Vive la Reine

Moving along the journey from beginner to novice, we enter new realms of knowledge all the time. Nowadays I spend a lot of time musing about Queens, temper, genetics and selection.

This is the succession of Queens I have experienced so far -

• First, there was the Black Queen, who arrived with the swarm in June 2009 and brought with her a summer of gentleness and getting-to-know-each-other friendliness.
• As my mentors suspected, and I discovered, that was also the summer of Supercedure for, when I next spotted a Queen in the same hive - Itchy Knee - it was early in the summer of 2010 and she wasn't Black, she was Lightly Ginger in colour.
• The early summer progressed companiably until the Prime Swarm of 19 May; which meant Queen Lightly Ginger went into San-Shi, and a new Queen reigned in Itchy Knee.
• the Cast or Secondary Swarm of 22 May, 3 days later, meant a young Virgin Queen was taken away by Patrice and Senpai Scott, together with her little colony.
• The New Queen ruled in Itchy Knee through to late summer, and caused so much grief with her bad temper rife throughout the colony, that we found her and killed her at the end of August 2010. She will forever be known as The Angry Queen.
• If there was a new Queen afterwards, she was sadly killed when I united the two hives, unaware of her existence. My bad!
• San-shi continued on, well-tempered, under the rule of Queen Lightly Ginger.
• When the two hives were merged at the end of Summer 2010, they continued to show good temper.
• So it is Queen Lightly Ginger who will hopefully survive through to the summer of 2011.

What will the Succession will mean for this summer?

Being born sometime in the late summer of 2009, and considering how quickly the colonies have replaced each Queen, it may be that -

• She may begin to reveal signs of aging by developing poor egg-laying traits, or laying only drones (meaning she is running out of sperm stored inside her body and so she can only lay unfertilised or male eggs), and so
• there will be a Supercedure; and/or
• highly likely they will try to Swarm again.

So I begin to think about genetics and temper-traits.

The Black Queen gave birth to Queen Lightly Ginger. Queen Lightly Ginger gave birth to both The Angry Queen and the Virgin Queen. Patrice and Scott have said their bees were gentle.

So when Queen Lightly Ginger gives birth to Queens this summer, it seems I have a 50/50 chance of a good or bad Queen, unless the genetic material has changed. Now let's consider the variables:

• Queens mate with between 10 and 20 drones (it is thought)
• Queens have been seen to lay in "pockets" of eggs; batches of which laid close to one another exhibit all one colouring, and batches laid further away, a different colouring. This reveals the genetic variance of many different fathers. As the sperm comes out of the Queen's body, it comes out in a "batch" left by a single Father; then another "batch" from a different Father, therefore the difference in colouring seen in worker bees born in different parts of the hive.

Are you still with me here?

• Remember female (or fertilised) eggs have a Mother and a Father; male (or drone/unfertilised) eggs have a Mother but no Father.
• Would it then be safe to assume, if I see Queen cells laid far away from each other in the hive, they would have different Fathers? And therefore different temperaments?
• I don't know how far about in the hive Queen Lightly Ginger was born from The Angry Queen. It's safe to assume however - different temperaments = different Fathers.

I wonder if there's any way I can manipulate The Succession this Summer, to ensure a new Queen with a good temper?

And thus avoid any more blasted stings this summer ...

Hmmmmmm.

A funny thing happened on the way to Slough ...

After the craziness of the house move, and the cataract surgery, sanity finally prevailed. I had to acknowledge that keeping the bees in The Secret Garden at Muswell Hill would simply mean too far to commute from Slough. So I decided to move them with me. Besides - selfishly - I miss them at the bottom of my garden.

So Guy and I applied the lessons, so very recently learned from Ron and Mary, and went to move them again. We carefully filled the entrance with a little piece of sponge, gently tied a cable around the entire double brood box, and slowly lifted the hive onto the trolley we'd brought with us.

We wobbled our way down the garden path, looked back for a last glimpse of a garden we'd hoped to grow and cherish, and then wound our way down to the little car. Mighty Mouse is a wee little car but is perfectly configured - once you've folded the back seats down - for fitting a standing hive in the back.

We drove away and off down the North Circular, on our way to Slough.

Now at this stage I must tell you - in five years of living and travelling in England - I have never once been pulled over by the police. So we were not expecting an eventful trip at all. Naturally, I had my bee suit on, but the veil off.

So when the blue siren went on behind us, I don't know who among us was more surprised - Guy, me - or 10,000 rather irritated lady bees.

Oh dear God! What had we done?

Guy pulled the car over, and I surreptitiously slipped on a jacket over my bee suit. I had of course, not bothered to put the statutory "Bees in Transit" notice in my car window, had I.

It turned out that the police thought my car was uninsured, and they fully intended to have the car towed away to a pound. I nearly fainted. I was rather glad at this stage that bees don't understand English. They might've rioted, or something equally scary ...

On top of that, I couldn't get out of the car because the passenger door doesn't work on the Mouse, which wouldn't have looked that good to the coppers.

Perhaps that wasn't such a bad thing, because it meant that I was forcibly confined inside the car - flathering away at Guy, who was meant to have organised the insurance. He spent 20 fraught minutes on the side of the highway, fast-talking the cops and the insurance company on the phone, while I and 10,000 close friends slowly simmered away inside the car.

Eventually it was all sorted out - it turned out that the insurance company had misspelled the registration number. The Old Bill turned away, visibly disappointed at not being able to tow my car, but gleefully listening to me ranting away at Guy about "getting it right the first time and why didn't you tell me and I could've done all this myself better and next time you'll know blah blah rant point finger threaten yell ...."

They left shaking their heads and smiling, and looking rather pityingly at my partner.

Yes, I'm proud of myself. I put on a Good Show for them, and they left none the wiser that they'd been one bee sting away from being assimilated by The Borg.

* * *

Once we arrived at the new house with the bees, we simply disappeared into the depths of the garage in Mighty Mouse and emerged out the other side into the privacy of the garden with the bees. We carefully trollied them all the way down the length of the long, long garden and round the corner behind the back of the shed.

We were in the process of carefully siting and uncabling them when I heard Guy shriek "they're all coming out the back end!" and he scorched off down the garden like a shot rattlesnake.

I popped my head around the edge of the hive and, sure enough, the cable had snagged on the Open Mesh Floor and pulled open a small hole large enough for several hundred extremely agitated bees to exit from.

"Holy Cow," I thought "imagine if that had happened in the car!?"

I must admit, I had a bloody good laugh!

They have settled now, after a few weeks, and seem to be thriving.

* * *

I've joined my local association, the impressively-named Slough, Windsor and Maidenhead Beekeepers' Society. So now I'm a member of two associations (I'd never give up my old one - I love 'em to bits).

To make friends with the new lot, I went on their Beginners' Beekeepers Course - not so much for the course content (although it was a great refresher, and I should be thinking about taking the Basic Beekeeper's Exam), but more to network among the local community of beekeepers. And it was great to do that; and to meet some more knowledgeable people.

It was also wonderfully inspiring, and got me down to the bottom of my garden this afternoon, in the sun.

Sadly, Bee Corner is rather tucked away in a dank and shady spot. I do hope it's not too cold and shady and secluded! They are buzzing, though, which gives me hope. And I spent the afternoon assembling all the new frames for my super-duper large 14 x 12 hive. It was hugely satisfying, banging and hammering and smacking away at things, particularly as I spent most of the time imagining it was Guy's head I was hammering.

Very useful anger management indeed.

Funny thing, beekeeping, isn't it?