At the end of my garden, in the orchard, under the dappled shade of the trees, are two beautifully made cedar bee hives.

Jim has clearly not read my hive rules.

As I’ve told you before, I have a bee-mate called Jim, who keeps his hives in my garden. I’m helping him with his colonies until I feel confident enough to buy my own. My duck egg blue empty hive still sits directly outside the front door. A better burglar deterrent than poor old Suggs the chocolate Labrador...

So, I promised to tell you about the day Adam the wasp man came over.

We’ve had so many wasps this year. A couple of weeks ago rather a lot of them were flying in and out of the eaves of the house. Cue, Adam the wasp man.

Adam arrived and thought that there was at least two foolish things about me. First, that I should site a duck egg blue bee hive directly outside the house, facing my front door and second, that my wasps were most probably actually apis mellifera!...

I recently had a significant birthday and all the lovely people in my village donated money and bought me a complete beekeeping kit – what an amazing present! The only thing I did know about beekeeping at that time was a) that I had always want to do it since I was a little girl breeding earwigs in a eggbox and b) that there must be a lot to learn before anyone would let me loose on actual living bees!

The first thing I did was phone a very nice lady at the West Sussex Beekeepers...