[Assam] A Rebellion of my Own

[Ram Sarangapani]

That is very interesting experiment & nice story, C'da.

>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!

Hehehe!  Maybe, just maybe, some apiarist someday may follow in the
footsteps of 'Robert The Bruce' & his spider. And then again, if wishes were
horses.... :-).

And the only thing I know of bees is to make sure they ain't "Africanized"
bees
... ooops! was that too insensitive, or not PC?  And I am not talking
about that crafty PC in Delhi :-)

Well, bye for now, we are out of town for the moment, you know, enjoying all
the simple pleasures that Capitalism dishes out to even common folks like
us......

--Ram
.




On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 3:21 PM, Chan Mahanta <cmahanta at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> assam mailing list
> assam at assamnet.org
> http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
>