Roger Morgan-Grenville - Liquid Gold: Bees and the Pursuit of Midlife Honey

1969

H e was called Mr Fowler.

Like most children then, I lived in a world devoid of adult first names, and so Mr Fowler he stayed. And when I thought of him, I really only thought of him as Mr McGregor in Beatrix Potters The Tale of Peter Rabbit. All I remember about him now is that he had a flat cap that he never took off, and a pipe that he never took out of his mouth.

He gardened for my grandfather, which must have been no mean feat, as my grandfather was a formidable gardener himself. One midsummer afternoon, while I was staying, I tiptoed round to the greenhouse to help myself to a couple of his Gardeners Delight tomatoes while no one was looking, only to find that Mr Fowler was looking. He was there in the shadows, operating the antique watering system, but he was forgiving enough to hand me a couple to try, anyway. Perfectly did he understand the elemental pleasure of the smell and taste of an old-fashioned tomato straight off the vine in a hot greenhouse. For a minute or two, he stood with me watching a bee hard at work on the flowers above. xii

Whys it doing that? I asked him as it darted from flower to flower as if its life depended on it.

Its not an it, he said sternly. Its a she. And shes foraging. Shes collecting pollen and nectar to take back to the hive to turn into honey.

How does she do that? I asked, chastened. In the monochrome world of 1960s food, honey was something I actually liked and could easily identify with.

With a lot of help from her friends, he answered, and went back to his work on the stirrup pump. He wasnt paid to entertain nine-year-old boys.

Mr Fowler kept a hive himself, in his little plot a couple of miles away. At some stage, he must have spoken to my grandfather about my furtive visit to the greenhouse, as the next time I went round, the latter announced that I had been invited over to the Fowlers for tea, and that I would be shown the hive if I was very good and said please and thank you to Mrs Fowler at all the right times.

So, when he had finished his days work, Mr Fowler and I bundled wordlessly back through the shady chestnut lane in his pale green Hillman Imp. As soon as we arrived at his cottage he became as light and frivolous as he had been stern and grave in my grandparents garden, as if the act of removing his hat and revealing the previously unseen bald head had lifted all formality from him. He and Mrs Fowler fussed over me like the sweet old people Id only ever read about in Enid Blyton books, plying me with sandwiches, cake and xiii lemonade, telling me that I would never grow to be a big lad unless I kept eating and eating. At length, Mr Fowler put his hat back on and led me down the side of his tiny garden, to a spot by a bank on the edge of the neighbouring farmland.

There you are, he said. Thats a beehive. Do you want to look inside it?

I wasnt entirely sure that I did, now that I was close up. But, after that huge tea and with a modicum of childish intuition, I understood that no wasnt on the menu of acceptable answers.

Oh, yes please! I said.

So he went back to his shed and brought out two faded white hats with veils attached, and a single pair of gloves. Having got my hat on, and with my veil securely tucked into the top of my sweater, and my trousers stuffed into my boots, I was still alarmed that he had only one pair of gloves.

A proper beekeeper doesnt use gloves, he said, beaming. He needs to feel how the bees are behaving, and he cant do that through leather, or even cotton. Here, these are for you. Shall we open it up now?

He lit a little bee smoker, and directed a few puffs into the hole at the bottom of the hive.

Why do you do that? I asked, sniffing at the wreaths of burned cardboard smoke that filtered up into the summer air.

That just calms them, he explained.

Im not sure what I was expecting to see as he took the roof off the hive and laid it carefully on the ground but, for xiv a second or two, I was close to sheer panic. I had never seen so many living things in one place, so pulsating with hidden energy, and so densely packed. The impression of a chaos so much vaster than me made me slightly nauseous. The top of the open box revealed a moving carpet of bees, writhing this way and that, and rising and falling. I had recently read T.H. Whites The Sword in the Stone, and all I knew about insects came from the few pages when Merlin turns Wart into an ant, and that had frightened rather than helped. A few bees flew at my veil, and I could hear the angry buzz of their wings, beating 200 times to the second. I had been stung by bees before, and the multiplied thought that there were maybe 50,000 of them in this box brought me up short for a second or two. I drew back a couple of paces, scared of being seen to be scared, but wary of being too close.

Dont worry about the bees, said Mr Fowler, taking two smaller boxes off the big one at the bottom. If you keep calm, they wont bother you. And anyway, youre well protected.

With his bare hands and a prong from his gardeners penknife, he levered the frames free from where wax and honey had stuck them to the box, and showed them to me as he took each one out to inspect it. I watched a few bees crawling across the backs of his hands, and wondered if he, too, was a bit nervous but just didnt want to show it to a boy like me. Pointing at how the queen had laid eggs all around the drawn-out wax foundation, he showed me the difference between new brood and sealed brood, and explained what xv the significance of each was. On the fourth or fifth frame, he said excitedly: