Bees!

I now present to you a tale of murder and mystery...

For the first time in years, I joined my dad at the bees. We had an important mission- to assassinate the old queen bees, and replace them with new, fresh queens. As a beekeeper, you have to replace the old queen every 2 to 3 years, because she stops laying as many eggs and your beehive will shrink in size. 

Last week, Dad got the two new queens in the mail. Yes, when you order bees, they package them in little boxes covered in screen, and send them to you via the United States Postal Service. As soon as he could, he introduced the new queen bees to the hives. Normally, the beekeeper must squish the old queen. Then, the bees release the new queen from her little screen box by chewing through a candy "door." She emerges and takes over the hive. 

Finding the queen is sometimes a needle in a haystack situation. When you order a queen through the mail, she'll have a brightly colored dot painted on her and is usually easier to find among the 10s of thousands of bees in the hive. But sometimes, the bees replace the store-bought queen themselves, and then the beekeeper has to find a big, fat, natural bee colored like all the rest. You might look through every inch of your beehive and never see her. And the more you take apart a beehive, the angrier the bees get. 

Well, dad was able to find and "assassinate" the old queen in my hive and replace her successfully, but he couldn't find the old queen in his hive. What could he do? He couldn't leave the new queen in her little screen box. There was no other choice. He put the new, young queen in there anyways, figuring that a battle between the old queen and new queen would ensue. The bees would eat through the candy door, and the new queen would emerge to take on the old lady in charge. He hoped for the best. 

This week, when we opened the hives, we saw the results of the battle: The new queen didn't have a fighting chance. She and her worker bees were murdered in their little box before they had a chance to find the old queen for a fair fight! That poor little virgin queen had her candy door opened all right- but she didn't even make it one step out into the hive. She was cornered and attacked! We found the little body with its bright yellow dot dead as a doornail. The unmarked queen will have to reign on one year longer. We didn't find her this week either. Regardless, both hives are very healthy and we're sure to have a huge spring honey harvest this year. 

Yes, this is my life. I swear I'll make it living in a city.