Battles Royal

The Wars of the Roses tore England apart for over 30 years in the 15th century - but not continuously. Edward IV died two years before Richard (III) of York went battling in vain for the want of a horseshoe nail on Bosworth Field, bringing to an end the Plantagenet dynasty and launching the Tudor hegemony. But the last 12 years of Edward's reign were, outside the machinations of the court, relatively peaceful, following Edward's decisive victory over the Lancastrian army at the battle of Tewkesbury

Tewkesbury - where we are staying, briefly - has an imposing Abbey church (built by the Normans), in which Lancastrian nobles tried to claim sanctuary after the battle - to no avail; they were dragged out and killed. In the grounds of the Abbey is a magnificent copper beech (a local told us that around here if is called 'cherry beech') - from the look of it, it may have been here since the battle - I'd guess the trunk diameter at 3 metres! Perhaps if was fed by the blood of the victims

Conversations about beekeeping with non-practitioners often focus on our springtime search for queen cells. A subtle widening of the eyes on respect can be detected when we say we can distinguish them from all the other brood, honey and pollen cells in the hive. Here's a trade secret: look at the image - it's not very difficult! The flat-topped, sealed cells on the left are worker brood; the domed tops of many of the cells on the right indicate drone brood (the doomed cappings are necessary to accommodate the bigger bodies of drones). And, of course, the two huge vertical, tapering cells in the centre contain queens - not hard to find

Before leaving this morning, our task was to find the queen cells in this colony and remove all of them except one (we choose the one at the top here). This, they will hopefully nurture into a new, fertile queen. If we leave multiple queen cells in the colony, several things could happen: the first queen to emerge may make her way around all the others and sting them to death in their cells. Alternatively, multiple queens may emerge and then fight - stingers drawn - until one remains victorious.

Both of these outcomes are fine for us, but the final possibility is not: the colony may decide that it is strong enough to dispatch the first newly emerged queen, with a proportion of the workers, to a new home, in what is called a 'cast' or secondary swarm, leaving behind a second new queen from another cell to keep the old colony going. In fact, multiple cast swarms are possible. Leaving them one and only one queen should avoid this risk of loss

Richard Nevillle, 16th Earl of Warwick, a political Svengali figure during the Wars of the Roses, was known as 'The Kingmaker'. In the beehive, we take that role. Long live the queen