"Many Photos" - ANNABEL HESELTINE tells why the new middle-class obsession can give you a real buzz

My son, Rafferty, 15, is my country boy, persistent and with an entrepreneurial streak. He has reared chickens and sold their eggs, gutted a salmon for his headmaster and campaigned to keep trout at school and to let pigs forage at home.

And now he wants to keep bees.

He is not alone. From London to the Highlands, Sussex to Cornwall, Middle England has mobilised in defence of our bees, with the British Beekeepers Association saying it's seen a substantial increase in amateur beekeeping.

The growth in interest is a response to tough times for bees, which are increasingly under threat from loss of habitat and what scientists call the four 'P's: parasites, poor nutrition, pesticides and pathogens.

The British Beekeepers Association said it's seen a substantial increase in amateur beekeeping (Pictured, Annabel Heseltine)

Over the past couple of decades, a toxic combination of these has led many domestic hives around the world to collapse suddenly, while there are no records of wild hives in the UK today.

And Britain's beekeepers are not just middle-aged women in rural areas, but teenage boys in Nike trainers and young adults living in urban factory conversions.

My own efforts to help bees started in the Noughties, when my husband and I decided to swap London for the country. 

I took a master's degree in wildlife management and conservation at Reading University to learn more about encouraging wildlife in our new home.

Britain's beekeepers are not just middle-aged women in rural areas, but teenage boys in Nike trainers (Pictured, Annabel with her son Rafferty, 15)

I soon learned that we are in the middle of an insect crisis.

These days, there are fewer butterflies on my buddleia, fewer moths circling my lights in the evening and the bee is losing its habitat fast, thanks to increased building and farming practices including crop-spraying and monoculture — wheat and barley do not even produce pollen. This forces bees to fly further in search of pollen and nectar for food and to make honey.

This matters hugely because bees are a 'keystone species' (named after the keystone that supports an archway) — if they were removed from an eco-system, everything else would collapse. Plants, for example, need bees for cross-pollination.

But I didn't bring the battle to save bees home with me until one night a few years ago, when my husband swept his gaze across the old farmyard of our home on the Wiltshire/Somerset border and said: 'This place looks dead.'

The growth in interest is a response to tough times for bees, which are increasingly under threat from loss of habitat and what scientists call the four 'P's

He had a point. The previous owners had laid out a pristine lawn surrounded by a huge leylandii hedge with a gravelled drive lying over 3 ft of concrete. It was lifeless and silent.

Piqued, I got a Forestry Commission grant to plant 4,500 indigenous trees on five acres. I cut out the leylandii and found a monster concrete-eating machine to dig up the ground.

Then we got to work sowing wildflower seeds, which are designed to attract insects of all sorts and, above all, bees.

Since that conversation, my marriage has broken down and my husband has gone, but my wildflower meadow grows more alive every year. Often it was to my meadow, spotted with fruit trees, that I would turn to meditate during my divorce.

It has become a true sanctuary. So adding a beehive does seem a logical next step.

There's plenty to learn before going ahead. Bees come with their own weight of folklore; for example, it is unlucky to buy or sell bees — recipients should find a way to quietly repay the donor — and you should never have an argument near bees or they will swarm and leave.

Over the past few decades, a combination of parasites, poor nutrition, pesticides and pathogens has led many hives to collapse

Beekeeping has drastically declined in the past 100 years, with a 75 per cent decrease in hives (Pictured, Annabel and Rafferty with beekeeper Nick Howell)

Apparently, Italian bees are second only to pure-bred English bees in grumpiness, but Devon's Buckland Abbey bees are renowned for their gentleness.

Beekeeping has drastically declined in the past 100 years, with a 75 per cent decrease in hives, but that's turned around in recent years. There are now around 274,000 honeybee hives in the UK, the majority of which are kept by 44,000 amateur keepers.

Ironically, the best-known bee, the honeybee, is actually the worst pollinator.

'They are too efficient at collecting and holding pollen on their hind legs instead of spreading it around between plants,' says entomologist Dr Graham Holloway, of Reading University.

MAKE YOUR GARDEN A HONEYTRAP 

• Bees have complex needs so, before you start, book yourself on a beekeeping course — many local clubs offer them for free. It's the best place to find an experienced mentor who can talk you through the process.

•  The size of your garden doesn't matter, as bees can travel up to three miles to forage. But make their lives easy, if you can, by growing a variety of plants to aid pollen collection. Hives need to be somewhere quiet and protected from the elements, but not under trees where they will be dripped on.

• Your basic starter kit consists of a hive, honey frames, cleaning tools, a smoker and a protective suit — around £500 if bought new. A 'nucleus' of 5,000 bees, including worker bees, drones and a queen born this year, will cost £200. They can be ordered online or picked up locally — the latter option means you can check for dead bees, a red flag, and the presence of eggs and larvae, a sign of health.

• Once your bees are settled, you'll need to check them every seven to ten days during the summer months and fortnightly in spring and autumn. Bees should be left alone in the winter. Note whether the bees are laying eggs and whether there are larvae.

• The hardest part is keeping bees alive during winter. Provide sugar syrup, and be prepared to insulate hives with polystyrene sheets, which can be purchased from specialist websites such as bee-equipment.co.uk

The bumblebee, my favourite, not least for its delightful Latin name, Bombus bombus, is better at cross-pollination because it is more furry, so lots of lovely pollen gets trapped on its fur and is then transferred between plants.

But the very best pollinators are solitary bees, which are really messy and carry pollen all over their furry tummies. They produce no honey, however, and live in the ground, not a hive, so the best thing for them is to set aside land — like my meadow — and leave it alone.

'It's so easy to bring back insects,' says Dr Holloway. 'Take Knepp Wildland in West Sussex. They couldn't make ends meet as a farm, so they let the land go wild and now have the UK's biggest population of Purple Emperor butterflies.'

You don't need much space to help. Tristram Sutton, a trustee of the London Beekeepers' Association, holds beekeeping courses at Walworth Garden in South London, an oasis created on land reclaimed from bombed-out World War II rubble. 

And Londoners are doing their best — honey bees are even kept on the roofs of the Bank of England, Fortnum & Mason and the Chesterfield Mayfair hotel. So overwhelming is the demand in London that Sutton encourages enthusiasts to time-share hives.

Pharmacologist Rosanne Bickerton, 58, keeps bees on the terrace of her converted factory home in Tooting. She says her honey is extra delicious because of the variety of flowers in London gardens. 'Honey made in an area characterised by monoculture, such as farmed fields, can taste a little flat,' she adds.

But honey is just a side benefit for garden designer JayJay Gladwin, from the Black Isle in the Scottish Highlands, who plants insect-attracting plants in her clients' gardens and keeps hives to aid pollination.

'I feed the honey back to the bees in cold springs to support the hives. I feed them sugar syrup, too — and on Christmas Day I add some icing sugar for a treat.'

Felix Bridgeman, 17, stung generous godparents for the £500 needed to set up a hive at his family home in Northamptonshire three years ago. He says: 'I have always loved bees. They do so much for us, and we help them in return by feeding them honey in winter when pollen is scarce and locking them up when farmers are spraying crops with potentially harmful pesticides.'

My meadow doesn't look much in winter, either. But now, just a few months on, the place is full of insects humming along to a chorus of birdsong. And buzzing busily through the daisies is my little furry friend, Bombus bombus.

Knowing Rafferty, next year there may be a beehive, too.

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News Photo ANNABEL HESELTINE tells why the new middle-class obsession can give you a real buzz
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