It’s a war zone in my apiary. There are battles going on that make Jon Snow and Bolton Ramsay look like toddlers lobbing Lego at each other. We’re talking evisceration, decapitation, disembowelment – it’s a gore-fest out there. Wasps circle malevolently at the base of each of my three hives, waiting for a chance to charge the entrances and infiltrate those inner, honey-filled sanctums. Like a wall of footballers defending their goal from a free kick in extra time, the bees brace for impact. None shall pass. Woe betide a bee who loses her grip and drops to the floor. The wasps are ready, pouncing on their prey without mercy, ripping the poor honeybees who can’t hold on any longer, head from limb.

For the wasps who worm their way inside, it’s a game of Russian Roulette. Can they stay in the shadows long enough to rob as much nectar and honey as they can stuff themselves with? If discovered, they’re either bitten or stung and their dying soon-to-be corpses bundled unceremoniously out of the hive and onto the ground.

It’s still really hot and the bees are in foul moods. Fed up with heat and wasps and being opened and closed by annoying humans.

While the battle rages, I’m trying to get each hive up and square for autumn. This involves taking the supers off each of the hives and freezing them to make sure no pests survive. Then I can store them over autumn and winter ready to return them to their rightful owners in the spring.

Ideally it’s best to get as many of the angry, hot bees out of the super as you can before taking out the frames to avoid clouds of them trying to sting your face (as I learned to my cost a few weeks ago). If there aren’t many bees I’m happy to sweep or shake them, but there are, and I’m not. Porter bee escapes it has to be. On they went; clearing the supers by creating a tunnel between super and brood box that means the bees can get out, but not back in.

This is all well and good if it works.

In the first hive, the bees cleared, to show both supers full of brood. The queen had had a field day. Marvellous. Could I find her? Can I ever?! I decided to combine both supers, ending up with one super full of brood and stores, which I then put under the brood box in the hope the bees would move up. I was about to replace the lid, feeling pleased with this brilliant plan, when I saw a funny-shaped bee on its back in the corner of the lid. Actually, not a funny shaped bee. The queen bee. All that time she’d been in the super I’d cleared and run up into the lid. I tipped her the right way up, and she scuttled off into the brood box. At which point I raced back to get the queen excluder I’d thought I no longer needed and walloped it on top of the remaining super under the brood box. Now I don’t know how fast a queen can run, but hopefully not as fast as me and she’s safe in that brood box and not going anywhere.

Onto the second hive the top super had cleared with very little in it, so it didn’t take long to shake the remaining bees off, pop the frames in the freezer and move the crown board with the escapes down one. And leave. And breathe…

Last hive. Has a massive hole in one side (it’s really old), so the bees just bypassed the escapes completely. Masking tape and some cardboard have rectified this honey hack, hopefully when I look again tomorrow the super will have cleared and I’ll be able to extract whatever’s in there, pop it back for the bees to clean up, and then remove completely, refrigerate and store.

There’s a lot to do. And I only have three hives! Still, nearly there and despite having almost squished the queen, I’m doing my best for my bees. Every year I make fewer mistakes and learn more lessons. That’s my story anyway, and I’m sticking to it.