… Since last writing of the painful mess I’d made, I can now confirm that I’ve a new queen!

She’s a soft, curvaceous young woman from Slovenia… a Carniolan Queen.

Her new prospective harem had been milling around, without proper jobs and so got busy filling the entire brood box with honey.. every single frame was stuffed and actually dripping. The temptation to remove my veil and gloves and do a Baloo was tempered by an acute sense of guilt for having got them into this sticky mess in the first place! They desperately needed someone to lavish attention on and steer them back to colonial supremacy.

To introduce a new queen you have to stretch the courtship out into a sedate series of obstacles. Bees, apparently don’t ‘do’ blind dates well, and tend to mob and kill the intended bride, no matter how beautiful. It was a nail biting procedure.

(Quick story here: my dear grandfather, having waited for over a month for a new queen to arrive in the post from some far flung place, was so overjoyed on receipt, he promptly dropped her and stepped on her!)

I collected her in a small perforated box, stoppered with a block of white bee candy and a plastic cap. Inside this little box she was attended by a few of her original workers who groomed and fed her as I wedged her carriage between two brood frames. The queen less workers were able to greet her, check her out, but keep an enforced respectful distance. After a few days I removed the plastic cap. At this point the white block of candy was accessible to the queenless workers. Rather like some ‘Harry met Sally’ b (sorry) movie playing out, as the Queen dined from the inside, they now were able to eat at the candy from the outside, and at some point meet in the middle and greet each other like tentative lovers..

Well this must have happened, as yesterday, nerves bubbling to the point of a kettle whistling, I headed down the mallow daubed field to check on the state of the hive. To my utter relief and joy, frames has been cleaned of honey and were being filled with new brood and pollen.

So there you have it, the rhythm and equilibrium of the hive has been restored.

And now, at last, I can consider the ‘room’ above, the extra larder where they’ve been making liquid gold. For my first season, I’m delighted to know that I will have a little honey… enough to feel incredibly grateful, and guarantee a little bit of this Summer to spoon onto a Winter’s breakfast of porridge.

The queen has been christened as Mrs Mallow.