A beehive in our garden!

On return from the UK we had one leaking toilet, which was repaired with a lot of frustration, a broken water heater, which was replaced -at considerable expense the same day--and a beehive in our compost heap! Lovely.

Mary found a list of beekeepers who would collect them and today a man arrived complete with his covers and a 'bee box'.

The bee honeycombs had to be slowly and carefully removed with a sort of spatula and placed into a new 'hive' box.

In spite of not wearing gloves, he was only stung once.

He explained that the common bee here is Aphis Mellifera and that a noraml hive can produce 20 to 50kgs of honey a year. An imported pest--the S. African hive beetle, is doing a lot of damage to the bee population.

There is a Sutherland bee-keeper association which meets near the oval each month.