In the past, I stumbled upon a captivating short story by Roald Dahl titled “Royal Jelly.” It narrates a father's frantic efforts to nurture his undernourished baby daughter who declines her mother's milk. As an apiarist, he explores the benefits of royal jelly—the nutritious substance honeybees provide to their larvae when raising a new queen. “Royal jelly… must be a substance of tremendous nourishing power,” he tells his wife, after secretly feeding it to their child, noting that honeybee larvae can gain 1500 times their weight in just five days on this diet. Soon, his daughter starts gaining weight and becomes voracious for milk.

This narrative ignited my fascination with bees. I delved into beekeeping literature, attended local beekeeping events, watched documentaries, and eventually ordered a nucleus colony of 20,000 bees last year. When I asked a friend for her opinion, she hesitated before saying, “Well, you’ll have to be okay with being that guy.” Undeterred, I set up the bees on the roof of my Brooklyn apartment and embarked on the challenging journey of keeping them alive. To my amazement, they thrived, and by October, I had about 70,000 bees and harvested nearly 30 pounds of honey.

However, this spring brought calamity. My queen wasn’t laying fertilized eggs, and without swift action, my hive was doomed by summer’s end. What followed was a prolonged struggle, which ultimately highlighted the theme of loyalty—mine to the hive and the hive’s to its queen.

During the initial months with the hive, I constantly checked on it. Although I was uncertain about what to look for, I felt compelled to monitor the thousands of bees on my roof. If I wasn’t inspecting frames for eggs, I was observing the bees as they came and went. Worker bees can embark on up to 15 foraging flights daily, and witnessing them return with pollen on their legs filled me with an unusual sense of achievement.

I truly became that guy. At a beekeeping class, I met Jessica, another novice beekeeper, and discussing my smoker technique made me feel connected. For months, anyone who showed even a hint of interest in my hive received a personal tour. Even my roommate, allergic to bees, found himself bundled on the roof in multiple layers, asking when he could retreat indoors. I had been so absorbed in bees that I hadn’t realized my enthusiasm wasn’t universally shared. It wasn’t until mid-summer that I noticed my friends lingering at a distance while I, clad in a bee suit and dish gloves, enthusiastically pulled frames and chatted about drones, brood, and propolis.

For weeks, I dreamt of beehives wrapped in plastic bags inside taxis.

Each beehive is distinct, so despite my classes and guidebooks, I often improvised. When I needed to clear a frame, I used a feather to brush the bees aside. For honey harvesting, I relied on spaghetti strainers and cheesecloth. Concerned about my seemingly reckless methods, I invited Todd Hardie, a friend’s father who runs an apiary supplying honey to his Vermont distillery, to evaluate my hive. We ventured to my roof one night during a torrential downpour, and astonishingly, he expressed his approval. Holding a barely functional flashlight, he tipped the hive back momentarily.

“How many brood chambers do you have?” he asked.

“Three.”

“And two honey supers?”

“Yes.” Our voices rose to be heard over the rain and wind.

“You’re fine. This is one of the best hives I’ve seen all year.” My heart raced with excitement. “I’ve never seen a first-year hive do so well.”

“How can you tell?” I inquired.

“By the weight.” He explained that a full hive requires 60 to 80 pounds of honey to survive winter and guessed mine weighed around 100 pounds. It’s unusual for first-year beekeepers to harvest anything. “Whatever you’re doing,” he shouted, “they like it.”

Shortly after Todd’s visit, my landlord sold our apartment. I began having dreams about beehives wrapped in plastic in the back of taxis. Eventually, I decided to move but kept a set of keys to maintain the hive and hoped the new landlord wouldn’t object. I treated the bees for mites, ensured their food reserves were adequate, and left them to endure the winter.

My queen likely perished sometime in the spring. Queens typically live for four to five years, so this was unexpected. However, a new queen is a regular occurrence in a hive’s life. Beekeepers often replace their queens every year or two to introduce genetic diversity and maintain a strong queen capable of laying enough eggs for the population. Bees can also rear their own queen, and when I inspected the hive that spring, I was pleased to discover mine had taken this initiative. Before her demise, my former queen must have laid a few fertilized eggs, which the worker bees raised as potential successors. They would have selected several fertilized (female) eggs and fed them exclusively royal jelly. Once the first queen emerged, she would have promptly eliminated any unhatched rivals and ideally gone on mating flights, storing enough sperm to last her lifetime.

Though a newly hatched queen may appear ruthless, a hive’s success depends on loyalty to its monarch. While she can mate with an average of 12 different drones, there is only one queen, resulting in a tightly-knit genetic community. As the new queen begins to emit her pheromones, the hive gradually aligns with her as older bees die off and new workers emerge. Essentially, the hive is genetically predisposed to remain loyal to the monarchy. If multiple queens were raised or if workers began laying eggs, the hive’s cohesion would unravel.

In a thriving hive, a queen lays hundreds, sometimes thousands, of eggs daily during spring and summer, fertilizing some and leaving others unfertilized. The fertilized eggs develop into either workers or queens, while the unfertilized ones become male drones, whose sole purpose is to mate with the queen—essentially, they are flying bags of sperm. Drones are crucial for reproduction, yet they do not forage, defend, or care for the brood—they cannot even feed themselves.

A properly mated queen lays eggs in a consistent pattern, with a large section of worker brood at the center of a frame and a few drone cells along the outer edges. Worker cells have flat tops, while drone cells are slightly raised, resembling small bubbles. However, when I examined my frames that spring, I found only scattered drone brood, indicating something was amiss. In a healthy hive, the worker-to-drone ratio is approximately 3-to-1; by late April, mine was closer to 1-to-1, with new drones hatching daily.

I often struggle to acknowledge when something is wrong, especially with my bees. My desire for success blinds me to the signs of impending trouble. When I noticed the irregular brood, I convinced myself that all was well—the queen would soon fill the frames. When I observed that all the eggs were drones, I assured myself that the workers would soon appear. I even proudly showcased the hive to my mother during her visit, asserting that since my hive had raised its own queen, it had an excellent chance of thriving.

In late April, I registered for a “bee tour” in Brooklyn with fellow urban beekeepers to share insights and conduct fieldwork. Embarrassingly, I had never seen another hive apart from my own. On a sunny May day, I biked to a garden in Brooklyn, arriving late and sweaty. Everyone else was already gathered around the hives at the back of the garden. The email had requested bee jackets, which I had forgotten, and the only remaining one was a child’s size. With sleeves barely covering my elbows and the hood unzipped, I hesitantly approached the group surrounding an experienced beekeeper from upstate.

It quickly became apparent how poorly my hive was faring. Almost every frame in the pristine hive before me was filled with uniform worker brood, and it even had honey in the corners. The bees were diligently packing in pollen and capping cells, and I spotted the queen scurrying about, maintaining order.

The beekeeper must grasp what the hive desires. In my case, it seemed to want to perish.

What had happened to my queen? Perhaps there were no drones in the hive to mate with her when she emerged; they are often culled in the fall as they consume resources during winter. Some of the first eggs a queen lays in spring are generally replacement drones, but my hive may have been devoid of drones when the new queen hatched. It’s possible it was too cold for her to take a mating flight, or that the chemicals I used to treat for mites affected the viability of the drones’ sperm. Whatever the reason, the contrast with the new hive was stark.

When our host stepped inside for a glass of water, I rushed to him in my comically small jacket, grasped his sleeve, and explained my predicament. His expression darkened.

“There’s not much you can do, really. Try to get a new queen, but at this time of year, most breeders are out of stock.”

“What happens if I do nothing?” I asked.

“Well, the queen will continue laying drones, and soon the workers will die, followed by the drones. I’d recommend cutting your losses and starting fresh next year.”

Someone else caught his attention, asking about the importance of organic sugar for feeding. I pulled away, feeling panic set in.

Frantically, I spent the remainder of the afternoon contacting every queen breeder I could locate on the East Coast. I eventually found a man in Florida who could send a queen within days for $50, including shipping. She would arrive via regular mail in a small cage, about the size of a granola bar, sealed with a sugary plug, inside a perforated envelope marked “LIVE BEES.” After removing the old queen, I was instructed to place the new one—cage and all—between the hive’s frames, allowing her to chew her way out through the plug, and she would start laying eggs within days.

Bees possess around 165 pheromone receptors on their antennae, and while it’s not entirely understood how workers determine their actions (the question of agency remains under discussion), it’s clear that the queen’s pheromones guide their behavior. When the reigning queen dies or ceases to lay eggs due to age, the shift in pheromones signals the hive to raise a new queen, as mine had done. Conversely, if a new queen arrives and her pheromones overlap with those of the old queen, the hive may perceive her as an intruder and eliminate her. Above all, they are loyal to their queen. I failed to fully comprehend this reality. Since I waited only six hours between queens, the worker bees likely killed my new queen within the hour.

A week later, upon realizing my new queen was dead, I called Todd with a heavy heart. “The hive is following its own path now,” he said, “and it’s a different path than the one you intend.” In essence, if I did nothing, my honey-producing hive of workers would gradually transform into an unproductive hive of drones, ultimately leading to their demise. My attempts to help had inadvertently guided the bees towards their own destruction. Yet, I was not alone in this struggle.

If you’ve heard anything about bees in recent years, it’s that they are facing extinction. This crisis is significant, as domesticated honeybees are responsible for pollinating approximately 80 percent of fruit, vegetable, and seed crops in the United States. Experts continue to debate whether Colony Collapse Disorder constitutes a singular issue or if it represents a convenient term for multiple threats to beehives. Possible culprits include pesticides, stress, poor nutrition, infestations, diseases, and mismanagement. It’s also worth noting that domestication may not be ideal for hives. Feral bee colonies throughout the country often thrive independently, even if many originated as domesticated hives like mine. The reasons for this difference are not entirely clear, but it appears that feral bees exhibit greater genetic diversity than their domesticated counterparts. In a process of genetic rewilding, feral bees develop a wider array of responses to environmental changes. If DNA serves as a manual and the environment dictates which instructions to follow, feral bees have access to a greater set of instructions.

My deteriorating colony illuminated the complex and often tumultuous relationship between honeybees and their keepers. Bees are remarkably self-sufficient, guided by ancient instincts. Ideally, a beekeeper’s role is to gently steer them towards desired outcomes—such as pollinating an almond orchard or surviving on a Brooklyn rooftop. Yet, to achieve this effectively, a beekeeper must understand the hive’s needs. In my case, as Todd pointed out, it wanted to perish. With its queen gone and the new queen rejected, my best efforts were dismissed. In a perplexing blend of genetics, instinct, and husbandry, the hive and I found ourselves at odds.

Near the conclusion of Dahl’s story, the mother grows concerned about the weight her daughter has gained. She becomes anxious about her husband’s unconventional use of royal jelly and perceives “a touch of the bee about this man.” Ultimately, she undresses the child to weigh her, discovering that while her abdomen has swollen, her arms haven’t kept pace. “The baby was lying naked on the table, fat and white and comatose,” Dahl writes, “like some gigantic grub that was approaching the end of its larval life and would soon emerge into the world complete with mandibles and wings.”

In contrast, the father is overjoyed. He reveals that this isn’t the first occasion he’s found success with royal jelly—he’s been secretly consuming it himself for the past year. “Why don’t you cover it up, Mabel?” he says to his wife. “We don’t want our little queen to catch a cold.”

As much as I hesitate to admit it, I admire this man. He was resolute in his mission to nurture his daughter, just as I was in my quest to save my hive. For better or worse, I couldn’t cease my tinkering. The hive was on a path to disaster, but I was determined not to follow.

I contacted my Florida supplier again. I informed my workplace receptionist of my situation. This time, when the new queen arrived, instead of placing her cage amidst the other bees, I divided the hive in two with a sheet of paper. The bees would eventually chew through and rejoin the two sections, but splitting the hive might temper their aggression. I provided them with food and fresh water, leaving the hive undisturbed for two weeks. I estimated the queen had only a 10 percent chance of survival.

There remains much uncertainty surrounding bees, making beekeeping often feel like a game of chance. As of this writing, my luck seems to be holding. The hive is producing worker brood with a healthy queen. The drone population has stabilized, and two brood chambers are filled with capped worker cells. Although there are fewer bees than last year, two honey supers are nearly full. I cannot say if it will suffice to survive winter, but the new queen appears aligned with my vision. While I don’t see her during every inspection, I frequently seek her out to ensure she’s thriving. After all, she is my partner in this endeavor—my hive’s savior—my little queen.