It’s me again and I have to tell you I’ve been a bit sad lately. We’re saying goodbye to the summer shift who have worked their tarsomeres off feeding the babies and stocking up the larder for us for the winter. But to be honeyest, I wasn’t sorry to kick out the last of the remaining lads. Them and their big eyes, strutting around showing off their musclebound longitudinals, they were eating us out of hive and comb!
I heard a buzz on the grapecomb that a lad tried it on with one of the girls the other day. He must have been desperate because we’ve got nothing down there under our 8th abdominals except a very sharp jagged poisoned sword. What a nasty surprise he must have had when he tried to put his endothingy in!
I stuck my antennae out this morning ‘cos I fancied popping out to see if there’s any grub left to forage, but it was a bit parky and my Organ of Johnston told me it was too windy to risk it. I don’t know why the monster finds that so funny; it keeps talking about something called boris and trousers. But some of the older girls say the monster’s got an organ too and they’d love to sneak in and have a go at. They’re just waiting for the day that it doesn’t fasten up its funny white exoskeleton. It’s worth losing a couple of the older girls just to hear him screech!
A few of the neighbours have been drifting in lately. I don’t mind them too much even if their chitin smells a bit different, but it’s live and let live I always say, and if the guard bees let them in I suppose it must be all right. As long as they don’t bring any nasty forrin germs with them or try to nick our grub.
Not like that dodgy family in the scruffy hive down the road that go mad trying to get at our stores, fighting to get in any way they can. The guard bees had a real battle on their hands for a day or two until the monster came and blocked most of the main gate so we can only get in and out one at a time.
A few weeks ago the monster came back with its crowbar and its flamethrower. The first time it put a huge platform with pointy holes in it under the larder so the poor souls who came down into the main hall at night to be with her ladyship couldn’t get back up again. They were doing their mushroom bodies trying until the monster removed it, then they found that half our food stocks had disappeared! All that hard work for nothing. At least he didn’t rip out all our furniture, squidge more of our sisters and tip the babies out of their cot cells.
The winter shift are still being born but there aren’t as many of us now. I have a fatter tummy than the summer lot, a bit like what the monster calls its beer belly whatever that means! It’s full of a magic ingredient that supposed to make us live forever called victuals jennin, or something like that. My hormones were up and down like a see-saw at first, but I’m feeling better now I’ve had a bit of fresh pollen to munch on and I’ve grown out of all that juvenile kids’ stuff!
I have to say I’m not looking forward to getting older at the end of the winter and all the problems they say we get with victuals jeninopause. As if that’s not bad enough, we’ve got to go back to feeding the babies and put up with all that hormone stuff that makes us broody again. Who’d be a worker bee!
I’d better go now, it’s my turn on retinue duty and I’ve been waxing apiarical too long. We need to keep her ladyship clean and fed so she’ll be ready to lay eggs again after the long cluster. We’ve all got to prepare and recover for when everything springs back again. Hey-ho on the merry-go-comb of life in a honey bee family!
Love Maya