BASTARD WASPS

God, I hate wasps. One of my hives was being raided by them on Sunday and had just a few sad bees left – the silly sausages only went and swarmed in August so they just didn\’t have the numbers to fight off the wasps. Also they probably didn\’t get a new queen. May I say that most of the beekeeping books say bees don\’t swarm in August, but it\’s obvious the girls weren\’t reading them.
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This is a constant cause for complaint among beekeepers in the CBKA. There are all these great books about bees around, but the bees just won\’t do their homework and find out what they\’re supposed to do.
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I was very worried about my other hive too, but it turned out I was panicking unnecessarily. Today I went to look again with my incredibly patient bee mentor Mike. It turns out, they had lots of brood, plenty of stores and were vigorously guarding the hive – yay! Kill those evil bastards! Go bees, go!