SNP Councillor Drew Hendry

Not quite "Bats in the Belfry" but a week or so ago I had bees in my chimney. The honey bees had been searching for a place to set up a hive and decided that they liked our place. Flattered as I was none of us relished sharing with these little natural wonders, especially as they had found a crack to come through, in numbers, into our bedrooms.

Honey bees are very important to our environement so we were determined to seek specialist advice to help them "choose a new home" rather than our chimney. If you call the council about bees then they will direct you to a group of enthusiasts and volunteers who both look after and help with bee incidents.

My call resulted in one of my own constiuents, Colin Robertson of Teandalloch, coming to the rescue with his roof ladder. After a bit of high wire bee wrangling and the discovery that thjere was no queen, the decision was made to discourage them by simply putting a plastic seal over the chimney. This simple act caused a bit of confusion amongst the bees but they moved away over the next 48 hours.

I am very grateful to Colin (as I am sure many others have been in the past) and it is of great credit to him and his fellow bee enthusiasts that they ask for no reward to help out. They are a shining example of those who help simply because they can.

In addition to his help I have now found a new source for free range eggs as Colin also keeps chickens as well as bees. Honey and eggs – I will be making a bee line over there.

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