The Hive

It's been just over 2 months since we moved in, and we're well settled in by now. There's still cardboard boxes lying around, as we don't have enough furniture for storage yet, nor do we have internal doors, but that's ok. The first few weeks were mostly much-needed relaxation and recovery, with the odd small job thrown in, while the past few weeks the focus has been outside. Pruning fruit trees, cutting back neglected beech hedging, first cut of the grass, sorting out the barn, that kind of thing.

In the barn, we seem to have quite the collection of old tables, which we've also started cleaning up in order to have a rustic kitchen table, though all have woodworm, so we need to something about that. But more of that anon.

While reorganising the back of one part of the barn, I was moving what I always thought was a home-made wall cabinet. It's incredibly solid, and quite heavy, but while moving it, I noticed a few features that I hadn't really thought about before. Plugged holes in the top, two horizontal slots at the "back" bottom, rails for shelves that made no sense. But it was thanks to some exploring my son and I did a couple of weeks ago, when we found an abandoned-looking shed filled with old beehives, that I realised this was exactly what the "cabinet" was.

Here's a video.

What I didn't notice while recording that, was some more writing on the door. It clearly said 1906, but I could not make out the rest.  But thanks to Gerrit on Twitter, he recognised it as Sütterlin script, saying "am 31. Mai 1906". So, most likely when it was built.

I'm unlikely to start keeping bees, though the idea does appeal. In the meantime, we've enough to be doing. It's just a matter of where do we start!