Hard Labour

Like Simone Biles, the resurgent peak needs to be savoured. I've taken several pictures like this over the summer, but glad to discover that I have not shared one until now, when this one surviving colony really is as (physically) big as it is going to get

This is the last inspection before the bee inspector returns (deferred until Monday). We slipped it in between the pre-dawn thunder and the afternoon thunder. Bees notoriously dislike thunder; beginners are discouraged from opening hives in stormy weather. I don't know if anyone has proved that they are sensitive to the static charge between earth and clouds, but it's inconceivable to me that they are not. They were hyper-excited - rushing across the combs, boiling over the top of the frames, as you see, clustering around anything that caught their attention, including my fingers - but this colony have such a sunny nature that, despite their extreme numbers, we never felt any threat

It takes time and effort to do this much dismantling. There is a roof (out of shot) to be removed, six sections ('lifts') of the outer wall to be threaded carefully over the stack, like a party game, and placed on the floor in pairs, to create three stands. Then each of the four shallow boxes to be lifted off in turn and placed on two of the stands, on the right, in a memorable order. All four are full, or nearly full, of honey, so weighing 10-12kg each

The deeper box on the third stand, at the back, is the one I added four days ago, at their insistence. They have drawn wax, created a lot of cells and part-filled them with honey. If the flow continues, this box could get to 15kg! Finally, after removing the 'queen excluder' (a grille that keeps the queen in the bottom box, on the left), we reach the inner sanctum, the object of our quest. 

We carefully removed each of the ten frames in turn, shook off most of the bees, back into the hive ('no animals were harmed...etc') and examined in detail what lay below. Unusually, they have organised the space with military precision: the front frame is almost exclusively growing drone larvae; the second is stored pollen; three to nine are new workers - from fresh eggs to emerging adults - and frame ten is nectar/honey. It's the first time I've seen this degree of frame-by-frame specialisation, and its structure appeals to my data-analyst mind-set. We are soul-mates, these bees and I

We found nothing untoward, so wound the film in reverse. "I bet you're glad you haven't got five hives like this", said MrsM