Women-only Space

I was planning to begin with 'I've never looked inside a hive as late as October', but I checked my 10 years of records and found some inspection notes for 4 October 2019 so, in fact, this is one-year-in-five unusual, not first-time-ever exceptional. It was really just a peace-of-mind exercise: I was slightly concerned that there was not much sign of eggs and new brood when I last looked, two weeks ago. I wondered if the queen was starting to lose her vigour

I was rapidly reassured. Before taking this picture, I lifted the upper of the two boxes that make up the hive and set it aside. It is extremely heavy - a clue that it contains not brood, but the much heavier honey. I did lever up one frame to check and was met with a strong, unpleasant and unmistakable smell: ivy honey! 'Unpleasant' is just my opinion, of course. I once gave a small jar of it to a friend, because they are always curious about different honeys. They sent a note saying it was the best they had ever tasted and had I any more! I think it smells like mouldy socks and tastes bitter. Bees are very happy with it, and I certainly don't need to supplement their stores

The picture is the lower box. There is a gap in the middle because I have looked at the front four frames, and moved them forward as I have done so. Those four were enough: one had mainly honey, one pollen, and the next two had developing larvae, and some new-laid eggs. That was evidence enough; there was no merit in going any further. I re-positioned those four frames, put the top box back and closed up the hive

I'm not so unwary as to enter the culture wars about trans-gender people and safe spaces. It seems to me to be a lot about cynical politics and very little about empathy with people who might actually be affected by the issue. The winter beehive is a female-only environment: one queen and 10-20,000 workers that are genetically female. The male drones have been ejected during August and physically prevented by the guard bees from re-entering the hive. They can't really fend for themselves and rapidly perish. In truth, a few may succeed in keeping their heads down and being ignored, but I did not see any today

We will open the hive once, very briefly, in the dead of winter, but not again until the warm days of spring