Fire the Leadership

What does an organization do when its employees fail to produce?  Replace the leadership, obviously…

And that’s exactly what I set out to do. 

In my opinion, beekeeping is like a roller coaster.  As logical as the bees generally conduct themselves, I never cease finding myself surprised at every (turn) hive inspection.  I find beekeeping to be a metaphor for business, and again, much like a roller coaster, the strategic actions a corporation takes are generally predictable. 

That being said, imagine my surprise when I opened my hive today in the quest to save what I believed to be a failing and highly vulnerable hive, only to find my reaction was….an overreaction. 

For those of you who are following my blogs as a form of tongue-in-cheek business entertainment, I must confess I use this platform to diary my beekeeping (memorializing mistakes and all).  We are 8 weeks into my bee season and I’ve pretty actively been tending them.  Within 2 weeks, I found mostly fully drawn comb in 8 frames of the brood chamber, and evidence of eggs and larvae with a respectable laying pattern. 

Mid-June: I added a honey super containing 10 undrawn frames and erroneously added a queen excluder.  My logic led me to believe feeding the bees would help them draw wax for the honey super.  As it turned out, this was likely a smart mistake, despite the counter advice of my fellow Bkeepr’s.  Feeding sugar-water, that is.  The queen excluder was a big mistake.

Fast forward a month… I expected to see fully drawn comb and capped honey in my honey super.  What did I find?  Nothing.  No drawn comb, just a handful of bees in the honey super.  I immediately set upon conducting a full investigation.  I pulled apart the hive, conducted root-cause analysis which led to the following observations:

1.       I found the queen in the top middle brood chamber, taking a ‘manage by walking around’ approach to the frame

2.       No wax drawn on frames 1 or 10.  For whatever reason, my bees don’t seem motivated to work the ends of the super (I suspect this is a task without recognition!)

3.       Light bee population based on my own expectations

4.       Brood laying seemed scattered and lazy

5.       No honey stores at all

The Bkeepr is the Chair-person of the board.  Our job is to oversee the operation, provide guidance, remove obstacles, and provide resources as needed to aid our organization’s mission.  What I witnessed in this trip, was an organization not in control of their destination.  I saw a staff with inept leadership who was not preparing the hive for the changing conditions….and she needed to be replaced.

I immediately took to task for second opinion and diagnosis.  Replacing leadership can present a major disruption to the hive, so this decision needed to be the right one, there is no going back once committed to the strategy.   I have to interject that I received no consensus on what I should do.  If you ask four Bkeepr’s a question, you will get at least as many answers.

I concluded, the risk of not replacing her outweighed the risk of keeping her.  Keeping her in power meant certain winter death.  If she wasn’t producing enough brood to collect, gather, and keep the hive mass warm over winter, they would certainly starve and freeze to death. 

Unlike some organizations who have great or effective layers of managers to ensure the mission of the organization is executed, bees cannot compensate for a failing leader.  There is no soft way to go about changing leadership.

I made the decision, in order to save the hive this late in the season, the original queen must be located, (literally) executed, and replaced with a new, foreign queen.  This is not a task for the delicate.  I admit, I kill a few bees every time I go into the hive (can’t help it) and my heart sinks to my stomach when I hear the unmistakable crunch.  The thought of killing the queen was not a job I was looking forward to doing.

Being the resourceful Chair-woman of Board I am, I was successful in locating a replacement queen from a commercial Bkeepr.  I made the call to secure her, and within 6 hours I was in route, queen in the car and on my way to the hive. 

I entered the hive prepared to correct my earlier poor decision (remove that excluder), and confirm my decision that executig the leader was the correct one.  All started well enough.  The honey super was empty, still no drawn comb, and only a few bees working the area.

I then entered the brood chamber expecting to see spotty egg laying, and an insignificant number of bees. What did I see/experience?   Really annoyed bees, let’s just call them beetch’s.   I inspected 5 frames, full of bees working the brood, I did not spot the queen.  While I saw sections of great brood pattern, I certainly saw pockets of spotty brood that really is more attributed to the hot weather than a defunct leader.   I suspect neighbor hives look much like mine. 

The conclusion: The hive is still in trouble.  My bees need to collect/store honey for wintering.  They are soooo behind.  We are experiencing a dearth (no nectar to collect).  All I can do for them is feed them, compensate for the lack of nature, not the lack of leadership. 

Lesson learned – the cause of an organization’s failure should be very apparent before steps to replace leadership are executed.  It is so important to focus on the right problem to solve before deciding “off with her head” is the right conclusion. 

For sale: 1 (mated) Queen