Let’s go right back to the start before bees were even in my life…
I was born in Leicestershire into farming stock, although my father was a ship’s captain and, latterly, a harbour master in the middle east. Throughout my childhood, I moved between many schools worldwide. It was a positive time in my life, and I look back at those years fondly. Fast forward to the modern day, and I am now married with one grown-up son who lives in New Zealand. He is my biggest achievement, and I am so proud of the man he has become. My husband and I have several dogs and a few thousand bees. They aren’t too bad, either! I consider myself very fortunate in life.
After leaving school, I worked buying and selling racehorses for customers and then moved on to running an office, where I was responsible for finance and payroll. When the Finance Manager left and started his own Chartered Accountancy practice, I was asked to join him…and there I stayed for 18 years. I have moved between various roles, and life has always been busy. However, after being diagnosed with progressive respiratory disease, I felt I could not give work my full attention and medically retired. But I am an optimistic person, and this was just the start of a new chapter in my life…the chapter I am in now and one that I adore!
I have always been interested in beekeeping after seeing my grandfather keep them in Somerset. However, it was not until I retired that I fell into it. I inherited a couple of neglected hives which had essentially turned wild (after not being attended to for several years). With no previous experience, I sort help from an old school friend of my husband, Yvonne, who came and helped me clean up the existing hives, sort the colonies out and extract my first honey harvest. It was a marvellous experience for me and will stay in my mind forever. Yep, I was bitten (or should I say stung) by the beekeeping bug! To this day, I am amazed by how bees work and live and the hierarchy within the hive. I have been beekeeping for over four years and am still learning every day! Fortunately, I can do my beekeeping and events around my health condition, so if I’m having a bad day, I rest, and on the good days, I crack on – the bees don’t mind.