With the thawing of the weather came a rush of lush green growth and flush of unfurling petals, but that’s not all, something momentous was happening. We could hear it, a great whirring, a low hum that ebbed and flowed, but was growing in intensity. We opened the door to a great commotion, a great whirling, tornado of bees overhead. They were swarming. The bee man Martin had said that Steiner thought that a swarm looked like the soul of a human being that has left its body…to me like ash caught in a whirlwind. They carried on all day and then as suddenly as they had appear they vanished. With unease we approached the quiet hive.

The hive has become too cramped for the growing colony and its ostentatious monarch.

The old queen, feeling like a change of scenery and a more spacious castle, ups and leaves without so much as a thank you, taking the majority of the flying worker bees, along with a huge amount of your honey! You’re left with a ragtag crew of young flightless cleaners, nursers and only a scattering of workers. But all is not lost, the old queen in her benevolence has left some virgin queens developing in their queen cells (much cushier than those hexagonal ones for the plebs!). The nursers feed the larvae up and when they emerge the fight is one! If one gets out earlier enough, the sneaky minx will just sting the others to death as they doze. If she is too slow there is a fight on our hands, its a death match, winner takes all. If you are unlucky then the victorious queen may be so injured she dies, the remaining colony will suddenly find itself on radio silent and listlessly will buzz around with no real purpose, it is doomed. Well, unless you go and order a new queen online, they come by matchbox I’m told.

Luckily for us our new queen was a warrior princess, the next day everything seemed back to normal. Even better she seemed a good sort and no surprise stings were to be had. A friend of ours had a particularly nasty queen, with a short sharp temper. If you get a feisty one the whole colony takes on her snitty ways and can be quite aggressive.

THE HARVEST