RIP little bees

Mum killed her bees sometime this month :( Starved them. She found them all huddled together, dead, with their heads embedded as far as they could into the wax, so desperately trying to get enough food.

They'd eaten the sugar water she'd put out for them a month ago, but they hadnt had the energy to convert it to food :( thousands upon thousands upon thousands of tiny little lives. Half a bucket full of little lives. Shame.. Thankfully dad's hive is still going strong. That would have been truly tragic. I had put my ear to the outside of the hives around Christmas time, when we had snow and could hear the new hive buzzing away. I guess they were buzzing, trying to keep warm and find food. Shaaaaaaame! :((((
Photo: Dad, so wonderfully, excitedly, proud in his brand new bee suit - 29 February 2008.
Is that significant? ...That it was 29th?

Dad had ordered his bees on the internet. How cool is that! At 82, I reckon that is seriously cool. They arrived by Royal Mail! Even more outrageously cool!

Dad poured over every piece of literature he could find on bees as the cancer took hold of first his lungs, and then his brain. The last time I went out there to the hive with him his coordination was gone and he lifted up the wrong layer... opening up the whole hive. But I wasnt scared. He wasnt scared either. We didnt use the bee suit or a smoker. What for? My brother was with us and stood back. I just drank in the rich moment.

I'd flown straight back from South Africa when I heard that something was not right. That they feared the cancer had spread. I got out the car and found a different man. He was awkward. His face changed. Strange. His speech jumbled. He pointed to some flowers and said... "Look... my bees!!" And sure enough... there they were.

Bless him. Thats the legacy he left mum.

Last summer she harvested our first 7 jars of the most delicious, delicately elderflower-scented honey. Honey from the gods ;)

The lavender that literally oozes with bees in the summer! Suffused in the most divinely heady aroma.

p.s. If dad hadnt died, he was all set to order chickens on the internet too and had even marked the ones he wanted! It puts such a smile on my face. One in a million :)

xxx