The Beekeeper

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.

a  bee smoking device

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.

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.

"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.

Evidently the bees have some extra sensory perception or antennae which warn them of flying over 35 kms an hour so many flew into the box after the Queen while others I suppose must have just dispersed. 

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!”