This morning was dry, cool and overcast - a perfect autumn window for harvesting the summer's honeycombs. Understandably the bees were a little upset by the arrival of a large armed raider intent on ripping off the roof, blundering about smashing the furniture and making off with half the winter's precious supplies. His pathetic peace offering of a feeder tray of syrupy sugar solution was met with sullen, rumbling resentment.
Luckily bees don't bear grudges. They live entirely in the moment, responding to environmental crises, unbalanced competition and the rhythm of the seasons all with the same constant pulsing industry. A female worker bee's lifespan in the months of high production is no more than six weeks and her entire life's output can be savoured in a single teaspoonful of honey.
This current European honey production cycle has been marked by unhelpfully erratic weather patterns and a growing conviction that endemic agricultural pesticide use is the root cause of widespread colony collapse. If the bees go, we go soon after predicted Darwin. Catastrophic food crop failures are a systemic inevitability if the strain on our unpaid workforce of pollenators becomes unbearable.
I bind up and treat the wounds to my hive as best I can, apologising ineffectually for my thieving intrusion and wishing my queen and her handmaidens well over the long winter ahead.
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