Bee shed rules

The first rule of the bee shed …

The bee shed is getting busy and now houses four full colonies and a nuc or two. With several people involved in sampling colonies for our DWV research we’ve drawn up some simple rules^‡ to ensure things stay neat and tidy.

This post – slightly more frivolous than usual – should automagically appear on my Twitter account as well. Normal service will be resumed shortly … with part 2 of “Spot the Queen“.

^‡ The first rule “there are no rules” is often thought to be a reference to the 1999 film Fight Club where Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) welcomes the unnamed Narrator (Ed Norton) and lists the eight rules that must be followed. In the film, the first rule of Fight Club was: you do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club was: you DO NOT talk about Fight Club! Perhaps surprisingly (considering the subject of the film), Fight Club does include a reference to bees … the following quote appears on the screen of the Narrators’ computer “Worker bees can leave. Even drones can fly away. The Queen is their slave” … not entirely biologically accurate.

“The rules are … there are no rules” actually comes from the 1978 film Grease … a rather different film altogether.