Ruminative Ponderings - Of Builders and Bees

Written during section renovations at our previous house in Pukerua Bay ...

Barrow load by barrow load, over three weekends, the concrete was mixed and poured. Slowly the wall took shape. When it was finished it was 12 m long and 2 m high. Not a thing of beauty by any stretch of the imagination, but Tim was pleased with his effort. The lack of reinforcing or a footing didn’t matter because, for now, the slow creep of his back lawn down the Wellington hillside had been halted.

Seventy years later, we purchased Tim's old property. We didn’t look too carefully at the huge concrete retaining wall that divided the top of the property from the bottom. It looked pretty solid and even had some apple trees espaliered against it. For a long time, the area below the wall was an unvisited wilderness.

After 8 ½ years, the garden slowly started to call me. The kids were getting older, more independent with their studies and I needed a new project. Maybe it was time to start that vege garden I’d always dreamt of. Six weeks of death and destruction with the scrub cutter followed, and the lower section slowly emerged from utter chaos. The odd hole (past excavations by No.1 son) swallowed legs occasionally, and eighty years of rubbish, including an old water tank, was hauled off to the tip. We rediscovered our old trampoline, which had been lifted over the top fence and deposited below by a gale many years before. After an expedition to Levin to order and collect a new mat for the trampoline, we installed it on the frame. No. 1 son decided to test it. He got in two wonderful bounces before the frame emitted a creaking snap and slowly subsided to the ground in three pieces. Scratch that idea. The tramp too, was hauled to the tip, and my planned vege garden got larger.

True to Wellington form the site is steep, and in order to be productive it needed terracing and retaining. We had our first retaining wall built out of triangular concrete blocks donated to us by friends. Great, level one was complete.

During the construction of the block wall, another tradesman – we’ll call him ‘G’ - arrived to start work on fencing the boundary. As he worked, I would wander down with a coffee for him and survey the work in hand. We got chatting about the block wall and started throwing some ideas around about what else could be done to improve the fledgling garden. We decided (the royal ‘We’ of course) that it would be a good idea to run a couple of layers of retaining parallel to the block wall, further up the slope. Pondering the possibilities I clambered back up to the house, hauled a few dozen books off my bookshelf and quietly schemed and plotted my way through the ideas that floated off the pages, letting them germinate and flourish in my mind.

By the end of the next day, G had installed the retaining and it was time for another coffee. So down I went, mug in hand for another chinwag. As we sat in the late afternoon sun I gazed pensively at the little retaining wall and a germinating idea burst forth into bloom.

“Hey G, ‘we’ could build a decking pathway along below the retaining.”

G swilled the last of his coffee, muttered about building things backwards then agreed that it would be okay. As the whole area started to take shape, new ideas – amongst them a flight of steps to link the two levels, and extensions of old ideas arrived thick and fast in my busy little brain. Over the next few days, G learnt to be very worried when he arrived to start work each morning to find me standing amidst the mess, hands on hips ‘just thinking…’. Finally level two with its boardwalk pathway, gorgeous flight of steps and seating alcove (G’s idea!) was complete. That just left the third stage, the area immediately below the concrete wall.

In ‘just thinking’ mode, my eyes travelled along the wall, planning what I would plant in the two beds this area would contain. They met a crack at the base of the wall. I had known the crack was there. However, it had expanded. Dread crept in as my eyes went up the crack to the top of the wall. At the top, was a yawning gap. The middle section of the wall had popped open, lost its negative slant, and was now vertical. If it shifted just a little more, the whole lot would topple over - onto my new gardens. This was not good. Retaining wall number three was in order and G was duly summoned.

He arrived, resigned to his fate. We just had one problem; I explained as we stood discussing the new wall. The previous evening, as No. 1 son and I had been clearing the wild tangle of Cape Gooseberries from the base of the wall, we had discovered a bumblebee nest. The nest was behind the old wall. As we watched, the bees busily reorientated themselves – after the loss of their landmark Gooseberries – and found the hole in the wall that led to their nest. After a bit of confused buzzing and zooming, they got it sorted and settled back down to bumblebee business, completely ignoring us.

The new wall was to be constructed in front of the old one, and the gap between them backfilled. We are lucky that G is as mad as we are, and agreed that we couldn’t possibly bury the bees and their nest behind the new wall. So, what to do? ‘The blokes’ discussed differing solutions at length and decided the answer was a tunnel from the present entry to the face of the new wall. Great, that shouldn’t be too difficult. Famous last words!

The new wall was built up to the height of the nest’s entry. Initially, a hole was to be cut in the new wall for the tunnel connecting old and new, but No. 1 son found a piece of retaining timber with a large knothole in it. This would make a good front door for the bees, it was decided. Tunnel construction began. A length of PVC pipe was cut to fit, and a flange was cut from an empty olive oil tin. That evening, we sat and waited for the bees to go to bed. They resembled plump jet planes coming in to land on an aircraft carrier as they flew to their front door and waddled back to their nest. After the last one was in, we glued the tunnel into place and spread the flange around the old entry. Problem sorted – so we thought.

Next morning I went down to see how the bees were coping with this latest change. A cloud of confused bees buzzed around in front of the wall. They had exited the tunnel through the knothole, but couldn’t figure how to get back in. The new wall has eight poles; one of which has the knothole beside it, but to the bees it all looked the same. Eventually a few of them flew above the new wall and found the site of their old entry, and after biting at the metal and squirming furiously they found a way in. No.1 son diligently plugged up the holes, caught confused bees in a glass and deposited them at the new ‘door’. Some of them caught on, but others were determined to imitate kamikaze pilots, getting angrier at every attempt to get back into the nest using the old entrance.

I went out and left No. 1 son and the bees to continue their ritual. On arriving home, I found a note from No. 1 son explaining what he had done. He had stapled a square of blue card next to the new entry to give the bees something easier to recognise. As he was away for the night, I was to take the caulking gun and plug the rest of the holes, making sure all of the bees had gone to bed first of course.

Dusk arrived. I went down to the tunnel three times, but the bees were still around, determined to continue working. I sat and waited…and waited. It was cold and windy and muttering to myself, I began to question my sanity. Finally they all retired for the night and I could get to work. I pumped away; filling the holes, hoping the fumes wouldn’t gas the bees. I ripped the piece of cardboard I’d brought down with me into pieces and stuck these over the goo, which sealed the holes. Sitting back, I pondered my handiwork. Surely the little blighters wouldn’t get through that lot. Hmm, maybe some added insurance would be a good idea. Grabbing the spade I buried the tunnel, obliterating any sign of the original entrance. As I rammed the spade into a pile of dirt, I issued a silent challenge to the bees. Let’s see you get through that lot!

As I came inside I marvelled at how well the bees had coped with the disruption to their lives. Not only had they lost their landmarks and entryway, they had put up with digging, hauling, banging, jack hammering and drilling all in close proximity; actually, right on the doorstep, to their nest. They hadn’t been aggressive once, but quietly buzzed past and around whoever was in the vicinity of their nest. What truly remarkable, stoic little creatures.

G thought he had the last word when, on arriving the next morning he told us that he’d read on the Internet that bumblebees used a nest for just one year. Not to be outdone, I let my eyes glaze over and said ‘I’ve been thinking.’

Pukerua Bay, New Zealand.