I start the New Year hanging my head in shame that this blog has taken so long to put together. An accumulation of excuses are about to befall this page, none of which are acceptable but read on if you are feeling a tad nosey!

First of all, you’ll have noticed that my website has changed. It’s now www.mdthequeenbee.co.uk Also my email has changed to Meriet@mdthequeenbee.co.uk. This is due to a fortuitous encounter with a gentleman called Phil Strachan aka Strange Brew. He decided, upon meeting me early one morning at a breakfast networking event, to come up and say these thought provoking words. “You…” he said in a gentle Scottish accent “… are not Betsie Valentine, she’s a character in your book. You are Meriet Duncan.” Well observed Mr Strachan. However, upon exploring this statement in more depth with him, it made sense. People do think I’m Betsie Valentine. I’ve even been to Seminars to give talks and on the poster board outside the conference room it has actually said “Meet Betsie Valentine” and the first thing I have to do is explain that I’m not, indeed as advertised, I am in fact Meriet Duncan! And so a long slow process began of being “Branded.”

Why a long slow process I hear you ask? Well, for a start, I didn’t even know what “Branding” was let alone see the necessity of it. I’d run my own photography business for 25 years, but never really viewed myself as a ‘business woman.’ Maybe that snippet of information gives you a scant insight into my personality and the problems that lay ahead for Phil. But he patiently explained his business and over time I gradually saw the sense in what he was saying. I needed a brand, an umbrella, if you like, to stand underneath that would make me stand out from the crowd. So here it is… my umbrella… “The Queen Bee.” However, for those of you who do not understand branding, let me make it perfectly clear… just as much as I’m not “Betsie Valentine” neither am I “The Queen Bee” This is the name of my business!

I’m glad I’ve cleared that up. It’s been bugging me… In fact so much so that in the end, just prior to Christmas Phil sent me this email. I could hear the exasperation in his dulcet Scottish tone.

Meriet

Here you are :

YOU ARE NOT THE QUEEN BEE! - You are Meriet Duncan, your business is The Queen Bee and you are in the business of creating a buzz about bees because......... and no arguments!

Phil

To say Mr Strachan is a patient man is an under-statement. Not only is he patient, he’s also creative and clever. So if you’re thinking of re-branding or branding your business I can highly recommend him as the man to talk to. Here’s a link to his website www.strangebrew.co.uk

So… there’s the first excuse.

On a much more personal level, and I’m not one for bringing intimacies to work but in this case I feel it appropriate as it’s an important subject that affects many. As people may or may not know, every Tuesday, together with a man called Colin Little, I lead a singing group for The Alzheimers Society called Singing For The Brain. I love it. Singing is so therapeutic and you can see the results as people leave the session and I ain’t gonna lie, it does me good too. I’ve done this for 10 years and always been an observer of this condition. However, early in December, my father - who is 97 - was diagnosed with early onset dementia. He also was admitted to hospital with pneumonia. This all happened at once. Fortunately he’s recovered from pneumonia but you don’t recover from dementia and every day I see worrying deterioration. At the moment it’s become untenable for him to stay at his home and he’s had to go into respite care which has been traumatic all round. I tell you this as a way of bringing dementia out into the open, so anyone who may be reading this with a family member who has dementia won’t feel alone. Also to help explain that my mind has been on other things during this early winter period. Thank goodness the honeybees are resting. Be grateful for small mercies I say. If anyone does have a relative with dementia or even suspects that someone has it.. please do get in touch with The Alzheimers Society. It’s a Charity and they are marvellous. They will help you. https://www.alzheimers.org.uk

I think I’m done with the excuses.. onward and upward to the blog about the honeybees.

What a fantastic year I had with my honeybees. I started the year with one strong hive and ended with three strong hives. So far so good. They are all still there. Just before Christmas I treated them with oxalic acid as part of their varroa treatment, which means of course, I get to have a brief peek inside the hives. It’s all done very quickly so as not to disturb or allow too much cold air into the cluster surrounding the queen. Two of the hives appeared as strong and healthy as they were when I last looked and one seemed to have considerably less bees than at the start of their winter rest. So I’ll be interested to see what’s going on in early March. I hefted the hives and they were all still fairly heavy. But, as I’ve said before, having plenty of stores can be misleading as sometimes, if it’s cold, the honeybees wont move from their cluster to get the stores. If they’re not near them they can simply starve to death while trying to keep warm. As a precaution I put some fondant icing in each hive just above the cluster so they could feed themselves without having to move.

All this sounds very professional. There was an incident… I have to say it was probably my most scary moment with the honeybees to date. Looking back I can laugh at my stupidity but at the time I thought I would be spending Christmas in the same hospital as my father - just on a different floor -

As I said, with help of my friend Sally, a fellow beekeeper, I treated my hives with Oxalic Acid. It’s nice to help each other with these things as the job can be done more quickly which can only be good for the bees. I, by return, went and helped her with her bees. We’d been told to be careful with the measurements as they were very precise and there would be none left over so no guess work - measure carefully and precisely for each hive - which we did. However, there was some left over, in fact quite a bit. When I got home I read the instructions again and realised I’d misinterpreted them. I called Sally and told her my mistake and, still wearing my bee suit, went straight back to my apiary on my own to administer the missing dosage. I went to the nearest hive, the strongest one, and lifted the lid and crown board. Unsurprisingly they weren’t amused. We’d chosen a mild day to do the treatment but nonetheless, in the honeybees minds, they’d been disrupted but a mere 30 minutes ago and weren’t prepared to take the next invasion lying down. They came up at me like oil from a newly sprung well. I was taken aback and somewhere in my mind I thought to myself ‘goodness they seem really close to my face’ and suddenly… ‘Oh sh*t I haven’t got my hood on…’ I could hear loud buzzing all around me and very near my ear. Some, I could feel, were already caught in my hair. I took off like a rocket hotly pursued by a mass of enraged honeybees. Shaking my head and shouting obscenities while running, I threw my hive tool in one direction and when I felt I the chase was tailing off, my hat went in the other. I stopped to tip my head upside down so I could brush the bees out of my hair with my fingers before they stung me on the head. Meanwhile my glasses had gone goodness knows where. When everything finally went quiet, I partly stood up, with my hands resting on my knees, and looked around at the debris I’d left behind. I slowly walked back toward the hives picking up said discarded items. All found bar my glasses, which incidentally I still can’t find. I stood for a moment trying to take in the stupidity of what had just happened and put my hood up. Realising I’d left the bees uncovered I then ran back to put the crown board and lid on the hive of exceedingly angry bees. Frankly who could blame them? I went on to give more oxalic to the next two hives, this time properly attired and finally, I took a deep breath, approached hive numero uno, saying “Sorry girls but this has to be done.” I lifted off the crown board and finished the job. When I got in my car, I sat for a moment and giggled to myself thinking what that would have looked like to an onlooker, had there been one. “Oh look” they would say “isn’t that Meriet Duncan… Speaker, Author and Beekeeper… you know… the one creating a buzz about the bees?

“Silly B…” I said to myself out loud as I reached into the glove compartment and took out my spare glasses.. “…that wont happen again.”

Finally… I love the pictures below. The Little Chalfont Community Library, which incidentally has a wonderful vibrant atmosphere, asked me to hand out prizes to children who had entered a short story competition. The standard was extremely high and each winner was well deserved. There were lots of excellent prizes, among them a copy of Betsie Valentine And The Honeybees. This lovely lad pictured below was among the winners and while I was giving out the other prizes he sat down and started to read his copy of Betsie… I then sat down opposite him and he said to me…

“I love this book. The Author came into my school and gave a talk about the honey bees.”

“Did she indeed?” I said.

“Yes” he said, then looked up and realised it was me! It was a great moment.

Well that’s about it. I have some lovely events and talks booked in for 2020 year and look forward to receiving many more requests. Last years accounts have just been done and - ring-a-ding-ding - I’ve sold over 1,000 copies of Betsie Valentine And The Honeybees. The more people who become aware of the plight of our honeybees and can help to maintain their being the better. See you next time…

HAPPY NEW YEAR!