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?

The Bee Carol

by Carol Ann Duffy

Silently on Christmas Eve,
the turn of midnight's key;
all the garden locked in ice -
a silver frieze -
except the winter cluster of the bees.

Flightless now and shivering,
around their Queen they cling;
every bee a gift of heat;
she will not freeze
within the winter cluster of the bees.

Bring me for my Christmas gift
a single golden jar;
let me taste the sweetness there,
but honey leave
to feed the winter cluster of the bees.

Come with me on Christmas Eve
to see the silent hive -
trembling stars cloistered above -
and then believe,
bless the winter cluster of the bees.


* * *

Bless you too, Poet Laureate, that brought a tear to my eye!

* * *

















Merry Christmas, bees!

Full Circle in the Sun

In the time since I last wrote, I have split the hives again on the faint chance that a new Queen survived in Itchy Knee. Weeks later, I checked again on Monday and realised that all chance of a Queen was gone.

Not only that, in my eagerness to protect them after a recent very heavy display of varroa, brought about by the lack of Queen to encourage them to groom each other, I poisoned them with Apiguard medicine. I looked in on Monday and there were hundreds of dead and dying bees. I had placed the Apiguard in a too-small space and simply gassed them to death. Very terrible. I took a video of the action of a dying bee to post on a beekeeping forum in the hope that someone more experienced might recognise what was happening and confirm my suspicion about poisoning, and they did.

* * *

Today was a tough day for me. Work started at 4am; and it was the kind of work that bruises the soul - the hard part of my job. But it was a pleasure to be able to leave early and get home at lunch time. I got straight into a beesuit and headed down to the hives, intent on making right what I've been doing wrong all these last few weeks.

When I finally broke down Itchy Knee's configuration I saw that they had moved all the honey from the bottom super into the brood box, just as Ron had said they would. They moved it all so quickly! That said, I'll never do it again - putting a super at the bottom. I'm hoping that by moving to the bigger 14x12 brood box next year I will only ever need supers for the honey crop.

As I worked through the frames in the brood box, it was very clear there was still no Queen. And so - I just knew - this time it would be absolutely the right thing to do to unite the hives - Itchy Knee into San-Shi.

Itchy Knee is weak, but has a lot of honey stores. San-Shi is strong and Queen-right, but has no stores to survive the winter.

So I carefully opened up San-Shi, removed the feed arrangement at the top, and placed a sheet of newspaper down again on the brood box. I heaved Itchy Knee's brood box across (it weighs an absolute ton from all that honey) and placed it ever so carefully, ever so gently on top.

Then placed two packs of candy fondant in an eke/super on top and closed it all up.

It all felt good and right and proper this time, not frantic and fearful and confused like the last few times I've dropped in.

And all the time I worked with the bees today, they were incredibly pleasant and good-natured. Sure, they buzzed about and checked me out, and expressed their grouchiness at being moved about with a few loud buzzes, but in the main they were a joy to be around.

What saddens me is to witness the terrible ongoing War against the Wasps - carnivores, killers, raiders, pirates. I even managed to stomp on a few this time.

On a completely different note, I saw that the perspex crownboard had accumulated a corner of condensation inside it. I will watch that, and change it to a wooden crown board, I think.

That will be one of the last things I do as I bed them down for winter. Insulation is a subject of ongoing interest and research. Wonder what I'll find to use this year?

After my visit today, I sat for a long, long time and just watched the bees, surrounded myself with bees. I watched as gradually the few remaining foragers at the base of the old Itchy Knee site slowly moved across to San-Shi. I watched some wrestling matches between wasps and bees. And I gloried in the blue sky afternoon sun; so rare! I miss it so much. When did I ever think the South African big blue sky was too big and too blue, and the sun too hot? Was I mad!?

Chatting to my housemate tonight, I found myself caught up in a passionate, articulate explanation of how Queen bees are made and how bees are one of the few creatures in nature who - collectively - choose the sex of their children. I could see the wonder in my housemate, and it brought the magic all rushing back.

It has been such a hard year with the bees; it has felt like just another job, just another chore.

But not today.

Don't worry, bee happy

Alright, alright, I'm cheering up. Calm down everyone!

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!

Old Bee Bore

I creep down to the hives every night now. In the gathering dark I watch and I wonder. I see Itchy Knee bringing in pollen; I see San-Shi flying all around the houses the wrong way round to get into their entrance as it gradually moves across the apiary, closer and closer to the other hive.

I am still moving the hive, but I keep believing that Itchy Knee will deliver a Queen; all those little hints keep me hoping against hope that they have a Queen.

• That torn-down Queen cell
• They're bringing in pollen

But more than anything, it's just a sense that they have continued so steady, so consistent, looking Queen-right all the time. They fly in, they fly out, they do their duty, they hold the fort, nothing deflects them from the ultimate objective: preparation for the winter.

The evenings are beginning to draw in; the garden is looking wild and woolly. Guy's tomato crop has come in; rich and ripe and ready. Everything is overgrown and fruiting; peaking in those few contained weeks before true autumn sets in.

I must; I simply must know the truth about Itchy Knee this weekend. I'm praying for good Hive Inspection weather. If there is no brood now it will finally, finally be time to unite them for the winter.

Well, that said, I will wait for the end of the Apiguard medication - mid October - before I tackle it.

I find myself reverting back to bee-strategising on the Tube again when I commute.

Now, do I clear Itchy Knee's super first? So that's 2 days with the crownboard and porter escapes in. Or do I do the same to San-Shi as well? Do I even have two crownboards and four porter escapes!?

Then what do I do?

Perhaps I just clear San-Shi's and .... no, wait, I'll clear Itchy Knee's, then lift that box across to the top of San-Shi.

But what about those guys who reckon the stronger hive goes on top? I don't wanna do that - every instinct rebels. Why move the strong hive and risk the Queen?! Doesn't make sense ...

Blah, blah, blah. I'm turning into an Old Bee Bore, I really am ...