Read Part One of this series here.  We're two-thirds through, folks, and I hope you'll feel the investment of your reading time pays off, with drama and fascinating facts from the insect world. Beekeepers call a honey bee colony “queen-right” when it has a laying queen in residence, and “queen-less” when it doesn't—which, as we'll … Continue reading The Summer of Laying Workers, 2 →

A passion almost equal to writing, for me, is beekeeping. Honey bees are exceptional animals, fascinating to humans and heavily researched, yet with many behaviours we still don't understand the mechanics of or know the reasons for. Here's a saga in several parts about who does what in a honey bee colony, and the consequences when built-in control mechanisms fail.