I went down to the hive today.
Since the end of summer, all I have felt about the bees is guilt. I have bedded them down for winter in a double brood and a super - far too large, too much room and too much work for them to keep warm. I stopped paying them attention far too early in the autumn. My life just got in the way.
All winter I have avoided thinking about them. Just another thing to worry about. Guilt, guilt, guilt. I made the odd rare visit and just seeing the fresh wax cappings dotting the floor underneath, like sprinkled sugar, was enough to reassure me that they were coping on their own. Munching their way through their capped honey stores. Doing alright. I'd turn away and carry on through the wreckage of my other lives.
This year I did not visit them on Christmas Day to give them the annual gift of fondant food, as I have alway done with Tigger. I just couldn't face it alone.
But then yesterday the lawns flooded, so I went to check on them. A fresh, very faint sprinkling of cappings but otherwise, an ominous silence. So today I went down with a fresh batch of Neopol, a delicious pollen-laced fondant food. I warmed it under my coat, then sliced through the plastic wrapping and cautiously lifted the hive roof. Thousands of beetles and worms nesting in the roof for winter fell out. Yeugh! I scraped them all off, and touched the inside of the roof with concern. It felt damp. My heart sank. Nothing kills bees quicker than the wet.
Then I thumped the Neopol down on the roof hole and saw, with absolute delight, thousands of disgruntled bees buzzing about in the top of the super.
Hooray!
The bees are alright.
