What’s the buzz?
Her Majesty has been liberated from three days of lockdown in a padded post bag and is secreted in a tiny timber box with five fawning court attendants. She’s under gauze and quivering. Her aides are edgy, feeding from a plug of sugary fondant, fussing and fidgeting. Perhaps they can predict the tragedy that’s about to unfold. A nearby hive is vibrating in a single pure note and it’s time for introductions.
Queen Regina is a docile Caucasian, a sub-species of the western honey bee, originally bred high up in the Caucasus Mountains. If true to breed, she’ll produce up to 2000 eggs a day in a colony of bees gifted with the longest proboscis to extract nectar from the deepest petals and the finest honey in a few weeks of summer. Her round-the-clock entourage will be a vagabond mix of colourful hive types: Juveniles, nurses, guards, honey handlers, undertakers, fanners and foragers.
“They’re very placid,” declares the aptly named apiarist John Prince, lifting brood frames up to his netted nose for closer inspection. The hive temperament is so unexpectedly calm that he makes
