Monday 4th May 2009

Most of this evening's class is taken up with discussions about our various apiary visits. Later we go on to learn about the sex life of the queen. Although she normally has only one nuptial flight, she can mate with up to 10 or 12 drones on this single journey. The act of copulation is tantamount to suicide for each drone, as instead of neatly tucking his apparatus back in his trousers, at the end his genitals are ruptured and he falls to the ground, leaving them dangling from the queen. The next drone to catch up with her does not see this as a warning to his own well being - he simply removes the ruptured debris, and has his own wicked way, and so on. The queen stores all this sperm in a special organ called the spermatheca and returns triumphant to the hive with her last suitor's genitalia hanging from her, like the proof of a blood stained sheet, to be lovingly cleaned and cared for by her attendants. (Well, I do like a bit of drama). She then begins her life's work of laying up to 2000 eggs a day, and secreting "queen substance" - the pheromone which keeps the colony working together, and prevents the workers from bringing on more queens.
I ponder over this fact. Who controls the colony? The workers can, in theory, turn any egg which the queen has laid into a potential new queen. The Queen must produce enough of this pheromone to keep the workers happy, so they will not supersede her. A sort of 'bread and circuses' policy on her part, but the workers seem to know the colony will not survive without an effective queen, so is it a win-win situation? True co-operation even? I have too much to learn before I can possibly begin to imagine the machinations of a bee colony.
As we finish, we are given our next apiary visit details. I will be going to the apiary of N, the association chairman. His bees are kept on the edge of land belonging to the nearby agricultural college - land which my ancestors used to work, so I am looking forward to that.