Lies and Deceptions

'Zing'. Was that a bullet? 'Zing'. Was that another one? They were close, but not with my name on

1. On Tuesday, I took a very worrying photograph - thinking originally that it might be a blip. Just a brood frame with some vaguely interesting things going on. When I looked at it late at night, my heart sank. Expanding the image, I could see discoloured, blackened larvae in some of the cells. (Healthy larvae are routinely described as 'pearly white'). Oh dear - looks like the return of the bacterium that wiped us out last year. MrsM was convinced too. Cue self-protective philosophising about the inevitable cycle of life and death and the fact that I'd rather have healthy grandsons and sick bees than the other way around

Today I have been back to the colony, found some rays of sunlight filtering through the trees and used them to meticulously examine every open cell. Universal pearly-whiteness and a sigh of relief. Moral of the story? Take note, everyone: photographs lie

2. The other colony. When bees are ready to swarm, they create 'queen cells' in the hive, so that when the queen leaves with her retinue for pastures new, the remains of the colony can raise a replacement. I'm sometimes asked if queen cells are easy to see. Well, here are two: do you think you could manage it?!

Notoriously, if the beekeeper finds a sealed queen cell, like the one on the right, there are very strong odds that they are too late - the old queen has gone! But, before I saw these, I had already seen the queen, and the hive is full of eggs - an about-to-swarm queen has usually stopped laying for a few days

Even more curious, these cells (which contain larvae and 'royal jelly' - queen making stuff) are not in the brood box, they are in the honey area, beyond an excluder that keeps out the queen. She has not beaten the system - there are no other cells with eggs or larvae. The colony have carried eggs or young larvae from cells below the excluder and secretly put them up here before feeding them as queens. I've heard of this but never seen it myself

I have my suspicions, but I want them to make their intentions clear. I've taken these, and some less-developed, empty ones away. We will return in a couple of days to see what they do. Moral of the story? Bees can be pretty duplicitous too