As a beekeeper you expect to get stung but my bees are damn angry; so angry that they chase me 50 metres away from the hive which is not good because some bystander could get stung. It’s time to re-queen.

I order a queen and she arrives by Express Post. I watch the delivery guy gingerly handle this box containing the envelope as if it contains thousands of bees, not one queen and some attendants.

I get the help of Ian from the bee club as I have only read books on doing this and don’t feel 100% confident to do a good job.

We locate the old queen quite quickly. Ian was going to put her to work elsewhere but we hurt her and she had to be dispatched. We put in the queen cage with the new queen and re-assemble the hive… good luck, your majesty.

Here she is in her cage (white dot).

31/10/10