There's a buzz in the air at Sarah Fowler's farm.

You don't hear it immediately because with hens, cockerels and ducks all vying for attention, it is hard to detect.

But if you listen carefully, it's there - a pleasant, background hum.

The sound comes from a collection of bee hives, positioned beside Sarah's farmhouse.

"If you come a bit closer you can hear them more clearly," she gestures, as, with Telegraph & Argus photographer Paul, I move forward a few paces to tune in.

Noting our look of anxiety, Sarah adds that the bees are Italian. "They are a very laid-back breed, very placid and easy to handle."

I heave a sigh of relief, trying to dispel images of being pursued across the neighbouring fields by a gathering swarm.

I've come to the farm, in Stainburn near Otley, for a beginner's lesson in bee-keeping - and it's clear from the start that I'm in expert hands.

With hives at sites across Yorkshire, Sarah produces honey to sell at farmers' markets across Yorkshire.

She leads the way into the single storey honey house', where jars of honey and honey products line the shelves. There is tree honey, borage honey, spring flowers set honey, woodland tree honey and many others.

Alongside sit different varieties of chutney, marmalade, candles and soap, with honey featuring prominently among the ingredients.

Preparing to go hive-side is a job in itself. Protection is afforded by a special suit, including headwear, which zips up the front and around the neck. "I'll have a job taking photographs through this mesh," Paul says, as Sarah zips on his hat with its protective veil.

I struggle into mine. "Is that too tight?" asks Sarah. "No, it's fine," I replied in a high-pitched voice as I take a deep breath to pull it over my stomach.

Whether trying on jeans, dresses or bee suits, we women are often reluctant to admit that we need a larger size.

Having briefly read up on bee-keeping before my visit, I'd learned that bees do not generally like dark clothing and will sometimes attack dark objects. Thankfully, the suit was white.

Once kitted out, I follow Sarah in the direction of the buzz.

She opens a hive and hands me the smoker - a simple firebox with bellows attached, used to puff smoke into the hive.

"This calms the bees," says Sarah. It was true - they did appear less agitated as I gently moved the bellows up and down. And wouldn't anyone be agitated if the roof of their house had just been removed?

When bees are frightened they send out a special scent to alarm the other bees to attack. The smoke prevents the bees from smelling the alarm scent so they keep working in the hive.

"It is important to relax with them," Sarah adds. "They can sense it if you are not."

Looking into the hive, I see a series of wooden frames containing the honeycomb - sheets of hexagonal, adjoining beeswax cells made by the bees. The frames can be lifted out to allow the beekeeper to inspect the bees and remove the honey.

It's fascinating to see how, after gathering nectar from flowers, the busy, highly organised, insects were building up the honey.

"I'll try to find the queen for you to have a look at," says Sarah. The queen is the only sexually reproductive female in the colony and mother to the busy worker bees, the smaller, lazy male drones' and future queens.

"We rear queens by putting in plastic cells," says Sarah, explaining how she is able to take away old queens and produce new ones. It sounded very scientific.

Looking for the queen, in a hive of around 80,000 (I try to count them but lose track at the 50,000 mark), seems to me like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. But Sarah assures me the queen could be found - she had, in fact, marked her with a blue dot before I arrived. Sadly, though, Her Majesty proves elusive and we abandon the search.

The queen is kept out of the honey storage area, where she might lay eggs, by a queen excluder' - a grill between the brood box - where the bees raise their young, at the bottom and the super' containing the frames at the top.

I help Sarah to inspect the hive, assessing how much honey had been made, checking the position of the queen, whether there are any eggs, and monitoring the health of the bees. "We generally don't interfere with the bees more than once or twice a month," Sarah explains.

Watching the bees moving to and fro in the hive, going about their duties is riveting.

"I have a huge respect for the bees and their organisation," says Sarah, who has a special glass-fronted observation hive in the honey house that allows visitors to safely watch the bees at work.

Our suits keep us out harm's way. I've been stung by a bee a couple of times in the past, and suffered no more than a swollen lip. To my surprise, Sarah reveals that she is allergic to bee stings.

"Too much exposure has made me allergic, so I go for an injection of bee sting venom to keep me free."

Beekeeping runs in Sarah's family. It was part of her childhood in South Yorkshire.

"My parents and grandparents kept bees. When I was growing up I assumed everybody kept them."

But she didn't plunge straight into it. "When I reached my teens I wanted to have nothing to do with bees - I hated them, I thought they were nasty, stingy things."

So, when she settled on the farm, when she has lived for 20 years, Sarah chose goats over insects.

"We produced goats' cheese, but there came a point when I decided I didn't want to milk goats for the rest of my life, so I sold the herd," she says.

The decision to diversify into honey was easy. "I came back to something I had been familiar with. I wanted a product with a good shelf life."

From the start, she felt as if she'd come home: "I found it absolutely fascinating. It was as if It was something I'd always wanted to do."

Sarah asks me to lift out one of the frames. It's incredible to think that the rich, golden honey has been made by these little insects. Replacing it, I'm terrified I'll squash one of the bees.

Back in the honey house, Sarah shows me the machine in which the frames are spun around to extract the honey.

In this idyllic setting, with the sweet smell of honey mixing with the earthy smell of the wax, and the background hum of the bees of, it is easy to see why Sarah is passionate about bee-keeping.

"I love it - I'm absolutely obsessed with bees, I'm afraid," she says.

  • The Honey House, Stainburn, near Leathley. Tel: (07814) 067659. The farm is open every Friday, otherwise, ring in advance. E-mail: sarah@braythornebees.wanadoo.co.uk Sarah's honey can be bought at Otley Farmers' Market held from 10am to 1pm on the last Sunday of every month.