Some years ago my husband, Jack, and I bought a domaine in France. It came with an
assortment of unusual buildings, most of which we didn’t need, but we weren’t
about to hire a ball and chain to demolish the ‘unnecessaries’. They included
the shell of what must once have been a splendid 16th century courtyard.
Although much of the domaine
history has sadly been lost in time, we know the courtyard is part of an old
fortification, the remains of which lie under our lawn. I’m convinced it’s riddled
with old coins, arrow heads and other thrilling treasures and, one day, I’ll
get my trowel out and start exploring. But, right now, there’s more than enough
to occupy our time.
We’re very rural here so I didn’t bat an eyelid when Jack recently
announced, “The bees are back in the courtyard.” This was nothing new, a
band of stripy regulars pop in each year. Ages ago they’d established squatting
rights in a minuscule space between the roof overhang and the apartment window
below. I know, it sounds strange to have an apartment there, but there’s a history to
it.
The previous owners built the apartment on one side of the
old shell as a means of accommodating extra visitors. Being a person who
prefers his own company where possible, this was one of the things that
immediately attracted Jack during our first viewing. The potential to have
house guests without them actually being in the house was manna from heaven for
him.
As for our bees, by and large they mind their own business,
as do the human visitors who occasionally stay in the apartment. The only
problem arises when a team flyby occurs at the same time our pals open the
window. Nobody likes a cloud of bees in their face. We have since taken the
precaution of suggesting to our summer-visiting chums that they might want to
check for signs of loud humming before embarking on a fresh air campaign.
A couple of days after Jack’s first observation, I sauntered
into the courtyard to clean out the dovecote. Two steps in and I came to a
jarring halt. Of course I expected to see our bees, but this was very different.
The sound was like walking into a motor-bike workshop with
several two-stroke engines running. The original scouts had relocated, and there
now seemed to be thousands in the air. Some were zooming around in circles whilst
others were flying in above my head. Then I saw the main cluster.
Masses of bees had set up a construction site in a corner of
the courtyard, right next to the dovecote. This wasn’t just our usual mob, they’d
brought family, friends, and enough energy to develop a colony. I decided to
investigate further.
Previously our bees had never shown signs of aggressive
behaviour. But I was heavily outnumbered so caution was required. I tentatively
crept over to have a closer look.
To my amazement I realised how wrong Jack and I had been with
our original bee ID. These were not masonry bees, as we’d previously thought. They
were honey bees and I was looking at what seemed to be an extraordinary series
of honeycombs absolutely covered in stripeys, diligently and rapidly extending
the structure. Clearly, action was required.
I rushed back to the house to find Jack and Nathan, (our
French forester colleague and all-round top bloke), sitting outside chatting.
“We’ve got a huge bees’ nest in the courtyard,” I squeaked.
They both looked rigidly unimpressed with my exclamation.
“Yes, there are one or two,” replied Nathan – master of
understatements – courteously humouring me.
“No, really,” I persisted, “there are absolutely loads of
them.”
Jack was looking decidedly sceptical, so I insisted they
come and have a look. That did it.
“Bloody hell, where did that lot come from,” he said, with a
sharp intake of breath. “We’ll have to remove them somehow.”
Nathan regarded the seething, buzzing mass, and reluctantly conceded
there were a few more than normal. Being a lifelong local he assured us he knew
just the man to sort it out.
Within seconds Monsieur
Decaunes was on the other end of Nathan’s mobile phone. Nathan said he’d be
happy to do the removal, but he couldn’t arrive until the following week. He
added that monsieur had issued an instruction
that, in the interim, the bees must not be upset in any way.
“OK,” responded Jack, dryly. “I’ll speak to them very nicely
and take them coffee and croissants each morning. What on earth does ‘not upset
them’ mean?”
“Well, for one thing, darling, it means not trying to
asphyxiate them with that dreadful powder you sprayed underneath the eaves last
year.”
“Harrumph! It was
just to get them to move away. Obviously
it didn’t work. Anyway, what about the poor doves? While we’re becoming best
mates with the insects, they’re having to cope with the noise of a motocross event
and the arrival of yet more flying invaders.”
“Jack, that’s nature! The doves’ instincts will cope with
things for a few days.”
Nevertheless, just to be sure, we dutifully observed their behaviour
from a discreet distance.
A constant stream of incomers and out-goers worked
tirelessly. More and more arrived each day. We were fascinated by their
activity, and their gradually developing honeycombs. The poor doves, less so.
The flightpath to their home had become an air traffic controller’s nightmare.
It now required highly skilled aeronautics to weave their way through the
stream of workers, which they fortunately managed without ‘upsetting’ any of
the newbies.
It was a boiling hot day when our bee man finally arrived. A
very tall, slim man, Monsieur Decaunes,
gradually unfolded himself from his car. He shook our hands and took
gangling, heron-like strides towards the new squatters.
“Oui, vous avez les abeilles,” he gravely
announced, stating the blindingly obvious in that especially French understated
way.
“It’s always best to get a professional in,” remarked Jack. “There
I was thinking it might be a flock of small starlings.”
I ignored Jack’s unwelcome quip and beamed supportively at monsieur. He assured us that we mustn’t
be concerned as he’d have everything under control very quickly. These were
reassuring words from one worryingly covered in so many lumps, which I’d
naturally assumed hadn’t been caused by a ghastly skin disease.
The game plan involved removing the bee-covered honeycombs,
and placing them in a temporary hive. The whole lot would be transported back
to his farm where they would be homed in permanent equivalents and live to
pollinate the surrounding fields.
With the battle tactics agreed, monsieur disappeared into the back of his car to kit-up. First out was
a wooden beehive. Then a white apiarist’s outfit made of extremely thick
material and, finally, a strange metal can with a spout at one end and bellows at
the other.
Fully clad, and looking as though all he needed was a skinny sword to complete the look, he
paced over and scrutinised the colony. We all did.
“Avez-vous une échelle s'il vous plaît?” Despite
his great height, even he wasn’t tall enough to access this lot.
A set of ladders were quickly produced while monsieur started a fire in his metal
can. This seemed odd. I asked him what he was doing. He explained that it would
create special smoke which would cause the bees to become sleepy and docile. Since
it smelled suspiciously like marijuana I felt sure it would do the trick in
seconds. However, closer inspection revealed the mixture to be a collection of substances
more akin to wood chips.
Amid billowing smoke, monsieur
ascended the steps and started puffing his bellows at the bees. To my untrained
eye it seemed that his technique was having the opposite effect to the one
desired. Bees started zooming around, bashing into his veil and sticking to his
gloves. Meanwhile, Jack and Nathan were gamely hanging onto to the bottom of the ladder to
stop it swaying. Totally unprotected,
they grimly swatted away the angry guards that zig-zagged around the courtyard
and their heads. Things weren’t going awfully well at this point.
But, for monsieur,
it was merely a temporary setback. Various sounds could be heard from inside
his helmet, none of which were remotely intelligible. It turned out he was unhappy
about the effectiveness of his smoke generator. He clambered down and
disappeared back into his van for more chips.
Meanwhile, the bees were working themselves into a proper tizzy,
and seemed to be preparing for a full-scale counter-attack. I felt certain that
he should be doing something quickly before they opened fire.
However, monsieur
was not to be panicked into unnecessary haste, at least not until his equipment
was fully re-stoked. He finally nodded at his device and re-ascended the
ladder. Rung by rung he poofed, billowed and puffed at flying buzzers, this
time causing many of them to calm down – a bit. Back in position at the top of
the ladder his head emerged through a cloud of smoke,
“Maintenant j’ai besoin d’un couteau s'il
vous plaît?”, he coughed.
This caught us all off-guard. We had no idea why he needed a
knife – it wasn’t lunchtime. Fortunately, Nathan, a man who always has an interesting
selection of weapons about his person, produced an extra-long sheath knife.
This was handed to monsieur, who made
its use obvious by carefully cutting off a slab of honeycomb. Gentle removal
revealed several distinct slices, each seething with the little critters. I was
absolutely fascinated.
Monsieur was now
completely covered in bees. Despite being inside and outside his helmet, up his
arms, and across much of his back, he stoically continued with only an occasional
expression of disquiet. The first segment of honeycomb, together with its
occupants, was finally placed in the temporary hive. One down, several more to
go.
Slice by slice the extraordinary structures were removed. Each
was a sumptuous colour of rich yellow. Perfect hexagons, some filled, others
not, dripping sweet natural honey that glistened in the hot sun. I watched in wonder
at this stunning work of nature.
The bees, relatively orderly now, clung to their segments. Like
master gymnasts they hung on to one another in their efforts to retain contact,
I couldn’t help but admire their tenacity. Monsieur
explained that part of their drive was to protect their queen who was within. There
is one queen to each hive, he said, which has been developed from larvae
selected by worker bees and specially fed royal jelly in order to become
sexually mature. No wonder she’s such a popular gal.
I watched as monsieur
continued his painstaking labour in the boiling-hot, sun-trapped, corner of the
courtyard. Despite his lanky awkwardness he handled each honeycomb with extreme
dexterity. As each piece was delicately removed it revealed hordes more of
these amazing creatures. I had no idea a hive was constructed in this way.
I tried estimating their numbers but very quickly ran out of
zeros. I didn’t have a clue how many there might be. Monsieur explained that a healthy hive has between 20,000 and
60,000 bees, of which the female worker bees outnumber the male drones around
100 to 1. Whilst I was still trying to compute this enormous number of animals
he chipped in that ours was a very healthy hive.
The last puff of smoke dispersed as the final segment was sawn
off. A few tenacious workers remained in situ, but the vast majority of the
colony was now buzzing sleepily in its temporary accommodation. Monsieur looked extremely sorrowful
about the stragglers and expressed regret at leaving them behind. No apologies
needed as far as we were concerned. Short of scooping them up and stuffing them
in his pockets I couldn’t see how he could possibly transfer them from the top
of the ladder to the hive below.
It had taken over two hours for monsieur to complete the job. The poor chap looked thrilled to bits
with his new bees, but totally spent. He removed his protective gear. First the
helmet, which revealed a beetroot-red face, pouring with sweat, plus a suspicious-looking
new weal on his cheek. His fat gauntlets and heavy top gear came next and had
to be peeled off, leaving his dripping T-shirt beneath. Finally, it was the not-at-all
technical-looking wellies. As he pulled those off out came a few more bees
which, shame though it was, presumably counted as collateral damage.
As he started stowing his kit, Jack, full of thanks, asked
how much we owed him. Monsieur almost
bashed his head on the door of his car in surprise and reappeared looking confused.
“Mais non, monsieur, c'est moi qui vous
remercie!”
He didn’t want payment. Instead, he produced a very nice
bottle of wine for Jack and, for me, a huge container of honey from his own
apiary. I was thrilled.
Jack, on the other hand, was completely taken aback. The
last time we’d had a swarm of bees removed – from our garden in England – it cost
us something like £15.
But monsieur was
insistent. Thanks to us he now had another colony of bees to add to his apiary
and he hoped we would call him the next time this happened.
“Oh, monsieur, thank you so much,” I cried, adding,
“but I’m so sorry you had to work in such difficult conditions today. Does it
always take so long to remove a hive?”
Monsieur looked at
me, slightly crestfallen and, speaking partly in English, replied, “Normalement
it is une heure. But that is when my
father does it. In this case I hold the ladder. This is why the many bites I
have. My father he has the hip prothèse
three weeks before. So, you see, I am the bee trainee.”
Jack, mightily impressed with the man’s honesty, pressed a
20 euro note into monsieur’s palm urging
him to have a few glasses of nice red wine that evening to help his father’s
healing process.
Monsieur, totally
abashed, was unable to defeat Jack’s offer and eventually re-folded himself into
his loudly-humming car. As he waved goodbye we could see one or two escapees buzzing
out of his window. His journey home was going to be sporty, to say the least.
“What a wonderful young man.” Jack said as we waved him off.
“Perhaps next time we’ll see him with his father and, even possibly, with his
own knife!”
How fascinating Beth, there's always something going on in your little corner of France. Life in the country is buzzing with excitement! What a lovely story.
ReplyDeleteI'm so pleased you enjoyed it, Rebecca, thanks ever so much for your beautifully expressed comments. And you're right, there's NEVER a dull one here! :)
Delete"Rigidly unimpressed." Perfection. Your best, YET!
ReplyDeleteHeh heh heh, wild guess, Nancy, but I reckon you may have a pretty clear picture of how the pair of them looked! Thanks so much for your lovely comments. :)
DeleteWhat a wonderful experience--my maiden name is bugbee and I did a paper on bees for school once--love them except when they get me!!
ReplyDeleteThank you very much for reading the blog. Yes, I was absolutely fascinated throughout. What a terrific maiden name you have, extremely apt here. I'm just the same as you although, so far, I've escaped a sting!
DeleteAbsolutely fascinating Beth, what a great blog. The honey looked delicious.
ReplyDeleteKiersten :)
Thanks very much, Kiersten, I'm so glad you enjoyed it. I learned so much during that day and you're absolutely right, the honey was every bit as delicious as it looked. :)
ReplyDelete