PHOENIX
Type: British Black
DOB: August 2022 (yellow)
RELATIONS: ROGUE (daughter), STORM (daughter).
CAUSE SUPPORTED: Portsmouth Community
LENGTH OF SERVICE: May 2023 - Present
STATUS: Retired
ROGUE
STORM
Her life in 2023
All through 2023 Phoenix and her colony produced 5 supers full of honey. I took 4 for myself and I left one on the hive for the bees to feed on during the colder winter months.
She was also the main attraction for many children coming for workshops with us. To spot and meet our most productive and popular queen.
A FAILING QUEEN
Phoenix survived the winter and once the weather had warmed up she began to increase her egg laying. But she started 2024 with an issue. She for what ever reason was laying mulitiple eggs in a single cell. Which is a sign that she is failing as a productive queen.
Now in this situation many beekeepers would simply kill the queen and either replace her or get the bees to raise a new queen. But I don’t like to kill any living creature. So I was given the idea by a beekeeper in France with a simliar approach to put Phoenix into a smaller colony, a queenless one, and to let her live out her last days peacefully and without the demand of a busy hive brings.
The worker bees did try to supersude her. Which is where they make a new queen and kill the old queen (Phoenix) in the process but Phoenix found the cell and killed the almost emerged queen.
So phoenix had to be put in to retirement.
Who knows this move could sort out her issue of egg laying. Only time will tell.