Tempt me

[gavin]

You'll find that beekeepers (until they learn, which takes years) tend to drop their hive tools into the grass with surprising regularity and can never find them again after that. You'll be well-supplied with them assuming that you let bees and their attached beekeeper onto the farm, like golf balls next to a golf course. With a bit of grinding (the hive tools, not the golf balls or indeed the beekeeper) they could pass as back-up knives.

Of course Doris being Doris will invent some new recycled hive tool from a rusty old tractor bolt or something, so perhaps her cast-offs will be less useful.

So that is one benefit of letting bees in. Another is their ability to herd sheep. I find that in the first few weeks sheep are attracted to the hives which they tend to push around quite a lot with the itchy bit of their backs. Give it an extra few weeks though and you'll find big semi-circles of ungrazed pasture around the fronts of the hives. Potentially useful for managing grazing, no?

hope that helped

G

[Neils]

Hey! After two years I still have both hive tools. That they cost nearly a tenner each and hence I have them surgically affixed to both hands is neither here nor there. We did have a talk from an ex commercial guy who had his attached to his bee suit on elastic. I did consider trying that but also realised that mine have really sharp edges and you only have to let go of them once and you'll never lose them again.

JohntheFarmer.

Isn't peace and quiet from Doris worth that 3x3 patch of land