Swarm Season Starts

A couple of weeks ago, I noticed that Dorothy's bees were building up quickly, and that I'd need to keep on top of potential swarm preparations.  I was not wrong.

Last Sunday (12th April) I checked Dorothy's hive, and there were the classic signs of swarm preparation.  Firstly, drone brood - both capped and uncapped.  Secondly, a couple of emerged drones.  And thirdly - and most tellingly - a queen cup (the start of a queen cell) with an egg in it.  I had to do something.

With the country currently in lockdown and social distancing in force, the British Beekeepers Association is advising that swarm collection may be a problem if beekeepers can't maintain social distancing when collecting swarms.  The last time I collected a swarm it was a two-person job, and we were definitely less than two metres apart.  That would be a problem this year.  So, the best thing to do is avoid swarming in the first place.

I therefore split the colony, left the laid queen cup in hive #2, and moved Dorothy and five frames of bees to a nucleus.  And then waited a week.

That takes us to Sunday just past, and two tasks - check the nucleus, and check hive #2.

The nucleus is doing well.  The bees are foraging and Dorothy is laying.  There is a decent amount of brood, pollen and stores.  Hopefully they will build up nicely - but not too quickly - I don't want them to start planning to swarm again.

In the hive, the queen cup I saw last week was now a complete and capped queen cell.  There were another three on the same frame, and four more on the frame next to it.  Here's a picture of three of them:

The thing is, eight queen cells are way too many.  If I left more than one, the bees could swarm when the second (and third and fourth) queen(s) emerge.  These are called 'cast swarms' - they tend to be small and have a poor chance of survival.  So it's better just to make sure that cast swarming doesn't happen.  That means assessing the queen cells, picking a winner and removing the rest.

Whenever I do this, I always intend to keep the cell that I saw the previous week.  But when it comes to it, I more often than not change my mind.  Why?  What makes a 'good' queen cell?  I've always gone by a simple principle - bigger is better.  This is because smaller cells can restrict the growth of the queen - particularly her abdomen.  A bigger queen, with a bigger abdomen, means bigger ovaries and therefore better laying capacity.  Since egg-laying is a queen's main task, I want the best layer as this means more workers and therefore a bigger colony, with the best chance of surviving through winter.  It also means more honey, of course!

So, last week's cell looked good.  But two inches to the right was a whopper.  Very long, and already capped.  So, last week's - and the other six - unfortunately had to go.  I cut them out with my hive tool, and left the super-cell attached to the comb.  The larva inside will spend this week pupating, and should hopefully emerge as an adult queen next weekend.  If she does, I shall have to pick a name for her...

Time to Get Outside (if you're a bee)

We humans may all be stuck inside right now, but that's not the case for the bees - we have lovely weather outside this week, and they are busily collecting the early nectar and pollen.  The gage tree in my garden has been getting plenty of visits from my bees, as well as bumbles, hoverflies, butterflies and solitary bees.

Sunday was my first inspection of the season - as is usual, I moved the supers from underneath the brood boxes and placed them on top, with queen excluders between.  Here's me hard at work (thanks to the bees' landlady Gill for the photos!):

So, a quick update on how the hives are doing:

Katherine in Hive #1

The colony has survived winter, though they are a little small.  There had been nothing stored in the super before winter, though they have managed to make do with the stores they collected in the brood box.  Because the super was empty, some spiders (all false widows - I think I counted three) had taken up residence and had been opportunistically feeding on bees that strayed too close.  The spiders were aggressively removed before the super was put back on the hive.  (Regular readers will recall this is not the first time I've encountered a false widow spider while beekeeping).

Despite the small size of the colony, they are bringing in plenty of pollen and Katherine is laying plenty of eggs.  I fact, when I spotted her there was one hanging out of the back of her abdomen, so I guess I must have interrupted her right in the middle of her important task.

Overall, good news and I expect they will start to fill the super soon.

Dorothy in Hive #2

Dorothy's hive is doing really well.  The super is half-full, and there are plenty of stores in the brood box.  Also, there are lots of eggs and a decent amount of capped and uncapped brood.  This colony looks like it is building up quickly - I should get a decent honey crop out of them this year, if I can keep on top of their attempts to swarm.  There are no signs of swarm preparations yet, but once the drones start to emerge in 2-3 weeks I think I will have my work cut out in keeping them from swarming.

I had sufficient confidence in their progress that I put a second super on hive #2 on Tuesday evening.  Hopefully this will keep the bees busy with nectar collection, and distract their collective hive-mind from thoughts of swarming, at least for another few weeks.

So, overall a good start to the season.  Nature seems to have taken advantage of us humans being locked away for a while - everything outside appears to be thriving!