Elegiac

The hornet is, on the whole, a misrepresented creature. As it looks like a larger, more dangerous wasp, it tends to get a lot of bad press even though it isn't nearly as aggressive as wasps tend to be (they look so scary that they don't actually have to fight much). Due to humans being a) prone to judge by appearances, b) generally irrational around insects, and c) an invasive species, hornets are actually endangered, because they are a) and b) getting ruthlessly (and, incidentally, illegally) killed and c) no longer finding enough breeding space.
I get that.

HOWEVER, that was not going through my mind when I found that a hornet queen had invaded my bee hive, put up her breeding nest in the empty frame actually meant for drone production and varroa reduction, and killed all the bees.
(Killed all my bees. I stood staring into the bee-empty, hornet-nest-filled hive for ten minutes with burning eyes before I managed to get a move on and think about what to do. ;_; )
When I had gotten over my mute shock and sadness, I figured that I'd have to re-settle the hornet queen - I mean, of course I was tempted to kill it and destroy the nest DESTROY DESTROY DESTROY EX-TER-MI-NATE, but of course I knew that the poor hornet queen wasn't really to blame. I mean, sure, I would think that in a place actually full of hollow trees and abandoned mouseholes and dry walls, a hornet would find sufficient space WITHOUT INVADING MY BEE HIVES DAMNIT, but apparently not. Or it was just too tempting to put up one's nest right next to a delicious, nutritious snack bar. Would've been smarter to leave enough bees alive so there's a steady supply, but hey, even humans don't manage that, and they have rather more complex brains than hornets do. So it isn't really the hornet's fault.

Anyway, hornets are under wildlife protection anyway, so killing it would have been a crime. :P
So instead, I dragged out a spare box and the frames I'm not using for beekeeping anyway (well, as of now I'm not using anything for beekeeping, as I have NO MORE BEES I COULD CRY), and meant to resettle the whole thing, when the hornet queen actually flew out of the box, took a crap in full flight (hornets are so huge and have so much in their bladders that you actually see it squirt out of them, isn't that delightful) and disappeared into the woods. So I couldn't do the resettling, considering that the queen was missing.
That was yesterday.
Today, while it was drizzling slightly (= hornet not flying out), I resettled the whole thing.

So now I have an empty bee hive. Full of nice - empty frames. (Except where the hornet destroyed the comb in order to eat the larvae. Did I mention that I could cry?)
And that put a cruel stop to my beekeeping for this year.
(Instead, I have a hornet nest. Hurrah. :P)

I could cry. Fuck it, I'm crying.