One Chance

Well, that's the first time I've shed tears for a bee!

Absolutely frustration; desperate sadness; worry; anger at self - just a whole lot of useless emotion.

I lost the Queen in last week's transition to the 14x12 hive.

On checking this week, there is no early brood whatsoever (no little 3-day eggies), and there are 3 new Queen cells. Each of them had a larva lying in Royal Jelly. In fear and nerves, I destroyed 2 of the 3 which, upon reflection, I should not have done.

So now the colony has one chance to survive.

Well, more than that because I could buy in a Queen, or ask my beekeeping friends if someone could spare a frame of very early brood. But ... by now, you'll know me - I wanted to do it all right, and I haven't and I'm beating myself up pointlessly.

I did feel a dreadful pang, thinking of Her Majesty, lost somewhere in the last week, maybe one of the poor bees batting at the wrong entrance, starving to death. She left me a last gift of hundreds and hundreds of magnificent looking sealed brood. That did make me feel bad.

But it's getting to a point where I'm starting to think: Oh for heaven's sake, Margo, snap out of it! They are livestock; it happens. You're learning; it happens.

So I will stop feeling sorry for myself and the bees, and keep trudging on.

It will be a few weeks now, before I know whether they're Queen-right, and the new Lass is properly mated and laying.

Patience, old girl, patience!