Trog
Tales from the Hive - Spring Cleaning
by
, 04-05-2014 at 12:35 PM (17488 Views)
The queen was disgruntled. Very disgruntled. “Do you really expect me to lay my lovely eggs in this?”, she grumbled. The housebees, like teenagers who'd not quite tidied their rooms to the required standard, replied somewhat grumpily, “We did our best, ma'am.”
“Well, it's not good enough. You'll have to use this one for stores or something.” Queenie flounced off to find a better frame. Hearing the somewhat mutinous, though muted, mutterings from that part of the hive, Mitzzi went to investigate. Queenie was right; it was a pretty disgusting frame. It was dark brown verging on black with a mixture of untidy drone comb, worker comb, short-cut holes, a few old queen cups and a bit of double comb at the bottom for good measure.
The beekeeper was outside her greenhouse, admiring the tomato plants, when a bee came over and hovered at ear-level. “Hello, bee”, said the beekeeper, carrying on pottering. Mitzzi hovered a little longer then flew back to the hive. A few minutes later, the thought dawned in the beekeeper's brain that she really ought to check the bees on such a nice day, especially with rain forecast for the rest of the week. Moreover, she really ought to make up some new brood frames as the spring inspection had revealed some fairly undesirable specimens in one or two colonies.
Soon after (the beekeeper being handy with a hammer), there was a brood box full of lovely new frames with fragrant new foundation. The beekeeper noticed a bee inspecting them and wondered if it might be the same one. Mitzzi, having completed her inspection, flew back to report to the queen. “Excellent!”, she replied, “That rebellious crew on the penultimate frame will have it drawn out in no time; should keep them occupied and out of trouble for a while, anyway.”