Chapter 1: The Village Litter Pick That Changed Everything
I didn’t wake up that morning planning to become a beekeeper.
I went to pick up litter.
It was one of those ordinary village mornings. Gloves on. Black bags handed out. A small group of us spreading out along the lanes and hedgerows collecting whatever winter had left behind. Mud on boots. Plastic bottles in ditches. The usual.
Somewhere along a stretch of hedge I got talking to Colin. I can’t remember how bees came into it. They just did. That’s often how things start — not with a grand plan, but with a passing comment.
“You should speak to Alison,” he said. “She keeps bees.”
Later that morning I found myself sitting on a sunny patio with Alison and shortbread, talking properly. Not casually. Properly.
She spoke about colonies, inspections, varroa, foulbrood, forage, pesticides. It wasn’t whimsical. No fluff. It was practical and informed. Bees weren’t a novelty to her. They were livestock. A responsibility.
I told her I’d been interested in beekeeping for years. I’d read bits. Watched the odd video. Thought about it more than once. But I’d never taken the plunge.
It always felt like something I’d “maybe do one day”.
Alison mentioned she was a member of the British Beekeepers Association and more specifically the Bishops Stortford Beekeepers Association.
Bishop’s Stortford. That caught my attention.
It’s the town I grew up in. We still live locally. I travel around Hertfordshire and Essex most weeks. It wasn’t some distant club requiring commitment I might struggle to maintain. It was familiar. Accessible. On my route.
At the time I didn’t recognise how important that would be.
Interest is easy. Consistency is harder.
And consistency is everything in beekeeping.
As it happened, the association were meeting at their apiary that very afternoon. Alison mentioned it almost casually. “You’re welcome to come along if you’d like.”
No pressure. No hard sell. Just an open invitation.
I said yes.
I drove out later that afternoon, turned off a quiet road on the outskirts of town, through a farm gate and down a rough track into a scrub field where a small group of people were gathering.
White suits. Wellies. Calm conversation.
There wasn’t a bee in sight.
I remember thinking that was odd.
It turned out it was the first inspection of the season. I didn’t understand the significance of that at the time. I do now.
Looking back, that afternoon was the point things shifted.
That afternoon, I drove through a farm gate on the outskirts of town and stepped into something that would quietly reshape the next twelve months of my life.
And there were no bees in sight.
That worried me more than I expected.
Because the people standing quietly beside those wooden boxes knew something I didn’t yet understand.
The first inspection of the season was about to begin.
The hive lid lifts.
Thousands of bees appear where moments before there were none.
And for the first time in my life, I’m handed a frame covered in them.
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