OK, so I have some sad news I have been saving up.......we acknowledge the passing of Dear Queen Malina on the Front Deck and 20,000 of her best friends.
The girls didn't make it though winter.......
The forensic investigation is considering a number of possibilities.......when I checked the hive just before winter, I noticed a few strange things....there had been a massive die off of worker bees.....lots of their dried out bodies up above the queen excluder......and most of the extra honey stores I was planning on harvesting were gone.......I put this down to a wee bit of poisoning.......Mr Duck had oiled the decking around the hive, AND there had been lots of resealing of the roads in the suburb.....both of these could have set the girls back a bit.
Also, during this little peek I saw HRH Queen Malina herself! This was unexpected as I had assumed she would have been replaced by a daughter long before now.....she is a almost three years old. I was NOT expecting to see her little white dotty back at all.
So it is possible she was failing as the hive went into winter.......and that there were perhaps not enough girls in the hive or honey stores to get them through......
Anyhooo, the hive is empty and silent.
When I get around to it I will take the hive apart and check it more thoroughly, and get it ready for a new swarm in the spring.
Amen.
9 comments:
Amen and blessed bee xxxx
Oh noes! Vale Queen Malina and hordes...
20,000 regrets. A disaster. Or is it? What is the life of a hive?
Sorry to hear.
We lost our hive (and my dad five hives) last year. They were adjacent to a canola crop so I suspect a nasty systemic pesticide got them. My father caught a swarm six months later and put it in one of the hives and the bees turned around and swarmed out of the hive. We're planning on burning the lot and starting again.
Hello Ducks I'm really sorry to read about the hive and the passing of Queen Malina. I watched a program recently on the bee crisis in the US then a few weeks later read that some hives were deliberately poisoned in NSW. It is bewildering (the deaths, and the behaviour of some humans) and sad. We need the bees! I hope spring/summer brings a thriving new colony to your front veranda.
verandah?
I thought I had offered my condolences here already, but maybe the internet was playing up. I am so sorry... that must have been hard to discover.
Oh gosh, that must have been hard to see.
Oh no! I really feel for you! We were really concerned about our hive over winter. It just reinforces how fragile the life of bees really are, and how essential they are to us. Will you replace them?
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