Mrs Mart started a thought thread about bees - she's reading one of several doom and gloom books saying bees are dying out.

This is serious. Honey is one of the vital ingredients of life. Not a luxury - a staple.

We need bees.

Yes, the book to read is "A world Without Bees".
It`s great.

I've seen very few bees this summer, but I put that down to the climate. It's been very wet with lower temperatures than normal. However, I hear that bees are thriving in other hotter parts of the world. I don't think we've seen their demise just yet.

My late father once told me that on your Talk Radio show you used to talk about how you used honey instead of sugar in tea.
I was at school during your Talk Radio phase, but did get to listen a lot during the holidays and never got to hear you talking about it!
I cannot recall having seen a single bee all summer (if you could call it "summer")
This could have serious consequences far beyond honey.

Your Dad had a great memory Marcus; indeed I take a little honey in both tea and coffee, it sweetens with less and a nicer flavour.

There was a superb squeezy honey bottle I always bought in North Africa which has now been adopted by British manufacturers and the Tesco UK bottle is identical.

A singer from one of the bands I look after swears by honey in tea for his voice, not a problem round here due the the ethnic area and wonderful Turkish teas etc.
But how many of you have tried ordering tea in a pub?

How can such an ancient English ceremony of tea drinking be ignored by the British pub? As for honey in it on asking? One can only imagine the retorts.

Turkish black tea with honey, that is indeed the business.(actually I am rather partial to their coffees as well in which the spoon stands up in the bottom of the cup..)

I generally drink mint tea, but a little honey adds to the pleasure. I think I have only seen 2 or 3 bees so far this summer.

Loads of bees here, almost a plague sometimes in fact.
A combination of the river and budleias I reckon.
I can see 7 as I type. That said, I don`t think one of them is the same variety of the next one.
I have not seen a wasp this year though.

In my Mum's house we had loads of flies, wasps, bees even hornets but a couple of years they started to decline as did the variety of birds.

Mysterious.

I hate hornets!
Scary little bastids!

We had to have the enormous hornets nest smoked (or gassed) out - it took ages and there were thousands of dead hornets on the carpet.

One of the problems of a house built in 1480.

There's a priest's hole in the chimney where they used to hide from Cromwell's killers.

After the world became safe for priests (until false accusers kicked in), they turned the priest's hole into a ham smoking chamber.

Which, to this day, has hundreds of years old huge metal hooks there.

No hams these days though. Buy it sliced in Harrods.

Progress?

A nurse friend of mine who still works on the wards, tells me they are using Manuka honey to try and combat MRSA. Interesting.

I kind of like the alcohol rub gel, very addictive, clean and probably a cool gelling member of any party!