Tuesday 27 July 2010

Goodbye Queen Mildred, Hello Queen Stella!

You may have been wondering what the Malarkey bees have been up to recently. I'll tell you what they've been up to. Causing us ANGST, that's what. ANGST!! With a capital A...N...G...S...T!

And I haven't been able to discuss the ANGST because I've been feeling like a big fat bee-keeping failure for the last three weeks, even though I know, deep down, what happened was mostly beyond our control. BUT...and here's the good bit...it seems like all is well again. Touch wood. Lots of wood. Especially a nice piece of oak. And that we have come through our first bee-keeping crisis having gained some valuable bee-keeping experience.

What's happened? I hear you ask.

('Yes,' says Mrs Miggins, who had a rather disappointing visit to Lakeland Plastics yesterday, and is feeling a bit narky. 'Just get on with it, will you?)

You will remember that when we brought the nuc home in May, there was a sealed queen cell attached. That's not good, we thought. We took it down.
'You've got a Queen,' we told the bees. 'Queen Mildred. That's her over there. The one with the corks swinging from her hat. She's Australian.'
'We know,' said the bees. 'She ain't our mum and we don't like her. Mildred out! Mildred out! MILDRED OUT!!' they chanted, and set about marching up and down, waving placards with 'MILDRED OUT!' painted on them, and building more Queen cells.

Well, they continued to build Queen cells for the next four weeks. Every inspection we were knocking 'em down.
'You didn't apply for planning permission,' we told the bees.
'We're going to apply retrospectively,' said the bees. 'Once we've got our new Queen.' One of them gave QM a kick as she passed by. Another stole her can of Fosters.

'No,' we said. 'You'll put up with Mildred. We are unanimous in that. Have an extension to your hive, in case you're feeling a bit hot and crowded.'

Of course, there came an inspection day when we couldn't find QM.
'She might be skulking in the bottom of the hive,' I said, optimistically.
'There are still eggs and larvae,' said Andy, even more optimistically. 'But not many.'

A week later. Still no sight of Mildred.

'She's buggered off, hasn't she?' I said, the nasty realisation slowly dawning that we now had a queenless colony on our hands.
'Looks like it,' said Andy.
'Poo,' I said. 'What do we do now?'

We went indoors and had a cup of tea, that's what we did. And then we panicked and made many phone calls to bee-keeping people along the lines of 'HEEEEEEEEEELP!!!!!!!!!'

However, it soon became clear that the various bee-keeping people were unavailable to 'HEEEEEEEEEEELP!!!!'

We were going to have to handle this ourselves.

So, braced with conviction that we could HANDLE this, NO PROBLEM, we re-entered the hive. We chose our queen cell. We marked the frame with a star. 'When she hatches, we shall call her Queen Stella,' said Andy.

We knocked out the other queen cells. We took out ANYTHING that looked remotely like it could become a queen cell. And then we said a prayer and shut up the hive and prepared to sit tight for at least two weeks.

Today, we could bear it no longer. According to our highly mathematical calculations, Queen Stella, if she was viable, would have hatched about a week ago. By hanging on an extra week, we hoped she'd have gone on a mating flight or three, and that we wouldn't be inspecting the hive whilst she was on a mating flight and confuse her by having her home in several different pieces when she returned.

Through the frames we went. Many, many bees. No sign of a Queen. No sign of eggs. Oh dear.

And the...

'THERE SHE IS!!!' I shouted. 'LOOK! THERE'S THE QUEEN!!!!!'
'Where?' said Andy.
'THERE!!!' I said, waving the hive tool with excitement. It was definitely a Queen. I homed in on her straight away. She was scuttling to get away from the light, in all her pointy bottomed glory. We replaced the frame she was on quickly, checked the other frames and reassembled the hive.

We are saying another little prayer that when we inspect the hive next week, there will be eggs.

But for now, we have hatched a new Queen. And that, as new bee-keepers, when everyone kept telling us we wouldn't have problems of this ilk in our first year, is the best we can hope for.

2 comments:

  1. Bees don't read the books! It's good experience, lots of bee keepers don't come across this problem for years, so you can be very smug once it's all worked out. I had to requeen this year after my queen disappeared, and as there were no eggs and no QCs I had to get a frame with eggs on from another beekeeper, oh the relief when it worked. She may not have mated yet, fingers crossed you'll see some eggs next time you look though. (Personally I can never see eggs, they're too fiddly - larvae are much easier to spot!)

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  2. Hi Olly! It's good to have some reassurance from you about this matter, newbies that we are. I suspect bees do read books occasionally, but of the Jilly Cooper and Catherine Cookson variety, which are of no use to the relationship they have with their keepers at all!

    My intinct (which I am relying on rather a lot these days!)tells me Queen Stella is mid-mating flights or just about to start, so we're going to leave the hive be for a good week, then, as you say, fingers crossed, there will be eggs to see. I can sometimes spot eggs if the sun is behind me; but I agree that larva are much easier.

    Our bee-keeping supplier says he's had lots of reports of 'bees behaving strangely' this year. Not quite sure what he means by that; dancing tangos with lampshades of their heads maybe???

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