NO SHORTAGE OF BEES HERE

We've always had more than enough bees here, despite the bee-population crisis elsewhere in the world. Not long after we moved, we had to have a wall of my study largely demolished to remove the vast bee population that had colonised the gap behind the room and between room and roof and was trying to expand into the room itself. The big old wooden pillars, seven feet tall and a foot wide, were coated in historical accretions of honey. The bees were removed by professionals.

This time, on Friday, more and more bees started to gather together on a branch of a plum tree about four yards from the kitchen window - until the branch was lowered to the ground by the weight of them, and the frenzied buzzing calmed for the night. On Saturday morning they were still there. The man next door has an uncle who keeps bees, so he was called in, and along with Kevin (he's French), the excellent boy next door, he arrived yesterday afternoon to lure them all into a hive, which he then took away in the back of his van. His estimate was that there had been 30,000 bees on our tree. Watching him giving them a helping hand into their new home was quite something.