Bees in my Bonnet

Just finished watching the final episode of Martha Kearney's The Wonder of Bees on BBC4. 
I've been fascinated by bees for a long time and have enjoyed learning more about keeping them from this series. I'm planning to do an introductory course on beekeeping in September to find out more. My family are getting edgy and making jokes whenever I mention the subject .....

I read Sean Borodale's collection Bee Journal a while back but it irritated me, something rather disconnected, dissociated about his style left me cold. I may get it out of the library again and give it another chance .....

In the meantime, I've sown a mini-meadow in a raised bed - all the flower seeds that I've not got around to planting over the past few years. Most of them are long past their use-by dates, yet despite that, tiny plants are starting to appear - verbena, poppies, marigolds, nigella, snapdragons, pansies, cornflowers. I want to attract and feed the city bees and butterflies and to offer pleasure to our noses and eyes. It's too dark to take a photo now but I will log one here later in the week and monitor my meadow's progress.....

I took the photo up above in the entrance to Manchester town hall. The bee, representing industry, was adopted as one of the symbols of Manchester, a city built on the infamous cotton trade .....

And as for bee poems, no-one can offer a more thought-provoking and chilling take on the subject than Sylvia Plath.  

The Arrival of the Bee Box

I ordered this, clean wood box Square as a chair and almost too heavy to lift. I would say it was the coffin of a midget Or a square baby Were there not such a din in it. The box is locked, it is dangerous. I have to live with it overnight And I can't keep away from it. There are no windows, so I can't see what is in there. There is only a little grid, no exit. I put my eye to the grid. It is dark, dark, With the swarmy feeling of African hands Minute and shrunk for export, Black on black, angrily clambering. How can I let them out? It is the noise that appalls me most of all, The unintelligible syllables. It is like a Roman mob, Small, taken one by one, but my god, together! I lay my ear to furious Latin. I am not a Caesar. I have simply ordered a box of maniacs. They can be sent back. They can die, I need feed them nothing, I am the owner. I wonder how hungry they are. I wonder if they would forget me If I just undid the locks and stood back and turned into a tree. There is the laburnum, its blond colonnades, And the petticoats of the cherry. They might ignore me immediately In my moon suit and funeral veil. I am no source of honey So why should they turn on me? Tomorrow I will be sweet God, I will set them free. The box is only temporary.

(from Ariel)