On our arrival at Spylaw Andy told us to avoid the area at the bottom of the cherry orchard, as the bees in the hive there were particularly active at the moment. He illustrated this warning by pointing out a throbbing red bee sting on his face. I am naturally predisposed to avoiding cherry orchards anyway, having had a particularly torturous encounter with Chekhov in my late teens, but hordes of angry bees only added to the incentive. There is also a risk that Amy is allergic to bees as both my grandmother and my sister are. While watching someone’s head balloon to twice it’s regular size as they go into anaphylactic shock is rather amusing when it’s happening to your sister, I imagine it is rather less so when it’s your daughter and you are forty five minutes from the nearest hospital.
We left the bees alone and they returned the favour. That is until Tuesday afternoon when, returning from an enjoyable day at the beach, we noticed a chorus of buzzing. Outside the window were around twenty bees, all throwing themselves at the glass. After a frantic tour of the house ensuring all the windows were shut, and the forcible ejection of a couple of bees which had got in through the chimney, we were left to ponder the meaning of the assault. Scenes from The Birds kept replaying themselves through my head, and I had visions of swarms of bees sitting menacingly on climbing frames around the country poised to reclaim the earth for the insects.
The reality however was a little more mundane. Andy had removed one tier of their hive for maintenance and the bees were merely looking for somewhere else to set up home. Once the hive was put back together normality resumed.
That is until the chickens attacked.
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