It was a cold spring this year. The furnace was still running at night when I picked up the ladies and set them up at my dad's place out near Lake Charles. I'd read a couple of books over the winter attended a half day workshop on beekeeping, and now I'm a beekeeper. It turns out though, you don't really look after a hive so much as look at it. With 10,000 years of genetics on their side, it's easier to adapt to what the bees want than try to impose what you want.
It started with the supersedure cells and the swarm cells—special formations from which a new queen is hatched. These little peanut shell-shaped formations signalled that mutiny was imminent. On each of my weekly visits there were new peanut shells. It was heart breaking that the ladies weren't happy. I phoned people in a panic and the answer seem to be, “Your hive isn't happy. Get a new queen.”
