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Beehive christening

By Margaret Sloan, Sunset production coordinator Despite warnings not to anthropomorphize our bees, we’ve named the queens....

Sunset

By Margaret Sloan, Sunset production coordinator

Despite warnings not to anthropomorphize our bees, we’ve named the queens. Our hives each have a distinct personality, and besides, we kept getting confused about which hive was “front” and which was “back.” And hey, the chickens have names, don’t they?

Drum roll, please.

Readers, meet Betty and Veronica. At left is a picture of Veronica (the red arrow is pointing at her). Betty wouldn’t sign on for picture taking that day (ok, we admit, we couldn’t find her. But we did find lovely little eggs, which means she’s around). 

Pretty cool photo, isn’t it? It was taken by E. Spencer Toy, from our imaging department (the brave soul didn’t wear a suit or veil!).

If you look closely at the cells next to the red arrow, you can see some uncapped baby bees (They’re white).

Cute, aren’t they? In a few days the worker bees will cap the cells, the baby bee will uncurl, spin a cocoon, and metamorphose (change into a worker bee).

The light brown cells are capped brood; there are baby bees in there, growing until they’re old enough to chew through the wax and join their working sisters.

Then their life of ease ends and they’ll spend their days taking care of Veronica, their beautiful queen.