BRAMBLINGS - the occasional newsletter of NCBKA

We looked at three colonies on Wednesday. In one, there was a laying queen, tail down and moving majestically across the cells. The comb contained eggs and brood in all stages. In the second colony was a queen rushing erratically through the brood area, clambering over workers in the manner typical of a virgin, but there was a small white object at the tip of her abdomen. If this was the remains of the genitalia of the last drone she had mated with, then she should be laying before too long. The third queen had something of the behaviour of each of the others. Calmer than number two, but not so dignified and purposeful as number one, there were polished cells but no eggs in her hive. Was she a virgin? Was she mated? It so happened that two days later there was an opportunity to look at these hives again. The first queen continued to lay as brood emerged and cells became available. The third queen had now filled several frames with eggs and had obviously been laying for more than a day. Queen number two had lost the mating sign but no eggs could be found in the numerous polished cells - until a small patch of perhaps 50 or 100 eggs were discovered on one frame. With queens coming into lay, the colonies had been transformed and acquired a new vitality. I am always excited by it!

I was due to take delivery of four new queens this week. They were ordered on Wednesday and were to arrive on Friday or Saturday morning, perfectly timed to coincide with the forecast Atlantic low with the usual dollops of rain and probable thunderstorms. New nucleus boxes were prepared for two of the queens and I arrived in sunny weather ready to extract frames of emerging brood from some established colonies. Happily I was sidetracked by my host and wasted time consuming a delightful lunch. By the time I arrived at the hives a particularly vicious cumulo-nimbus cloud had moved in. It was the sort that reinvents stories of Thor getting cross with Zeus, and it duly soaked everything. The rain stopped, the sun shone again ... and I noticed a swarm hanging in the hedge. O.K. queens must have emerged from one of two hives, and one had decided to decamp leaving her sister to keep house. I made a mental note to be more positive about cutting out queen cells next time and set off back to the car to collect a brood box and foundation to hive the swarm ... I now got very cross with Thor who had noticed me toiling up the hill without my waterproofs. This was getting silly, but those queens needed their nukes!

The air cleared and I was able to extract frames from two hives. Split between the two nucleus boxes, the frames of young bees and sealed brood were slowly moved together and flour shaken over all to add to the confusion. As 1 worked I heard a strange rumbling and then noticed lightning flashes all around. Old Thor really did not want me to carry on. I stopped while a light shower passed and then opened the third hive. The remaining frames were taken out and added to the nukes, just as the heavens opened again and stair rods fell all around. I rushed to close up the hive and nucleus boxes as the rain turned the flour to pastry. Worker bees were drowning all around me, frozen by the drop in temperature and trapped in the water soaking everything. With thoughts of the last chapter of Grapes of Wrath, I despondently poked soggy workers through the crown boards and sealed the boxes for transport home. My only consolation was that the bees had remained remarkably good-tempered throughout the operation.

That evening I set up the nucleus boxes at a new apiary site. The storm clouds were all distant although there were constant rolls of thunder. On opening the nukes to introduce the queen cells, there was no sign of the chaos of earlier in the day. The hive and combs were now dry and the bees were neatly covering the frames but not overcrowded. There was little sign of the flour paste and only a handful of dead bees. There had been no fighting and the only distress was the jumpiness of workers that realise they are queenless. As I write this a day later, the queen cells have been opened and workers will be clearing out the candy to complete the introduction. Very soon we will be able to decide how best to use the new queens.

W. M.