The birds and the bees (and the wasps)

June 5th


Just having finished work I sat down to eat a late lunch when Jack, our neighbour, nipped in through the French doors (we have a space between our border to nip across to each other's back door). He asked me, "Have you seen the swarm of flies out the front?" I looked out the kitchen window to see two little faces peeking out of their bedroom window across the road. It was like the old fuzzy black and white TV screen. 10,000 little black dots whizzing across my view. Luke raced outside and came back in with a grin to say, "They're bees!" before racing upstairs to grab his camera and race back outside.

So, began our bee venture: off we all went, getting closer and closer as we got braver (or more stupid).The bees weren't bothered with us as they were busy swarming into the hedge. Luke had done a course on bee keeping and had kept a couple of hives on his allotment but after we all got stung when the inspector disturbed their hives he sort of lost interest. Tim, Luke's best friend, continues to keep bees though and now has 60 hives dotted around Cardiff.
So, half an hour later, up drives Tim in his bee suit and whilst I get the kettle on he locates the swarm (not difficult as there are 10,000 bees either in the air or climbing over each other in the hedge). Whilst Luke films the entire episode and Jack and I drink our tea from a safe distance, Tim sprays a fine mist of water over the swarm to trick them into thinking it's raining and so to settle them slightly before he then puffs smoke in their direction. Once he has them calm he places a box underneath their mass and sharply shakes the branch to make them drop in a ball into the box. Strangely enough they all stay put and he places them gently on a sheet on the ground and joins us for his cuppa. As long as he has the Queen in the box the others will follow, attracted by the scent. Within an hour he has the majority of them packed up in the box which in itself is wrapped in the sheet and off he drives. Later that night we are going over for dinner so will be able to see them in their new home; a hive in Tim's back garden. Who'd have thought a week later we would have a similar experience - this time with wasps!



The following week - the wasps!

June 12th
Jack came around to the house again. "I've been stung", he said. It had happened whilst he was trying to cut the hedge between our front gardens. Out we went again to discover a melon sized wasp nest. They make it by chewing little bits of wood and sticking them in layers to make the nest. You can hear them clicking away as they make it, I guess.





June 15th
Having awoken early at 6am I trudged downstairs to look up information on wasp's nests on the net. Now I am in a dilemma; if I can leave them through this summer it seems they will vacate the nest and the only surviving member of the colony will be the Queen bee. However, I if I leave them, their nest will continue to grow ( it is already the size of a large melon ) and as Autumn approaches and they start to feed on over ripe fruit, they may act more aggressively (basically they are drunk and argumentative: football fans take note). So, I don't wan t to kill them but I don't want to be stung as I pass them after a hard day's work (mine, not theirs) and the front door is in their flight path. I think a call to the local pest control department is called for.

June 16th
D-Day for the wasps. I feel mean about it but the wasps are in both the front and back gardens (they chew bits off the hen house roof to make their nest) and may well turn nasty later in the year so, gulp, at 1.30 the man from the council arrives, takes forty quid off me and pumps chemical into the nest. It all takes about ten minutes and he advises us to stay indoors for ten minutes in case they all come round the back, spoiling for a fight. Poor old things. It's been a really demoralising few days what with uprooting the cherry tree, having to dig up a few dead Mahonias and now killing several thousand wasps. Sometimes gardening can seem a world away from nurturing and growing new life. I know we are doing things for the right reasons and have thought long and hard about it beforehand but it does feel wrong. I'm so looking forward to the simple pleasures of growing things again.

June 18th
Just returned last night from a flying visit to see Luke's Dad and this has been my first opportunity to check out the wasp nest. It's a sorry sight, bashed about and pumped full of powdery chemical. I took a photo, showed everybody who came to stay and after three weeks of it sitting out in the wind and rain I hoped enough of the chemical had washed off it for me to be able to bring in and add to my little display of natural beauties.











July 12th.
I'm a happy woman. The ballerina-graceful doves who announce their arrival with squeaky sounding wing beats were both perched on my bird bath just now. I raised the camera to my face, knocked it into autofocus and off they went. But just to see them there, two little pale grey birds drinking from the water - bliss.