about where and how they had become lost? Were they discussing how expensive pastries were in ‘Bjorn Bar’? Had some of the worker bees given up on the direction finding exercise and were now sitting upon a bench checking their cell phones and sucking on a Delaney’s coffee, a dead giveaway? Any rate could the bee people get rid of them for us? The woman was starting to unfurl her equipment. We were surprised that it was a vacuum cleaner. Protective gear was donned, a ladder was raised and soon the bees were being vacuumed up ready for relocation to their original hive. By the way no bees were harmed during the making of this story. The call out was free. The bee persons were enthusiastic and delighted to be there. They came and went.

Irene and I both understand hobbies. Indeed what you are reading at the moment is a hobby. But I was taught to read and write at school. I don’t regard reading and writing as being outre, in no way eccentric, because so many people do it. But beekeeping? What prompts somebody to decide one day that they want to keep bees? Maybe a love of honey, maybe some masochistic pleasure in being stung. I think at last I have started to understand.

A couple of years have passed since I read the following two novels, “Hamnet and Judith” and “The Beekeeper’s Daughter”, by Maggie O’Farrell and by Santa Montefiore respectively, they taught me to appreciate the fascination. There is something very calming about an English garden on a summer’s day. I can see the flowers and hear the bees as I write. Combine that with thatched roofs, the patchwork of fields, the old oaks, the yew, the cooing of pigeons, then the idyll becomes bucolic.  And to round it off there are hives and honey and a human in a protective suit with a smoker to subdue the wee creatures. So add that to Shakespearian Stratford, where the first novel is set, and an antebellum, World War II, English aristocratic pile with tied cottages and a feudal beekeeper, as in the second then apiarists as eccentrics becomes no longer true. Apiary suddenly becomes a balm for the soul.

So what of other eccentrics? It is always fascinating on historical or travel TV shows when one discovers that the host of the show has discovered a local expert who knows everything about local tidal flows; can talk forever about Bram Stoker; has been instrumental in reviving an old steam train and railway system; talks ecstatically about the time he spotted the lesser spotted peregrine flycatcher bird thingee, or some such avian rarity, flying from the local elm tree. “It’s very rare, you know”, we are told. “Yep, so are you, mate” we mutter under our breath. It would be easy to tease such characters, snigger behind one’s hand. I remember that he who was responsible for “Plant a tree in 73” went back to an English village years later to find how his trees had progressed. Only trouble was he and the camera crew were trekking around the village and being permanently disappointed because the planter thought he had reached the spot and then realised that yet again he hadn’t. That actually made better television than if he had actually found the trees! I have tried to reduce my puerile sniggering at such characters and now manage an indulgent smile. But I read something the other day which has me thinking that I should wipe all such amuse bouche from my face. George Bernard Shaw had it right when he said,

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world, the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

Of course, he was writing at a different time for he certainly meant ‘woman’ as well. So here in Vancouver, there was the woman who used the money she received as a pay out from her job to set up hives for homeless people. I don’t know whether this was before the bees were in crisis but homeless people certainly were. So this remarkable woman, whose name I know but fight shy of naming, chased two hares and did the impossible by catching them both. I am not sure whether her downtown project is still going but I really do hope so.

Incidentally, Dear Reader, the apiarist gets her name from the Latin apis mellifera, ‘apis’ meaning ‘bee’, ‘mellifera’ meaning ‘honey bearing’. Oh dear, now I am off on a terrible tangent. Get off this horse now, Dear Reader. Give it up, shut her down, make yourself a cuppa tea. Don’t read on. You will be sucked into a vortex of stuff which nobody in their right mind needs to know. You are a victor at the moment but victimhood awaits if you follow this blog to its interminable conclusion. Very well, don’t say you haven’t been warned.

 If one, Dear Reader, has the gift of the gab, one’s flow is ‘honey tongued’ that is to say, ‘mellifluous’. And if we transfer we ‘carry across’, you confer you ‘carry onto/with’ and you trek over to Horseshoe Bay to catch a ‘ferry’, this is a boat which will carry or bear you to the island. Because, Dear Reader, the Latin verb meaning ‘to carry or bear’ is ‘ferre’. So now, Friends, you are victims of an eccentric, somebody who spent a ridiculous amount of time at school studying Latin, a decade (“Decem” equals ‘ten’) at least and less time, yet still ridiculous, (‘rido’ equals ‘I laugh’) learning Greek. Yes, Friends, you have now descended into a deep hole along a path upon which you may not wish to travel. This route has no terminus (L. ‘end’) so you will never arrive (‘ad ripam’, the Romans only ever arrived when they reached the river bank either metaphorically or in reality. ‘Ad ripam’ means ‘to the river bank’ and morphed into ‘arrive’ through the French ‘a rive’).

So inadvertently, Dear Reader, you have been introduced to another eccentricity which is my love of the roots of language. Because of this late and unexpected arrival to my blog, I will now attempt to backtrack on my argument and state that I now believe that there is no such thing as eccentricity. We all have something which is a passion which is not part of the mainstream. As individuals we are all unique so there will inevitably be something about us which will cause a snigger behind a palm.

 Thanks for making it to the end.

“Nunc est bibendum” and you deserve it, Friends.