It starts with a phone call. "We want to renovate our stables. It seems we have a few bees under the floor. Could you come along and give us some advice, please?" 

The Bee Garden, as I have now named the field, has taken another step in it development. Whilst I was waiting for the weather to a little less inclement and that in turn to allowing the field to dry out, 

A chance meeting with a land owner whilst fettling my bees led to a discussion on converting a piece of unused pasture into the honeybee idyll. The pasture has been under grass and heaven knows what else for a decade. This triangular shape parcel of land is tricky for large machines to cultivate hence it has been "set aside" for the want of a better word. 

I got the following email from a concerned citizen regarding dead bees in May 2014. 

 

“Hi Dave the Bee farmer, We have just noticed over the last couple of days that bees are going in somewhere in next doors lean to/extension thing. But that’s not the problem, the problem is that we have found at least 6 dead bees on the ground outside in our garden about 2 meters away from where we’ve seen them going into next door. And also just down the road, probably about 20 meters away we saw a few dead bees on the ground. So we are wandering if there is a problem that you might know of as to why they are dying?