Alex James: A bee experience with a sting in tale

The cleverer you are, the more interesting bees are, or so the story goes. There is an Oxford don nearby, a professor, who has millions. He's gone, daddy, gone: off with the bees, watching them dance, and staring at their honey, stupefied.

Like higher mathematics, The Grateful Dead or cocaine, once you've tasted bees, they can run away with you and there may be no going back. Maybe that's why, although they have always been near the top of my shopping list since we got here, I haven't actually started a hive yet.

One of the things about living on a farm is that you get to meet other people who also live on farms, and they all tend to be quite passionate about what they keep.

They usually want to share their joy – and that, combined with the charm of the animals, can be hard to resist. I very nearly bought a herd of Ayrshire cows a few weeks ago while under the enchantment of a dairyman. So, when I went with a film crew to meet an apiarist and a few hundred thousand of his closest friends, I went cautiously.

There are not as many bees around as usual and nobody knows where they have gone. Possibly, somebody very, very clever has lured them to a Doctor Moreau-style bee island and is sitting bang in the middle with a big smile on his face. More likely, they are in peril.

Still, unlike many Cotswold citizens, who consider them garish, bees like rape fields and continue to thrive in them, and there in the corner of one was a hickledy row of whirring, whizzing, fizzing hives.

Maybe the camera distracted the keeper and he didn't puff enough smoke, maybe we came at the wrong time. Next thing I knew, myself, the presenter, producer, camera and sound men, the whole crew, were running up the road in our bee suits pursued by an angry mob. Maybe I'm not as clever as I thought.

When the cat's awry...

We're down to one cat at the moment. One fell out of a tree and is convalescing in a hutch. They keep the place tidy. I've never seen a live rat here before, but the pig and I watched one scamper off like a big hamster when I went out to feed her last night. She turned to me with a frown. I said, "Ha! That's not scary. You should have seen the ones in London!"

First rate lodgings

I'd quite like to get some more rats. That one looked interesting, but we'll have to get the place pristine. I have a spare shed and it looks like Lady Bamford might want to keep some of her pedigree Gloucester cows in there over the winter. Very exciting.

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