At the end of January I decided I would write a weekly blog about my bees which, at the time, someone said to me… “that’s going to be quite a challenge isn’t it?” My response was that it would be a good discipline and any way, I thought it would be a more intimate look into life up at an Apiary, resulting in a better insight in to the honeybees.

Me being me, (that is to say I’m quite impulsive), it never occurred to me that sometimes, for example early in the season, not a lot happens at the apiary because the bees are all inside. But, not one to be deterred, I thought… that’s ok, when all is quiet I’ll just write something about the honeybees, they are, after all, infinitely interesting creatures and while I’m thinking about things I can tell you about them I may learn a thing or two as well. Win-win.

But for this weeks blog I thought I’d begin this quest by sharing with you how I became a beekeeper and subsequently a children’s author and public speaker.

I never set out to be a beekeeper or write children’s books. Both the bees and the books arrived of their own volition and to this day I am so grateful they did. It started with the honeybees, who changed my life, and the books seemed to be a part of the package. I am sure none of this makes any sense to you and as you read on you will see it made little or no sense to me either!

I had been working as a professional photographer, specialising in black & white photography and printing for about 15 years. I had my own studio and darkroom at home and was happy mixing my work life with my home life which suited us all. My husband, who was an accountant was unperturbed by my lack of business acumen - in fact it served him well - I was a bona fide tax loss! But, in spite of my lack of business know-how I loved photography. Even when not working I was rarely seen without a camera in my hand. As a friend of mine once said, when I dared to tell her I had written a childrens book, “you’ve told stories with your camera for years, it’s no surprise to me that you’ve turned to the pen.”

After many years of working with a manual camera and countless hours in a dark room, I had to accept, along with many other photographers, that the world was going digital and if I wanted to keep up that was the way to go. It took me a long time to come on board. In my head I was a ‘creative darling’ - likening myself to a carpenter despising the very thought of flat packs .

But, with the constant whispering in my ear, from a dear friend and fellow photographer, Robert Radmall, I engaged with the digital world, albeit akin to The Reluctant Dragon, which, by the way, is one of my favourite Disney Cartoons. After a few years, though, it felt like everyone believed they were photographers and all the things I had learned seemed not to matter any more. You didn’t have to get it right on the day you could correct and change anything in photoshop. If people didn’t like their nose… click… sorted! It became extremely competitive with so many photographers around and that’s not why I was in the business. So, I decided to bow out and retire.

Beautiful Kristina Rhianoff… no photoshop required. Great lighting, fabulous makeup, (Carlo de Caterino), and wonderful hair, (Hannah Ovenden).

Very soon after this decision, my nephew Leo, who worked in live TV, approached me saying that in between shows there was often a gap of a few weeks… (back then he was the Director of VT’s on Strictly Come Dancing)… and he would like to fill that time by doing photography. Would I teach him about studio lighting and help him start a business? I will tell you now, it was like Usain Bolt, saying “teach me to run.” Needless to say he is now a Series Producer, not Usain… Leo!

So, back into the world of photography I went, this time working in the media and having an absolute ball - sometimes literally - as the first people we photographed, to build up our portfolio, were the Strictly Dancers who were always fabulous to be around. We went on to work with a lot of them for 7 years or so and many other personalities in the media. We were a great team and our business, Snooty Fox Images, really did take off - we had developed a very particular style and our reputation was gathering momentum. However, two things happened; Leo’s career in TV also was gathering momentum and I had become a beekeeper and written a childrens’ book which needed marketing! So we went our separate ways and Leo kept on the business as a hobby which he continues in between shows: https://www.snootyfoximages.com and I concentrated on my bees and book.

Did you read that? I became a beekeeper and had written a childrens’ book. How did that happen?

Beekeeping wasn’t something I ever considered. To be honest, if anyone had asked me what I knew about honeybees, or any bees for that matter, I would probably have looked at them blankly and, provided it was a sunny day and I was standing in the garden near a bed of flowers, I would have pointed, like a toddler, to a bumblebee and said “bee.” Until, that is, one fateful night when I was at a dinner party and sitting next to a chap my sister was dating who, at some stage during the evening, told me he was a beekeeper. Wow… I’d never met a beekeeper before. I’d probably seen them in photographs but that’s as far as it went. And so, as he started to talk to me about the honeybees and beekeeping I fell under his spell and he drew me in. I was fascinated and told him so. If I remember correctly my words were…”Wow, that all sounds amazing. That’s something I might look in to when I finally retire.” In fact I’m sure those were my very words.

The following weekend, my sister called me:

“Meriet… I don’t know what you said to Dirk but we’re on our way to yours, we’re actually coming down the bridle path with a box of bees in the back of the car as I speak.” (We lived in a cottage that was quite a way down a bridle path, surrounded by acres of fields and rolling hills. I thought it was a very romantic spot, friends, however, had a very different view as their cars’ subframes bumped and scraped along the uneven, rough and pitted track all the way to the front door.)

I digress… I was taken aback. A box of bees? What the? They arrived. Gari glared at me from the car. Now I have to go off piste once again. I now know, through two of my boys diagnosis, that I am ADHD. It explains so many unanswered questions! I do have a tendancy to come up with ideas and bolt off like a loose horse until I hit an unsurmountable hedge. Or indeed flit from flower to flower like a butterfly. “Oooo this ones nice, no that one, oh look at that one over there.” So Gari glaring at me and my husband saying “what have you said now?” came as no surprise. The answer was… I didn’t know.

Dirk got out of the car. Put on his bee suit and waved at R and I who were standing at the gate looking perplexed, apprehensive, confused, bewildered, puzzled. I think that just about covers it. He beamed as he greeted us, walked around the garden and decided upon a spot… returned to his car, bought out some bricks and placed them on said spot. He went back to his car and emerged with a box which he placed upon the bricks. R and I had barely moved an inch and our expressions remained the same; we were still looking perplexed, apprehensive, confused, bewildered and puzzled.

Gari stayed in the car, grinning through gritted teeth. Another of her sisters mad idea’s was indeed what she was thinking. I tentatively smiled at her and shrugged my shoulders… she tentatively smiled back. At that point Dirk came and told us that this was a split hive from one of his hives. They were New Zealand bees and very calm. He told us to go inside while he removed the foam that had been blocking their entrance and said the bees would soon come out. Meanwhile he had to go as they were on their way somewhere and were running late but he’d be back.

R and I retreated to the conservatory, in silence, and watched the hive. Sure enough the bees started to emerge and there was quite a bit of flying around and then it all settled down and they continued to fly in and out of the hive throughout the rest of the day. I cannot deny it, it was a lovely sight, but I had no idea what happened next. By that I mean, not a clue what to do with or about this box of bees in my garden.

A week went past. Dirk hadn’t been back. I had told my neighbours, (whose cottage was back to back with ours and had young children) about the box of bees in the garden and I said I would try and find out whatever it was I needed to find out about having bees in your garden.

I googled honeybees. I found lots of articles which I read with a great deal of interest and finally I found and telephoned The Chalfonts Beekeepers’ Society - https://www.chalfontsbeekeepers.co.uk/ and the conversation went thus.

Sister Marie Chris: Hello?

Me: Oh hello. I wonder if you can help me, I have a box of bees in my garden and I was wondering if you could advise me as to what I should do with it/them?”

Sister Marie Chris: Do you have a swarm?

Me: A what?

Sister Marie Chris: A swarm.

Me: I don’t think so, it’s just a box with bees in.

Sister Marie Chris: Well, are you a beekeeper?

Me: No.

Sister Marie Chris: Well it must be a swarm then.

Me: It’s not hanging in a tree. It’s just a square box with bees in it.

Sister Marie Chris: Well, has someone caught a swarm in your garden and put it in a box and coming back later?

Me: No, someone bought it round last week and left it here.

Sister Marie Chris: I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. Where do you live? I’ll send someone round!”

Enter Sarah Peterson. A fellow beekeeper, who is now the President of The Chalfonts Beekeepers’ Society, a fabulous lady and still my friend to this day! She laughed when I told her about my conversation with Sister Marie Chris, who incidentally is a wonderful character whom I became extremely fond of. Sarah was taken aback by how I came to have bees in my garden but assured me the box was indeed a beehive and it’s placement in the garden was spot on. I’d always pictured a beehive to be a pretty white teared sort of box, which I soon learned was called a WBC. I also learned that beehives come in all sorts of shapes and guises. Below are just a few! They’re rather like cars, you choose the hive that suits you best. As she didn’t know anything about the bees in my garden, she invited me to her apiary to meet her bees and we would take it from there.

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We duly drove to her place where she suited and booted me and as we walked towards her hives, (which were all WBC’s), she explained a little of what was about to happen and said that if I felt uncomfortable at any time I should just calmly walk away. I was ok with that. Once inside the apiary my stomach did turn a tad. It was a beautiful warm afternoon and she had about 6 hives and the bees were very busy coming and going and quite a few buzzed around us. Sarah smiled a lot, told me where to stand and why and gently removed the roof from one of her hives and placed it upside down on the floor. She took off one of the tiers which revealed a plain box inside, very similar to mine, just a bit smaller. She, told me to stand back a little as she was about to take off the board that lay on top of the box and told me I was about to see lots of honeybees. By now, I’m feeling quite excited. I had no idea what to expect. Although, I have to say, a vision of Whinnie The Pooh running from a swarm of honeybees did flash through my mind. However, no such thing. Even as I sit and type, I find it hard to describe what I saw and how I felt. What I saw was hundreds of bees milling around on top of what I now know are frames. Nothing happened. They carried on doing whatever it was they were doing. None of them flew up… they took no notice of me whatsoever. I was spellbound. Sarah, always smiling talked me through every move she made. She took out a frame and inspected it to make sure the queen wasn’t on it. I had no idea what she was talking about. She then handed me the frame. I lifted it up to get a closer look at the bees. And there they were, milling around on the frame, front and back, completely unperturbed by our presence. From that moment on I couldn’t hear what she was saying. I was mesmerised by these tiny little creatures that bore no resemblance whatsoever to a bumblebee and who cared not a jot that I was there holding the frame they were working on. It was such a beautiful feeling, being so close to nature. I can’t explain it better than that, but what I can tell you is I was hooked and I wanted to know more.

Without hesitation, I joined The Chalfonts Beekeepers’ Society, embarked on the beginners course and could officially say I was a beekeeper! The Chalfont Beekeepers are a fabulous lot. I feel really blessed that I called them because I cannot emphasise enough how they taught me and what they taught me about honeybees and beekeeping could not have been better. Their support and friendship throughout the 14 years I was with them and even to this day is second to none.

Honeybee on my cuff… not **the** honeybee but a honeybee!

I fell in love with the honeybees at first sight, rather like Renée Zellweger in Jerry Maguire… they had me at hello! And I feel very proud and blessed to be a beekeeper. But, still it was never my intention to write a book! Until… one day…

About two years after my first encounter, I was inspecting one of my hives when a little honeybee landed on my cuff. This is nothing unusual, some bees, who are toing and froing from the hive can be inquisitive, they either fly around you or land on your suit and you carry on regardless and eventually they fly away. But this little girl was not for flying away. I went on with the inspection and she just stayed there appearing to look at me everytime I stopped to look at her. I put the frame I was holding, at the time, back into the hive and lifted my wrist up to get a better look at her. From out of nowhere a little rhyme came into my head and I looked down at her and repeated what I was hearing.

“Are you looking at me little bee, are you looking at me? My name is Betsie Valentine and that begins with a B.”

Whoa, what was that and where did it come from? I knew where the name came from. My son and his wife had had a baby about a year ago and it was a boy. The called him Hewey Valentine. Having three sons, two nephews and a great nephew and loving the name, I asked them what they would have called a daughter… Betsie Valentine was the answer. Oh I loved that name too. I instantly conjured up an image in my head of how Betsie would look and there she stayed for about a year. I didn’t know she was there, but she must have been.

Because…

Beekeepers keep notes when we’re doing inspections, otherwise you would never remember what was going on in which hive the following week. I say that, but to be honest, one week is a long time in a honeybees life and it’s all change when you do the next inspection. However, it does give you an idea of why something might have happened. Baring this in mind, I grabbed a pencil and my note- pad and wrote down the rhyme.

The bee flew off.

I remember this all so vivedly. I smiled and carried on with the hive inspections, packed up my bits and bobs, packed them into my car and drove home. The apiary was only a short distance away but when it’s not in your back garden you have to take everything just in case! We had to move the honeybees from our garden because it turned out my husband was allergic to bee stings. The farmer who owned all the land around our house very kindly found me a corner in one of his fields at the top of the bridle path. As I was driving down said bridle path I repeated the rhyme to myself ”Are you looking at me little bee are you looking at me? My name is Betsie Valentine and that begins with a B.” Then, to my surprise, a second verse appeared. “Are you looking at me little bee, are you looking at me? My name is Betsie Valentine And I’d love to be a bee." I stopped the car and wrote it down. I sat for a moment reading this rhyme, seriously, wondering what it was all about then, without thinking, after I had parked the car I ran into the kitchen where R was standing at the sink filling the kettle and without hesitation said… and the next paragraph you must read quickly and without pausing for breath…

“Robin, Robin, I’m going to write a children’s book and I’m going to call it Betsie Valentine And The Honeybees… it’s going to be about a young girl who through the power of a magical rhyme starts a conversation with a honeybee who she thinks is watching her eat her honey sandwich. The bee asks her to repeat the rhyme and she turns into a bee and takes of on an adventure learning all about the lifecycle and importance of the honeybees…. I’m going to take the book around schools and give talks to the children and they too will learn all about the honeybees..

To which he replied… “would you like a cup of tea?”

And so it was, I started writing everything by hand. Scribbling things down, tearing out pages. Just endless writing. Every spare moment I had I couldn’t stop. But eventually I had to. I had the beginning of the story and I had the end, but I couldn’t get Betsie into the hive. Such a dark, overwhelming place. How could I bring the children in there and break it down and let them see what was going on? So I I transferred everything I had done on to my computer and put it on a memory stick, labelled it Betsie Valentine and walked away. I honestly don’t know how long all this took. Months I think..

A couple of months had gone by when one morning Robin brought me up a cup of tea. He had never really taken any notice of what I was doing. Another mad-cap idea. He just let me get on with it. By this time, Tobi, our youngest had taken up residence in my office which had been above the garage. He virtually lived in there. He was in a band and he’d turned both the downstairs and upstairs into a music studio leaving me, like Harry Potter, virtually living under the stairs, tap tapping away at my computer! As Robin handed my my tea he asked me, out of the blue, what I’d done with the book. "Oh nothing,” I said “I hit a brick wall. I couldn’t get her inside the hive, which is the major part and point of the book, so… nothing…”

To my utter surprise he told me not to give up. I told him I’d tried but hey-ho it just wasn’t happening. Later that morning I went down to the town to get some bits and as I walked past Waterstones I noticed a book just inside the door, The Cavan Cat And The Meadow Cat, and the front cover really caught my eye. I went in and picked it up and was looking through it. The illustrations were lovely. They reminded me of my mothers’ art work. She’d died when I was 32. She was a brilliant artist and these images were so very much drawn in her style. A woman came and tapped me on the shoulder and I honestly jumped out of my skin. She told me she was the author of the book and asked me what had drawn me to it. I said it was the pictures and began to tell her that I had started writing a book. I suddenly felt very stupid telling a published author that I was writing a book. But she was very sweet and encouraged me to talk about it. “Oh, it’s nothing,” I said “It’s just a book, and I can’t finish it. I have the beginning and I have the end, but I’m afraid there’s no middle and so really it’s not a book at all!” I didn’t tell her what my book was about; she gave me a book mark with her name on it and told me not to give up lots of authors get blocks… “Oh God I’m not an author. I’m a photographer. I’m not an author… I just wrote some stuff and can’t finish it… I’m not an author but thank you.” I bought her book, put the book mark in my bag and all but ran out of the shop.

Move on another couple of months. I was at my apiary going through one of my hives when all of a sudden, I can only describe it as feeling like Alice In Wonderland, I was drawn into the hive and suddenly I could see everything so clearly. I finished the inspection and with a pounding heart rushed back home and started tapping away at the computer. R walked past. “How are the bees?” … “Ssshhhh I’m writing.” And there I stayed, apart from eating and sleeping, until I’d finished. Boom. Back into the desktop folder it went and onto the memory stick.

Move on another few months. Another morning cup of tea arrives.

R: “What have you done with the book?”

Me: “What do you mean, what have I done with the book?”

R: “I just wondered what you were doing with it.”

Me: “Ok… nothing.”

R: “Why?”

Me: “Well, what do you want me to do with it?”

R: “I don’t know… what do you want to do with it?”

Me: “Nothing… I’ve just written it. It would need illustrations if it were to become a book, but I’m not an author, and , well that’s it.”

R: “Why don’t you find an illustrator?”

Me: What are you talking about? Find an illustrator! Ok I’ll go and look for one… where shall I start? In the spare room?”

R: “Why are you being aggressive? Google it.”

I picked up a book that I had on my bedside table and a bookmark fell out of it. I put on my glasses and read the name on it. “Elizabeth Valentine” author of…

Me: “Oh my God Robin, look at this. That woman I met about 6 months ago whose illustrations I loved in her book, her name is Elizabeth Valentine! Where’s her book? I gave it to Hewey. Sh*t”

R: “Well are her details on the bookmark? Give her a call. It’s an omen!”

Three weeks later I was down in Seaton with Tegan Sharrard, - www.tegan-art.co.uk - the illustrator of Elizabeth Valentine’s books. I gave her a copy of the manuscript, which by now I had had proof read and edited. She showed me more of her art work and I knew she was perfect for the job and would bring my characters to life. I wasn’t wrong.

It was another 18 months before I finally published Betsie Valentine And The Honeybees.

I didn’t, for a moment, think I had another book inside me. Publishers I approached asked me if there was a sequel to Betsie Valentine And The Honeybees and I was horrified. “Goodness, no” I said, “She’s an only child!” And then came lock down and for reasons known only to the powers that be, one morning I decided Betsie had grown up and she needed to become a beekeeper, aka, here comes the next baby! Betsie Valentine And The Honourable Honeybee.

This time children would learn all about beekeeping and working with the bees would teach Betsie many things about life itself:

Communication - the importance of working together.

Determination - having the confidence and courage to pursue the things you want in life.

Respect - respecting all those around you - everyone has an important roll to play.

Resourcefulness - knowing how to use what you have helps children to be creative, self-sufficient and productive.

And a bit like my children, why stop at two when you could have three… Hence my trip to Uganda last year. If you didn’t see that blog, please do take a look…https://mdthequeenbee.co.uk/blog/2023/3/2/a-dream-come-true… it really was an incredible journey that I went on as research for the third and final book in - what will be - The Betsie Valentine Trilogy!

In this book Betsie, has yet again grown up, as children are want to do! She is 16 and studying for her Natural History GCSE. She goes to Uganda to learn how people from some of the world’s poorest communities become self sufficient through beekeeping. She learns about sustainability and biodiversity and the important part the honeybees play.

I haven’t started writing it yet, even though it’s been a year since I went there. Well that’s not strictly true. I have started it, but so far it hasn’t felt right. People keep asking me if I’ve finished it yet… eek… but I’m not worried, it’s out there in the ether, just like the other two books were and when the time is right the words will flow…

And so, I have come to the end of this blog. It really has, like my books, taken on a life of its own! I didn’t plan it at all… I just typed.

Thank you for reading it. You’ve been very patient! I hope you feel you know me a bit better now… and hopefully, next week I’ll have a little more news about my bees. If not I will, no doubt, find something else to write about. My children tell me I am a power talker… I think I can add power blogger to my CV!

As you know, I always end my blogs with a quote and weirdly this is the first one I came across. It would appear that ever since the honeybees came into my life they certainly have been guiding me…

"Listen to the bees and let them guide you."
- Brother Adam -

THE ACCIDENTAL BEEKEEPER AND AUTHOR!