I WAS worried about the bees. The news had told us a while ago about how they were all dying out because of a combination of wet summers and a killer bug.

I just wanted to know whether our bees, South Devon's bees, would be okay.

There was only really one group of people to ask and so, without really knowing why I had become so concerned for the stripy little critters, I set off to find them.

Thankfully, very much like the insects which so fascinate them, bee people tend to congregate every now and then inside the same small building.

Tonight they would be making their way back to the Gerston Christian Centre, in Paignton, for a talk by the Totnes apiarist and beekeeping evangelist Phil Chandler, aka The Barefoot Beekeeper, about top bar hives.

If you are not sure what they are, and I certainly wasn't, it might be best if you visit his website (www.biobees.com), which will leave you in no doubt.

Inside the large hall, with its high ceiling and various piles of stacked equipment from the various clubs and societies which use it, people chatted in small groups.

I assumed they were talking about bees.

There at the front of three arcs of chairs was an overhead projector, laptop and Phil, who claimed 'not to be a typical Totnes person' but confused the issue by wearing a cravat.

The lure of hearing Phil's philosophy certainly seemed enough to draw in a decent crowd on a wet and windy Tuesday night in Torbay.

It was encouraging to see so many bee people — which I might start referring to as 'beeple' for the purposes of this column — in the same room.

If these folks were a reflection of the health of our hives then there was nothing to worry about.

None of them looked overly concerned about anything.

It turns out they weren't, overly. As ever with these sorts of stories, it would appear the scale of the problem got slightly blown out of all proportion over the course of a newspaper article or two about how all the bees were dying because of bad weather, insecticides and mites.

One of these, in the Daily Express on September 5, claimed rather alarmingly that British honey would run out in three months and there would be nothing to glaze the Christmas ham with.

But honey would not be the only casualty of this mass extinction, continued the story.

With no bees there would be no pollination. No pollination would mean no apples and pears, no strawberries, and no runner beans (why did Brussels sprouts have to escape this cull? Or broccoli?).

Up to 40 per cent of the population would die out (that's bees, not people, or beeple for that matter) and we would all have to eat food shipped in from abroad, which could be anything but would most probably be sauerkraut.

Before I get too carried away, it should be pointed out that one of these factors affecting our bees, the varroa mite, is a genuine problem and was first discovered in this country right here in Torbay.

The parasite originated in Asia but has since infected Europe and can wipe out entire colonies if left untreated.

That said, there are treatments which can help.

Phil swears by icing sugar, and a couple of the slides he shows us of the inside of one of his top bar hives looks like it has been attacked by a passing pastry chef.

Each of the keepers here seems to favour their own method of beating the bug.

Maurice, one of the club stalwarts who has been keeping bees for 50 years, and who makes the tea following Phil's talk, uses oxalic acid trickled over them in a solution of water and sugar.

But there will always be something needing doing to the bees, and I sense that is part of the attraction of this hobby in the first place.

If you're not treating them for some killer infection, you're extracting honey, checking the queen's all right, or just making sure the hive is happy.

"We do need money for the government to invest in bees," says Maurice. "They are an important part of nature. But we've had bad times before and come back.

"Isle of Wight disease wiped out the whole population before the war and they just started bringing in bees from all over the world."

Isle of Wight disease, named after the place it was first found, is caused by mites which block the bees' airways ,and did indeed wipe out the entire population of Great Britain.

But, like Maurice said, they came back. All of a sudden I am seeing why members here tonight are not as concerned as they might be.

As, I think, are David and Donna, two bee-ginners (sorry) who also came along to see if the bees were okay and actually wanted to do something to help.

"My motivation for coming in the first place was to see if the bees were all right," says David, in a soft Scottish accent, slightly tempered by his living in St Marychurch.

"We thought we'd do the right thing and try to learn about them first before we try to keep them."

Donna has been impressed by Phil's talk, which did actually make the discipline of keeping bees seem fairly simple.

"I'm sure it's not as easy as all that," she says, "but the way he was doing it, with just a simple bar, seemed quite natural."

They appear to have stopped worrying too much about the bees' plight and have moved on to thinking about how they are going to keep them.

They are certainly among a knowledgeable group here.

John, another who has been keeping a hive most of his life, took up the hobby after watching his father who had just returned from D-Day with a bullet wound in his chest and started keeping bees to convalesce.

He blames his father for 'dragging me into it' but it's not hard to sense that John is more than glad he did.

"It seems to me to be a hobby that attracts those people who like to fiddle," says John.

"I keep my hive for the honey, and the fact that it's near a pub. But you do get all these people who say they are into it, they come along to the hives, get stung once and you never see them again."

Maurice again has the answer to that. "Never wear smelly socks near the hive," he says, "they hate that." You can't blame them for that, enough to make anyone get upset.

With Phil's talk over and following a lively discussion about his methods among the members, Jim, the club chairman, takes to the stage to talk us through building our own hive.

"I enjoy making things," he says, holding up a square box into which he has built a small ramp for the returning bees to land upon. "We can make these things at our leisure. In sheds. Don't go buying stuff if you can make it yourself."

It's good advice in these times of financial crisis, but Kingsley, another of those long-time keepers, is in mischievous mood.

"But you've had 30 years of doing joinery work, how are we supposed to make that?" he says.

It draws a small cheer and roar of laughter from the rest of the members, well used to an open and frank exchange of ideas with the chairman, who gives as good as he gets.

"You can do anything if you want to," fires back Jim, rather inspiringly.

"I thought you might be interested to see what you can make yourself on a bench at home. It's what makes our craft and hobby interesting."

Beekeeping is not alone in being a hobby with different attractions for different people.

But what sets it apart is the fascination of the bees themselves.

Their unswerving devotion to the queen, their diligent work in constructing the hive, making honey, pollinating our plants, flowers and crops. We owe them a lot it seems.

But it is not a place for sentiment. Maurice spelled that out to me earlier.

"The world is getting smaller, we buy in bees now from all around the world," he said.

"I have bought queens in from Greece. They come in a little tube with food in one end and a stopper in the other.

"I had this one once, I put her in the hive, opened the end and 'pop' off she flew! Off goes seventeen quid odd!"

So don't be worried about the bees. No one in the Torbay branch of the Devon Beekeepers Association is gravely concerned about anything beyond their next honey crop.

They are fighting a good fight against varroa, but there's not much they can do about a cold winter and wet spring.

And if it does all go really wrong and once again we lose all our bees, we'll just get on the phone and put in an order for some new ones. Perhaps they'll arrive by air mail…