As pictured at Queen Bee Day: Beautiful but Dangerous!
One queen has lived in Gill Brewer’s memory since 2009! Her daughters stung her apiary landlord and his dog. She culled the whole hive because the extreme aggressive-defensive behaviour might have been passed on to other colonies through the drones.
Our training day on ‘The Queen Bee’ at Flitwick Village Hall dealt with many fundamental issues of real practical importance, attracting 48 participants. Among the matters covered were just how the female egg becomes a fully-fledged queen, pros and cons of different strains of bee, different queen rearing methods and whether to buy in professionally produced queens – or raise our own “British Mongrels”, with a clear majority perhaps leaning towards this approach.
We were privileged to have Peter Tompkins as one of our teachers, who gave us with insights into pioneering bee research at Rothamsted as well as the benefit of his huge fund of know-how about working successfully with bees.