And Finally Artist News Beef Of The Week

CMU Beef Of The Week #173: Bromley Beekeepers Association v Bez

By | Published on Friday 6 September 2013

Bez

Poor Bez. Having hung up his dancing shoes, due to his advancing years (he’s 49), he’s discovered why other members of The Happy Mondays went around writing songs all the time. Apparently you can’t copyright shaking some maracas, so he’s found himself without any sort of pension plan set up for his old age.

Luckily though, he’s been taken in by a commute in Wales, where he now spends half of his time learning to live a self-sufficient life, spending the other half undoing all of that in Manchester. And it’s in that commune that he’s found a new love: beekeeping. That’s right, Bez keeps bees. What of it? He bought a colony from someone for 50 quid a while ago and hasn’t looked back since.

Explaining his lifelong affinity with bees, Bez told The Guardian: “My granddad, when he came home from the war, the only thing he came home with was four massive tins of honey and ever since honey has been part of our family life – on our cereal and in our tea”.

And now he’s discovered the joy of bee wrangling, he wants to share this with other people. So he’s promoting an initiative to get more people doing it, and recently helped to set up some new rooftop hives in Manchester. It’s noble work – bees are vital to our eco-system, and populations have depleted in recent years.

“In the wild colonies [of bees] don’t last very long so really beekeepers are keeping the honey bee population alive”, said Bez. “We need it for pollination. If bees die out we are really going to be in trouble”.

I think it’s right that we stop here and contemplate the strange image of Bez the conservationist. Bez the educator. It’s weird, right? Also, it’s not something all beekeepers are especially happy about.

Mary Slater of the Bromley Beekeeping Association wrote to The Guardian this week complaining that its interview with Bez “gives misleading information and encourages people to begin beekeeping without learning the basics first”.

“People who begin beekeeping in an impulsive way often give up after a year or two when their bees die out and they become disheartened”, she added. “It takes many years to learn the skills of beekeeping – to just start up is irresponsible and disastrous for the bees”.

So, there you go, apparently we can now all return to our natural position of not taking anything Bez says too seriously. Though he is right about bees being important. And if you do really want to keep bees, you shouldn’t let all this put you off. Just don’t go into it without some proper thought and advice first.

What might put you off, however, is a tale from Bez’s early beekeeping exploits, when he apparently opened one of his hives with his flies undone. “Around 100 bees got inside his pants”, The Guardian explained. Bez added that he was “stung everywhere”.

So, if you take nothing else from this, at least remember that when approaching lots of small things that can both fly and jab you with poisonous barbs, do your bloody trousers up properly.



READ MORE ABOUT: