More hive naming

Well, I'm still not decided on what to name my hives, but it's got to be done since "hive1" and "hive2" just won't do. Thanks for the comments. Lynn uses names of people in her family, particularly grandparents and grandchildren at present. That idea has some appeal to me, but I'm not sure I'll be using this: I've got 4 small children of my own, and I'm bad enough calling them by the wrong names when they're michief-making, let alone duplicting the names on my hives. Mark says that using a naming convention such as US presidents would not be quite interesting enough, and I tend to agree. I'd like to get my names somehow relevant to my beekeeping if possible (hence why I like the Queens idea). Somewhat relevant ideas I thought of so far are: naming them after crops which bees polinate (eg Apple, Pear, and so on); names of other nature reserves in my area of London since that's where my hives are right now (Adelaide, Westbere, Waterlow, Mortimer, and so on); or perhaps streets in the area; or perhaps...errrr I don't know, but my thinking cap is still on. Having said all that, there are some non-beekeeping-relevant naming conventions which appeal, even off the top of my head: greek and roman gods, rock or pop bands, trees, and so on.

Another feature of a naming convention which I like is to alphabetise (ok, alphabetize for American readers) names in the same way they do for hurricanes which travel from the Carribean Gulf to the Southern US: in other words each successive one is given a name which starts with a successive letter of the alphabet. I think they futher constrain their hurricane naming convention by alternating boys and girls (do they then do girls then boys the subsequent year? I don't know). Anyway, applying this to, say, the bee forage crop idea I might end up with: Apple, Blueberry, Cherry, and so on.

Hhhmmm, I think I may try posting this on the BBKA forums too now and see what comes back. Will update this blog with any fresh thoughts, and suggestions are still most welcome!