My bargain flat pack beehives finally arrived today. I bought them as seconds in a sale, trusting that the Systems Administrator would be able to coax them into shape even if they weren't as perfect as firsts. That was in early January, and the suppliers warned on their website that due to the popularity of their sale delivery might be three weeks. When after a month I'd heard nothing I rang them, and spoke to a very nice woman who patently knew nothing about my beehives, and didn't seem to have access to a computer that could have told her when they were due to arrive, but assured me that so long as I had a customer order number the matter was in hand. I decided to leave it another month before enquiring again with more urgency, and lo, yesterday I got an email to say they had been despatched.
It was by sheer chance that I happened to have come in from the garden for a coffee at the point when the FedEx driver rang. He couldn't find the house. That's no great surprise. Drivers who haven't been here before can almost never find the house. I told him where we were, and looking out over the field could see his van heading in the right direction. I sat down again to finish my coffee, and after a while thought he should have arrived by now, so got up again to look where he'd got to and saw the van heading back in the wrong direction. Confusion briefly reigned, as we both tried to ring each other, then there was another delay as having reached the final turning he couldn't believe he had to turn right yet again. I could see the top of the van bobbing back and forth above the line of the hedge. Finally he made it, declaring cheerfully that he would never have found the place. I don't know which part of the instructions Turn right at the lettuce farm car park is so difficult, but it is.
Buying a self assembly beehive in January is a curiously unrewarding retail experience. True, there is the knowledge that you've saved quite a lot of money, and that come the swarming season at least you will have enough boxes to put the bees in. But there is no immediate thrill of acquisition. Nothing arrives for six weeks, for starters, and when it does you have to build it before you can do anything with it, and even then you don't need to use it for another month or two. The nearest comparable experience is probably buying bulbs, where you make your choice in June, the box doesn't arrive until autumn, you don't plant tulips until November and you don't get any flowers until the following year. Though at least with bulbs the website or catalogue has nice colour pictures of what you can expect (if the mice and rabbits don't eat them). There is nothing beautiful or picturesque about a commercial brood box and roof to stir the imagination.
Addendum I was reflecting after my last London concert how strange it was that musicians still play from paper scores whose pages need turning. I'm not alone in my surprise, since the Independent has an article about a pianist who has taken to playing from scores loaded on to his iPad. He turns the electronic pages using a Bluetooth switch activated with his foot, but there are apps that will follow the performance and move on to the next page automatically. The trick with the iPad is apparently to make sure the battery is fully charged, kill all other apps, and disable the wifi so that it can't start trying to do updates or anything else in mid performance.
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