Eggs

Still standing on end, which implies they are very fresh. The queen lays eggs in this improbable position and, over the course of three days, they progressively lean sideways, before hatching into a tiny larva on the third day. We were quite excited to find these, along with the new queen who laid them on the same comb, because we had begun to lose faith that this small colony was ever going to produce one. 

It is almost eight weeks since we created this colony, by moving some of the frames and bees out of another hive. That length of time usually implies that something has gone wrong and they have wound up queenless. A couple of times, I have offered them a 'test frame' - a frame (without bees) taken from another hive, with some eggs like these in it. If the colony thinks it is queenless, it will use the donated eggs to try to create a new queen. On both occasions, this colony spurned our offering and just raised the eggs as ordinary workers - as far as they were concerned they were perfectly fine, but I remained sceptical. It turns out they were wiser than I was

This is one of the few good things that has happened in this apiary this year. Disease has wiped out one colony. Another has failed to thrive. A couple of other attempts to raise new queens have come to nothing. We have taken no honey here whatsoever, and will get none. As we arrived today, a hare was loping quietly across the field in front of us. They are mythical animals. Perhaps it came by to mark a change in fortune

We are once again in charge of our neighbours' chickens for a few days. Tonight, I collected a much larger egg