The Queen is dead. Long live the Queen!

Our animals have always gifted me with love, grace, humor, and more often than not a mutual admiration.  The not being an occasional rooster, but you know roosters are just being roosters after all.  Our animals keep me on task and stabilize my day adding the benefit of continuity and connection to so much in this world from which I am separated.  Living in the wilderness is dreamy, but out of the question so I live a little vicariously through a terriers lively instincts, and the call of a not so wild turkey.  Which brings me to the other things that animals pepper my days with; mischief and high dramatics of the life and death variety.  As in, "I am going to kill that dog!" or the coop being raided by raccoons.  

Bees, being animals, are of course no different and without the least bit of frost, winter has provided a rich dose of drama.  In winter, bees form a cluster for warmth, and ideally (if you don't rob them blind) survive off their stored honey.  However, our fall honey flow has been and continues to be incredibly abundant.  With so many warm and fruitful days my lovely ladies decided to supersede their queen, and the new queen never returned from her mating flight.  No Queen, no brood, and winter are a terrible combination.  

After a few anxiety filled days of hustling for a new queen, I came to terms with the fact that despite living in FLORIDA I would have to either pilfer fresh brood from a friend for the girls to make a new queen or order one from Hawaii.  The conversations were dismal at best.  One local beekeeper even lamented on the hardships of winter on a sunny eighty degree day with a lovely flow of maple going strong (please insert the Twilight Zone theme music here - no, not the one with vampires).   

As certain as I am of the loveliness of Hawaiian bees, their plumeria scented buzz could not survive the sticky, parasitic wilds of Florida.  Not to mention the fact that if my back yard honey originated in Hawaii, I may as well just get it from the grocery store.

  

Those lumps are future Queens!

As luck would have it a brilliant Beekeeper and friend saved the day!  Fresh brood went in, and as hoped, three days later I had lovely queen cells!!!  Now, with the help of some global warming I need a warm patch in two weeks for a successful mating flight and one darn good hive of feral bees will survive this treacherous Florida winter!!!