[Assam] A Rebellion of my Own

[Rajen Barua]

Chandan:

Very enlighteneing news from you.

No help from Kharkhwa capitalists here.

Waiting to read the next chapter.

Rajen



 


 

> From: cmahanta at gmail.com
> To: assam at assamnet.org
> Date: Wed, 19 May 2010 08:21:13 -0500
> Subject: [Assam] A Rebellion of my Own
> 
> Not to make light of the struggles of the oppressed in India's 
> heartland and frontiers, but I have found myself
> with sort of a Maoist rebellion right here in the land of 
> capitalism :-).
> 
> After a number of years of mulling, I have decided to take the plunge 
> into bee-keeping this year. In February I attended a full day
> seminar on bee-keeping, while traveling in Assam in March ordered bee 
> packages and queens via the internet and thereafter attended monthly
> meetings, on-hands training sessions on assembling hives, comb frames, 
> installing bee packages and queens into hives, periodic checking, 
> feeding, pest control etc. etc. Finally on April 17 we took delivery 
> of two packages of bees each weighing about 2lbs. (about 6,000 bees) 
> and a queen, for two hives.
> It is recommended that a newbie bee-keeper start with two hives, just 
> so if one becomes dysfunctional or diseased, one can remain to 
> overwinter
> and produce honey next year.
> 
> Immediately installing the packages into the hive boxes, the worker 
> bees go into action, drawing combs in the frames for the queen to lay 
> eggs
> and start building the colony with worker bees. A good queen will lay 
> eggs primarily to produce the female workers and perhaps a few DRONES 
> ( males)
> here and there. The queen starts laying eggs within three days, the 
> eggs hatch in another three, the cells are capped in eight days and 
> adults emerge
> in sixteen days and the colony begins to build.
> 
> Things were going quite smoothly, until, after sixteen days of 
> installing the two packages in the hives, I discovered that in one of 
> the hives
> there were only DRONES being produced, no workers, and thus a recipe 
> for imminent demise of the colony. The drone cells are distinctively 
> larger than the worker cells and easily identified. It did not seem 
> right, but I thought it was just a little aberration. About a week 
> later an e-mail came in from our bee-keeping organization announcing 
> the next seminar where an expert was going to discuss various issues, 
> INCLUDING problems such as drone-laying queens and
> egg-laying worker colonies.
> 
> A warning flare went up in my mind! There are such things as a 
> dysfunctional queen that produces only drones ? Or a colony taken over 
> by the workers
> who lay their own eggs? Oh no!! Why me I thought.
> 
> Ten days after I first saw the drone cells in my hive, I re-inspected 
> the defective hive to confirm that there were no worker cells, only 
> drones, just before going to attend the seminar. After a number of 
> questions thrown at the speakers and a re-re-inspection of the problem 
> hive the next day, I confirmed that the colony
> did not have a queen and that workers were laying eggs, which can only 
> produce drones.
> 
> Obviously, for some inexplicable reason, the workers went into a full- 
> blown rebellion, killed the queen and took over egg-laying. I had a 
> Maoist rebellion on my own hands!
> 
> Now what? I thought of calling PC. But that was not a good idea. He 
> would probably say-" No discussions without them first laying down 
> their arms" or recommend calling in the air-force. MMS, perhaps? 
> Naah, he will probably say that there is nothing that could not be 
> solved within the democratic process! No use there either.
> 
> Well, how about Assamnet law-and-order advocates? Any help here :-)?
> 
> Stay tuned for Chapter II.
> 
> cm
> 
> 
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