Our beekeeper neighbour in the next village arrived in the early evening with a swarm of bees safely enclosed in a ventilated box in his car. After suiting up in the drive in his white bee suit, we followed his example by putting on our newly purchased pristine jacket, veil, gloves and boots. We followed him up the meadow, excited and a with slight trepidation to the site we had prepared for our apiary. Grass had been mowed and a wooden stand constructed for our very first hive to rest on.

With a couple of shakes from the box the bees were deposited into the top of the hive. We now felt a responsibility to do our best to help our bees thrive. For the next couple of evenings we sat and watched our bees making forays from the hive,setting up home. They had a lot of work to do to build the comb they needed from the pristine sheets of foundation wax we had provided for them.

The fields either side of the meadow were planted with oil seed rape and although the flowers had just started to die off there was plenty for them to work on. The meadow was shining with golden buttercups and we looked forward to the taste of our very own honey.