You would not bee-lieve some of this bee-haviour but it's true!
To become a registered beekeeper here in Provence, I took a practical course during 2014 and since then I've looked after my hives, Endeavour, Diligence and Resolution (named by my husband).
I never thought I'd be brave enough to become a beekeeper but here I am, fascinated by the habits of creatures that have been farmed by humans since prehistory, for almost 9,000 years according to archaeological evidence. And yet there is still so much we don't know. Which is good for a novelist!
- All worker bees are female. They map out their territory and communicate this by dances, which give exact directions to e.g. food or home, by distance and compass points.
- The queen is female and on her mating flight she is impregnated by approx 10-20 male bees (drones) with the thousands of sperm needed to lay eggs all her life (6 years if she's lucky). After mating, she doesn't fly again unless she takes a third of the colony and swarms, leaving the old hive to a new queen (one of her daughters).
- A queenless hive is doomed but the queen does not make decisions, other than those concerning egg-laying. When choosing a new home, scout bees are sent to investigate options and they dance their findings to the whole swarm. They are more or less enthusiastic according to the quality of the new home's potential. Gradually, one dance is taken up by all the bees and that is the chosen home - democracy at work! Research shows that the chosen home is nearly always the best of those considered - better still, successful democracy at work!
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- Drones successful in mating leave part of their body in the queen and die.
- In my region, honeybees prepare for winter by throwing out all the drones. They are left outside to die and in the spring, the queen lays eggs which will become the new season's drones.
- Bees can't see red and they can see ultra-violet so flowers look like they have targets and landing-paths, in a purplish world.
- When worker bees want to raise a new queen, they feed royal jelly to a worker baby so she grows up as a queen.
- A newly-hatched queen will try to kill any other queens in her hive and will sting unhatched rivals to death in their cells. Many beekeepers believe that the murder victims 'sing', aware of death approaching. There are other theories about the song of the unborn queens but nobody doubts the song itself, a high, piping noise.
Extract from The Queen of The Warrior Bees
Chapter 1
Why was the Forest
forbidden? The very word was unmentionable. Yet everybody knew it was out
there. Otherwise, how could children scare each other with whispered stories of
what might be in the Forest? Gigantic sticky-buds, striped man-eaters, slithery
poison? Their imaginations ran wild in a tamed world. But as each child reached
Maturity and passed – or failed – the ritual test, the word Forest disappeared
from the new adult’s mind, like a leaf dropping in autumn.
Mielitta had tried
to ask adults why the Forest was forbidden but the word tied her tongue in
tangled roots and instead she found herself asking the way to the schoolroom,
or some other question so ludicrous that she was mocked for her stupidity. She
sensed magecraft twisting her words but she could not force a different path
from the one required of good citizens.
Now she was the
only child who'd seen eighteen year-cycles and still been told she was not
ready for testing. Her old playmates moved around the same halls as she did,
girls in silken robes, boys in leatherette jerkins and long trews, while she
still wore a tabard over a child’s short britches and stuffed her hair into the
coarse netting of a servant’s ugly snood.
Flowers, thought Mielitta, as three girls in gowns
like satin petals rustled past her. Grace, Felicity and Espoir had turned into
a golden daffodil, a blue pansy and a violet campanula respectively. Mielitta
knew these flowers from the books in the library, which she was tasked with
cleaning each week. She remembered when the golden daffodil used to play
leapfrog against the stable wall and when the violet campanula had linked
pinkie fingers with her, swearing friendship forever. But even then, her
finding had set her apart. All the other children had been born in the Citadel,
not discovered as a baby by the Mage-Smith. She would always be a foundling, a
freak.
‘The stones be with
you, Lady Grace, Lady Felicity, Lady Espoir,’ murmured Mielitta, lowering her
eyes. Barely nodding slender necks, expressions stonier than the walls they
passed, the ladies swished past in silence, the better to ignore such a freak.
Had they forgotten
her when they reached maturity? Or did they prefer to forget their broken
promises, made by childish pinkie fingers?
As the chirruping
gossip started up again behind her, Mielitta was warned of a potentially worse
encounter by the brown scent of peat, a metallic clank and rumbling voices. She
shrank into the shadows of an alcove, held her breath. Whichever route she took
from her bed to the kitchen, there was always the risk of meeting Jannlou and
his cronies.
I hope you enjoyed this blog, creating a buzz for my new novel. You can find out more and continue reading the first two chapters of Queen of the Warrior Bees here.
