2008

We visit the Royal Highland Show. The first stop is.... oh yes, The Bee Tent. I buy honey, soap and beeswax. There is a beekeeper who is showing visitors the inside of a hive - minus bees of course! We stop to watch and somehow find ourselves loitering around waiting for him to finish speaking to someone else. We tell him about our unsuitable garden (is there any beekeeper in Scotland who hasn't heard of this by now?). He doesn't see it as a problem. We say that we would really like to keep bees, but...... He says that there is a beginners course held in early spring, usually in West Lothian - it would be a way of finding out if bees were for us. He writes down the email address of the organiser, I tuck it into my purse.
We visit the rest of the show. By evening we have decided bees are not for us.

1999 - 2007

We move to the yellow house. After two years of dreaming, reading Seymour and other similar books, we finally have a garden large enough to grow vegetables, keep hens and generally do all the things that are now so fashionable. Bees have been discussed and dismissed. The garden, although sizeable, is long and narrow. Neighbours are in close proximity. A huge Leylandii hedge, while protecting our privacy, crowds us in and keeps us in shade until early evening. "It is not suitable for bees," we say firmly to ourselves.
Nevertheless, on one of our many evening trips to Borders bookstore in Glasgow, I buy a book - Guide to Bees and Honey by Ted Hooper. It is fascinating, but too scary to contemplate. I have decided not to get bees.
We subscribe to one of the smallholder magazines - they have a monthly feature on beekeeping. I read it avidly. "Its not for me though" I say...decisively.
We visit the Royal Highland Show at Ingliston. The first tent we come across is that of the Scottish Beekeepers Federation. We admire the honey and beeswax exhibits, have fun rolling candles, sample types of honey, marvel at the live bees in their glass case, buy jars of honey, bars of wax and soap. We talk to the beekeepers, telling them of our unsuitable garden. "Not a problem" they say. We talk some more, they give us local contact addresses. "Yes let's" we say. Later we change out minds.
The Highland Show scenario is acted out in this way for several years. In 2007, we decide, after another long conversation with a beekeeper that we will never get bees - and that is definite.