A swarm of bees

In Competition No. 2455 you were invited to incorporate a dozen given words, all beginning with b, into a plausible piece of prose.

The given words were on the surface less testing than usual, but that was only to lure you into the trap of the too obvious. Cleverclogs, like Jeremy Chilcott and L.E. Betts, who managed it in half the maximum number of words lost in entertainment what they gained in brevity, even though they impressed me. David Jones, Andrew Brison and W.J. Webster were all close to the money. The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 each, and Alan Millard earns the extra fiver for his Cumbrian fantasy.

An internet source stated that Coleridge, banjaxed on opium, arrived belatedly at Dove Cottage in the buff one autumn, blue with cold, shouting, ‘Forget Keats’ “close bosom friend”! I’m freezing!’ Dorothy, seemingly unperturbed, proceeded to bank up the fire and offer him soup with a freshly baked, homemade oatmeal biscuit.