That's not how I'd go about it

I took my first honey crop in the May of 2017.  There had been a significant acreage of oilseed rape around the village and the bees had made good use of it to produce an early honey crop.  It's not the finest of honeys because it is prone to crystallising within hours of extraction, but it was our first crop and we were just delighted to see the honey pour from the extractor.*

Later in the Summer I was approached by an acquaintance that had heard that I had some bees.  He had a hive up in his Orchard and wondered if I would be willing to extract some honey from his hive.  He offered up half of the crop by way of a reward and I agreed ... What could possibly go wrong?

On the agreed date** I loaded up the Defender with my beekeeping kit and drove up to his orchard which is close to the tower that overlooks the village.  We wandered over to the hive and I was presented with a very scruffy WBC hive that was sat on a wooden platform some 3' above ground level.

I suited up, lit my smoker and clambered up on to the platform to open up the hive.  The owner had already informed me that he followed a hands off approach to beekeeping and this was apparent as soon as I managed to wrestle the roof from the hive.  

The WBC hive is the traditional English beehive that most people tend to picture when asked to imagine a hive.  It is a double walled design, with outer walls surrounding and protecting the hive that sits within.  

This hive had not been inspected for months, if not years.  It was apparent that ill-fitting supers and frames had been added at some point and these had created gaps that had allowed the bees to colonise the space between the inner hive and the outer walls.  This space was crammed with honey-filled comb and bees.

I could see that the colony was healthy enough, but it was clear that the owner had no spare equipment and neither did he seem to have any desire to take any care of the colony.  I therefore advised him that I would only take one of the two supers for a harvest and that was on the understanding that he returned the super to the hive to give the colony the space it needed.

After a bit of work with the hive tool I managed to break the super free from the hive.  As I did this it became apparent that the outer hive was starting to rot.  I upgraded my advice from "inspect them and give them more space" to "move them in to a new hive".  I lifted the honey filled super from the manky hive and stepped back ... I had forgotten that the hive was 3' off the ground and found myself falling with a 25 lb super in my hands.  As I landed, the super crushed the top of one of my fingers and my pride was somewhat bruised too.

To cut a long story short, the honey was extracted and I received a bottle of wine, a leg of lamb and nearly eight pounds of honey in payment.  I also ended up with a broken finger and several hours of work to clean the extractor after this harvest. 

Funnily enough, I hadn't really heard from him again until I bumped in to him earlier this week.   He asked how my bees were doing and I asked how his were, in return.  He advised that the colony had died out a couple of years after we had taken the harvest.  He had cleared the hive and bought a new colony from a local semi-professional beekeeper.  The semi-pro had advised this chap to inspect the hive every eight days, but this chap seemed to take a perverse pleasure in advising that he hadn't looked at them since introducing them to the hive.

I really don't understand why this chap has bees.  He takes no care of them.  He doesn't need them for pollination of his orchard as there are ample local colonies to perform this service.  I just don't get it!

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* I had borrowed a hand cranked extractor and all the other extracting paraphernalia from Doctor H; Village Idiot's son and heir.

** 30th July 2017 ... I knew my beekeeping notes would be of use eventually.