Day 13: High Drama, Gobs of Drone Brood, and the Great Grass Panic
Gobs of runaway drone brood, a horizontal empire running out of room, and the terrifying moment our star queen vanished into the tall grass.
Amanda Collins
5/31/20262 min read
Welcome back to the blog, to both of my loyal readers! Today I are going to dazzle you with a tale of high drama, massive infrastructure management, and the moment my heart nearly exited my chest.
It was time for the looming deep dive into The Ranch, and let’s just say our resident celebrity—The Workhorse Queen—has done it again. For my readers who might not remember her backstory, this is the legendary queen who originally came out of The Vault after she completely blew that hive up in early spring, turning it into such an absolute empire that I had to split her out.
I moved her into the horizontal layout of The Ranch, and true to her nickname, she completely filled the entire footprint with a massive, booming colony. She is a victim of her own ambition. Because she ran out of horizontal worker cells, she went rogue: I found gobs and gobs of extra drone brood hanging completely off the bottom of the frames, creating a structural mess of extra burr comb that I had to carefully scrape and clean up.
And then, the disaster struck.
I was inspecting a middle frame, completely mesmerized by the sheer volume of bees, when I spotted The Workhorse herself. And then, because I am a complete and utter dumbass, I lost my grip on the frame. In slow motion, the frame tumbled out of my hands, crashing right into the tall grass below. A carpet of bees—and my absolute star queen—shook completely off the wax and vanished into the green blades.
Cue absolute, blinding panic. I dropped to my knees, frantically parting stalks of grass with my heart in my throat, praying I wouldn't accidentally step on or squash the genetic anchor of my apiary. By some absolute, terrifying miracle, her bright golden body caught the light. I spotted her, reached down, and safely secured her in a queen clip before I could screw up again.
Once my adrenaline dropped back to normal levels, I realized we couldn't leave her in The Ranch; the hive was just too crowded. I decided to make an immediate split, and tucked The Workhorse, along with three frames of brood and a loyal entourage of nurse bees, into a temporary nuc box.
I slid the remaining populated frames back into The Ranch and backfilled the empty spaces with fresh, blank frames. The silver lining here? Now that The Ranch is temporarily queenless while they raise a replacement from her fresh eggs, the workforce doesn't have a mountain of open unhatched larvae to forage for. Hopefully, they will channel that massive, booming energy into drawing out fresh wax and packing those frames with pure honey.
What a whirlwind of a day. Between cleaning up mountains of messy drone brood and surviving a dropped-queen crisis, it was a masterclass in staying on your toes.
The Moral of the Day: No matter how careful you think you are, gravity always wins. Keep a tight grip and queen clip handy!