Feeling Bad

I've found myself avoiding this blog in the past couple of days; I don't want to face it; I don't want to face myself. I'm ashamed of myself. How have a bunch of little creatures brought me this low, I ask myself. I swing wildly between despair and mortification and self-deprecating humour. How can I take any of this too seriously? After all, the bees don't care about my blog!

It really does feel as if they sometimes stare me down and find me wanting.

And in this case, I ought be ashamed of myself, I really do.

Let me explain.

On 1 August, after a wild summer of being chased down the garden by a bunch of bees, I finally gathered up some friends and mentors, and together we hunted down and killed the Queen of Itchy Knee. You remember that part, right?

The intention was then to leave the bees to make a new Queen in the hope that the new one would be of a gentler disposition. This in turn would make her 50,000-strong hive gentler too. Less running down the garden path and cowering behind hedges for me.

So for the next 7 weeks I spent a fair old amount of time sharpening my pencil and doing calculations on a regular basis, trying to work out how long it would take to birth a Queen, get her mated and get her laying some new brood as proof for me to find on my next Hive inspection.

7 weeks later, and several despairing checks inside the hive, I was convinced - absolutely convinced - that if there WAS a Queen, it had become too late in the season to get her mated. I was convinced there was no successfully-mated Queen.

So I had been screwing up my courage, all my resolve, to go for a Uniting of the 2 Hives - Itchy Knee and San-Shi. This would help make the one hive stronger to survive through the coming winter. Before I went in to do the job, I reminded myself and reminded myself "don't forget to inspect properly for any brood."

Don't forget, Margo. Don't forget!

What did I do? On Saturday, I did a cursory inspection of a few frames inside Itchy Knee; found them broodless. And went and did the Uniting. Apart from the stupidity of not putting a Queen Excluder between the two, so I could locate the new Grand United Queen, I didn't do a proper check of ALL the frames.

So last night I did the follow-up call; in which you're supposed to check that the Unite has been successful, locate Queen-sign (ie brood) if not the Queen herself, and select the best frames to start reducing the size of the Double Brood Box Hive to a single, or a Brood-and-a-Half. Except that, when I went through the frames, I found mature brood. In both brood boxes. This means both Queens had laid brood, each in Her own hive, 10 days earlier.

There WAS a Queen - a new successfully-mated Queen in Itchy Knee. I just didn't spot her - or her early brood - on that cursory inspection on Saturday. If I had, I would never have united. Now, of course, one of the two Queens is dead. Long live the Grand United Queen - whichever one survived the fight to the death between the two that has inevitably taken place in the last couple of days.

I hate myself sometimes. Oh, I know I shouldn't beat myself up. I know I'm only a learner beekeeper. I know I'm doing a lot of this stuff by fumbling through on my own. I know lots of better beekeepers than me make the same mistakes.

But OH! I should've known better!

Allow me to feel bad today. I'm sure I'll recover my equilibrium soon, but today - today, just let me feel bad for a bit.

Buggeration, this beekeeping lark is hard!