VIEW FROM INSIDE THE HIVE
Many year ago I spent an enjoyable hour inside a bee hive.
It was possible at that time, during World War II when I was stationed with the 467the Bomb Group, USAF, airbase at the village of Rackheath, Norfolk County, England, just four miles or north of the city of Norwich.
A large, walk-in bee hive was a feature at that time among the exhibits in the old Norman Castle which rises on a three hundred foot man-made hill in downtown Norwich not too far from the high spire of Norwich Cathedral. I say “was” because , when I visited Norwich twenty-nine years later, I chanced to be waiting at a bus stop in downtown Norwich. I got to talking with a local citizen who was waiting for his wife to meet him from Christmas shopping. I had been walking about the city and we benched and chatted for a time. It turned out that he had been one of the men charged with care of the large, glass walled, walk-in honey bee hive in the Castle Museum. He told me it had been discontinued as an economy measure after the war.
The Castle has just undergone a full scale modernization and restoration and it is my hope that the hive was reconstituted. If not, there will be marked lacuna waiting me the next time I get to visit the sturdy old fortress.
The bees had access through openings in thick stone walls of the castle to the bountiful Castle Garden outside, and on the sunny day I was there they were one busy bunch of bees. The narrow corridors one went trough had to watch them had glass panels on either side and the place was only dimly lit so you could watch hundreds, perhaps thousands of bees going their systematic ways each one busy about their assigned hive job. Although the openings were not visible from that interior point, I imagined the air-conditioning bees stationed on the uppermost area of the tunnels near the opening were fanning away to keep the hive properly air-conditioned and in touch with the floral displays outside in the Castle Gardens.
“Topic” has readers in England, and anyone in Norwich or East Anglia in general, who knows if he bees are back in the restored and renovated castle, might drop me an e-mail line to let me know if the new hive is thriving.
I have many other pleasant memories of my three-year stay in the area and especially of the fine people I came to know so well. I arrived early, months before the Bomb Group and the B-24's came in. There were a hundred and six of us, I think. We shared our set-up tasks with an RAF group some of whom had returned from Malta. The second advantage I had was that I was assigned to play bass with the 467th dance orchestra named the “AirLiners” and we got to travel about a great deal. We were regulars at St. Andrews Guild Hall on Friday nights when were “at home.”
Odd, isn't it, that of all many more important events events and memories, one that should be trivia stays so close to me, watching The live bees at work inside the Castle building stocking their own castle.
A. L.M. November 29. 2002 [c551wds]
