More Swarms!

In my last update on Sunday 3rd May, I'd finally managed to collect the swarm from neighbour Mark's garden.  The bees were safely housed in a nucleus, and everything was back to normal.  Or so I thought.

The next day (Monday 4th) they swarmed again.  I don't know why, but for some reason the bees abandoned the nucleus and headed off to another neighbour's garden (Julia's, this time).  So, off I went again, with a bucket, loppers and the now-empty nuc for round 2.  This time, they were about 8ft up in a crab-apple tree.  At least they were easy to reach this time.  Unfortunately, they were clustered around a thick branch, just at the point where it divided.  There was nothing else for it - Julia lent me a saw and I started hacking away.  Eventually, the swarm - and accompanying branch - was free:

The only way to be sure I had all the bees was to put the piece of branch - with swarm still attached - into the nucleus, and then carry it back to the apiary.  Eventually they settled down, and I'm relieved to report they didn't swarm again.

The next incident was on the bank holiday, last Friday.  I'd checked Dorothy's colony, in the brown nucleus, 6 days previously - and all seemed fine.  Unfortunately, I must have missed a queen cell, so off they went.  This time, they decided to set up home in my neighbour Darren's chimney.  There's no way I can collect them from there, so I suppose they will just set up home and have a happy summer, undisturbed by beekeepers.

That brings us to today.  I checked the blue nucleus (the Mark / Julia swarm) first.  All looked good, and the queen has started laying.  That meant I could mark her, so I popped her in the marking cage and put a dot of blue paint on her thorax.  Next, I checked the now-queenless brown nucleus.  There were a couple of queen cells, but no sign of any new queen.  I decided it would be easier for me to manage the nucs by combining them, so I prepared by removing the old frames with the queen cells (there was very little brood, so it was a good opportunity to remove the old comb and burn it).  I then replaced with fresh.  The handy thing about the brown nuc is it has a detachable floor, which allows me to put it on top of the blue nuc and make a double-height nucleus, like this:

When combining colonies in this way there is a risk that the bees will fight, so it helps if you can make them mingle slowly, so they get used to each other.  The way this is done is by putting a layer of newspaper between the two boxes.  The bees will nibble through the paper and start to circulate through the holes that they make.  This way, they get used to each other's pheromones without getting aggressive.  At least, that's the idea - I will find out next week how they've got on.

All was fine in Katherine's hive - they were very well behaved, and no queen cells.

In hive #2 I was please to see that the new queen (the one that had emerged after the swarm) had started laying.  She also got a blue dot on her thorax, and then that was the end of the day's beekeeping.  I'm pleased to note that hive #2, which has had a bit of a temper in the last few weeks, was much better behaved today.

Now that I'm back to three laying queens, I'm hoping that's the end of all this swarming nonsense and everything will be a bit more orderly for the next few weeks.  One other thing - I have two newly-marked queens, and regular readers will know that I always name my queens when I mark them.  Tune in to the next update to find out what they're called...

Swarm... Collected!

After Friday's shenanigans, and a heavy downpour on Friday night, I was relieved to see that the bees in neighbour Mark's tree had survived the night.  They didn't seem to be in a hurry to go anywhere, so yesterday I set up a spare nucleus, with one drawn and four un-drawn frames, as near as I could to the swarm cluster.  My hope was that they might smell the wax, realise that the nuc was a nice warm dry place to live, and move in.  In the meantime, I had to wait.

I used the time to check the other hives, as I wanted to know where they'd swarmed from.  Not the nucleus - Dorothy was still at home.  And Katherine was still in residence in hive #1.  That could only mean that the new queen, who was first seen last weekend in hive #2, must have swarmed.

I had a good look inside #2, and spotted a lovely big queen cell that I completely failed to see last week.  That was my mistake - if I'd seen and removed it, the bees wouldn't have swarmed.  I could see that the new (newest) queen had emerged from the cell - and I spotted her on the next frame.  She is quite distinctive-looking, with a single ginger stripe on the anterior segment of her abdomen.  At least she should be fairly easy to find in future.

Back to the swarm.  By this morning, they still hadn't moved from the tree, and it was looking like something needed to be done - Mark and his family really needed their garden back!  So, this afternoon Amelia and I tooled up and headed round to Mark's house with a spare bee suit and a very vague idea of a plan.

Mark had a couple of ladders that we could use, and was happy to join in the fun.  So I headed up a ladder with a pair of long-handled loppers, while Amelia held on tight and Mark got ready to catch.  We had to have three goes at it, because the bees kept re-clustering on the tree.  This was how it went on attempt number one:

I didn't get a video of attempt number two, but here's the third and final try:

And it's done!  The bees are now safely at home in the nucleus - hopefully they'll stay there and we'll have no more funny business.

Swarming In The Rain...

My bees swarmed today.  We'll get to that part later - first, a bit of a catch-up on what happened last weekend, and how we got to today's events.

In my last post I talked about the surfeit of queen cells in hive #2, from two weekends ago.  So, last weekend I went back to check on how things were progressing.  Here's a hive-by-hive rundown:

• Hive #1 (Katherine):  The colony are still building up slowly, but look healthy.  There were a couple of frames in the hive that were now two years old, and really needed to be replaced.  Both had capped and uncapped brood, and I didn't want to diminish the amount of brood too badly, so I decided to remove just one of them.  Interestingly, after I'd shaken the bees off, I noticed two queen cells - one uncapped and one capped.  I was a little lucky the bees hadn't swarmed.  I was surprised that the colony are making queen cells already, since they don't really seem big enough yet, but the weather up to last weekend had been very pleasant so perhaps they were just taking advantage of the conditions.  Anyway, I checked the rest of the frames thoroughly, didn't see any more queen cells, and burned the frame I'd removed.
• Nucleus (Dorothy):  These bees had built up quickly, and had even started making comb in the space between the top of the frames and the roof.  In fact, after I'd taken the roof off I realised that queen Dorothy was on the roof and not on the frames where she was supposed to be.  I carefully picked her up by her wings and popped her back inside, and then removed the excess comb from the underside of the roof.
  To slow things down a bit I took two frames of drawn comb out of the nuc and donated them to hive #1, replacing with new frames.
• Hive #2 (no queen... or...?):  I had a good look through - there were four more queen cells, which the bees had presumably decided to make just to keep me on my toes.  I removed all but one, and then checked the big queen cell that I left last weekend.  That one was open, so the queen must have emerged.  It took me a while to find her (honestly, I nearly gave up) but I did spot her eventually.  Reassured that the hive now had a queen, I removed the last queen cell and closed up.  Happy days - all three colonies have a queen!

So, the position by the end of Sunday was three colonies, all with queens and with all queen cells removed.  Great - that should have meant no risk of swarming for at least a week.

Fast forward to today, and this (it's worth having the sound turned up):

How did it happen?  I have no idea.  It wasn't great weather today - the temperature barely nudged above 12°C and it's been raining.  About half an hour after that video was taken, we had hail.  What on earth the bees were thinking, swarming in those conditions, I have no idea.  Anyway, they've done it now.  Unfortunately, they've settled about 15 feet up in a magnolia tree (they're still there as I write this) and there's no way I can get a ladder up to collect them, so they'll just have to stay there until tomorrow, when they'll presumably pick a permanent home and move in.  I've left an empty nuc with some new frames in the apiary, a little distance away from the other hives, so with a little luck they might be tempted to move in there.  Otherwise, they'll probably find a nice tree on Beechen Cliff and establish themselves as a feral colony.

One question comes to mind - which hive did they swarm from?  The answer to that will have to wait until tomorrow.  In the meantime, here's a couple of great pictures of the swarm that were captured by my neighbour Mark:

The swarm

Beekeeper fails to spot the blindingly obvious...