I killed the queen, and I liked it.

Today, I killed a queen bee.  It was the right thing to do.



Queen Killer.

My only hive which survived the brutal -30 degree winter had a weak queen.  She was old.  She had a broken wing.  I planned to re-queen the hive because it was mean to me last summer; they were extremely aggressive bees which stung me through my suit and pissed me off.  With a new gentle Italian queen, I could introduce gentler genetics into my apiary.  I ordered a replacement queen for the hive.  But when I checked the hive earlier this spring, I saw the doddering lady and felt pity.  Why kill her just because she's old?  I'm sort of old, too.  I decided to let nature take its course. 

 

Today I checked the hive again and saw her.  The worker bees were dwindling, and there were no new eggs being laid.  In fact, I watched the queen's behavior for a few minutes.  She was dropping her abdomen into empty cells, but no eggs were coming out.  She was going through the motions, but the magic was gone. 

 

It was at that moment that I realized that letting nature take its course meant that not only would she die, but the rest of the hive was in the process of dying as well. 

 

I had another hive which had a sprightly virgin queen, but only a handful of worker bees.  They too wouldn't survive, except for the opposite reason.  I decided to combine the hives, and the only way to do so would be to kill the elderly queen and replace her with the new one.

 

I gently removed grandma from the frame, thanked her for her service, and smushed her with the blunt end of my hive tool. 

 

With a nubile new queen laying eggs and the combined field force of the two hives, they might just make it.



 

The queen is dead.  Long live the queen.