I am presently living with my eldest son Anthony
and his wife Pia in Johannesburg.
The garden is spacious, peaceful and well-treed,
offering sweet smelling Syringa blossom in the spring and a wonderful habitat
for birds and bees.
The bees formed a huge hive under part of the roof
over the main bedroom and bathroom. During the night, attracted by light, some
of the bees would somehow climb down into the bedroom and lie doggo on a pillow
or the carpet resulting in some fierce stings when pressurized by a cheek or a
foot.
Pia, who is allergic to bee stings, seemed to bear
the brunt of this.
After a particularly painful sting on the foot she
said to Anthony: “Either I go, or the bees go!”
He asked her where she would go
to and unthinkingly she said: “.. to a B&B”.
At long last Anthony decided he would have to have
the bees removed, much to Pia’s relief. He found a beekeeper who arrived in a
truck with a long ladder tied to the roof with a bit of rope. He was dressed in
a white protection suit and he swiftly removed and set up his ladder to
inspect the hive with bare hands and no protection on his face.
He carried with
him a bee smoker device, used to make the bees dozy. It was a small mug with a
lid and a long spout carrying straw.
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| a bee smoking device |
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| Bee careful |
Unfortunately he mislaid his lighter and got stung
on the cheek. He hurried down the ladder, donned a protective headgear,
borrowed a lighter from Ant and up he climbed into the roof once more. He told
Anthony that when one bee stings you others follow suit. His bare hands were
stung many times but he did not seem to worry about that and simply removed the
stings and went on with his work.
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| "I was full of admiration" |
I watched the beekeeper happily going on with his
work of dismantling a huge swarm which had been living there for years. I was
full of admiration.
He removed the darkest comb first with the many, many
little black baby bees which he placed with their Queen in a cardboard box on
the top of his truck.
Bees followed their Queen in clouds and buzzed in
confusion around the box, whereupon another swarm from some neighbouring garden
invaded the situation and in no time a sort of bee war went on with complete
bee fury!
We were all safely inside behind closed windows
with the dogs and watched with fascination.
Eventually the cardboard box was put into the truck and the beekeeper left at great speed down the drive, pursued by a swarm.
The honey comb had been put
into buckets; the beekeeper would then settle the bees in a new hive.
In an hour or so the beekeeper arrived back for the
mop up operations and to put tiles back on the roof. He went to collect payment
from Anthony who asked him his name and email address. “Ant 4 B” said the
beekeeper.
“I am called Ant too!” said Anthony. “What is your
second name?”
“Lawrence,” replied the beekeeper.
“That’s odd,” said Anthony, “My second name is
Lawrence too, spelled the same way as yours.”
I was sent for to establish if they were at all
related, and I said that the Lawrence family were indeed relatives of ours.
They were engineers and shipbuilders from a farm in Scotland called
“Tillygthills” and had settled many years ago in the Kimberley area where my
mother was born.
We will have to sort out the full history of our
relationship at a later date but I do know that the Lawrence family of
Kimberley with James and Alexander Lawrence as our forefathers were famous in
their day for building churches and bridges in South Africa.
“I knew you were special Anthony Lawrence,” I told
the beekeeper.
“When I watched you handling those bees!”
