Swarm chasers

So on Wednesday I had a call telling me that a number of bees had been spotted leaving the hive. Could this be the new queen going on a mating flight I wondered? Apparently there were thousands so sounded more like a swarm which was a little puzzling and very bad news.

I looked all around for a resting swarm but there was no sign of them anywhere and a quick look in the hive confirmed my suspicions. I had little choice but to go home for the day wondering if I would ever get any honey.

Then Thursday morning I was awoken by another phone call from my brother-in-law who has found a post on facebook about a swarm that arrived nearby yesterday afternoon! I was even more surprised to discover that they were still there so I got everything ready and jumped in the car.

We arrived and there they were hanging out on a piece of driftwood! A few minutes later and we had performed a textbook swarm collection and had them all in a box. Feeling rather pleased we headed off and would return later in the day when all the bees would have returned and we could take them back to the hive.

resting swarm of honey bees

However, a couple of hours later I receive a message saying they have headed off again! Followed a short while later by more calls informing us they had resettled on someone's tree! By this point I had spent most of the day chasing bees but reluctantly got back in the car to go and see.

On arrival they were in a very small tree only a few foot off the ground and again within reach but as soon as they saw us suiting up they were off again!

That evening we had more luck with a more inaccessable swarm that definately hadn't come from my hive but we had been contacted about after seeing a facebook post. This time we were up the ladder and over a ditch by a, fortunately not too busy, road. A few concerned looking passers by included two truckfuls of marines returning from a training excercise. Whether or not this swarm will stay put in the hive now still remains to be seen.

large swarm in a tree

We are still getting calls about swarms and everyone seems to know we lost some bees!

preparing to catch the swarm

After an exhausting few days we have learnt that:

1. You can only keep bees that want to be kept.
2. Deal with the bees first and chat to onlookers after.
3. Beware the power of facebook.
4. Annoying bees while standing on a ladder and not holding on is not for the fainthearted.
5. Royal Marines are not as tough as they look!

Where's Queenie?

I've been waiting for an opportunity to open up the hive and have a good look following the MAQs treatment. We've had lots of dry weather but temperatures have been too low. It needs to be at least 16˚c to safely open the hive and not chill the brood. Last Saturday the forecast looked perfect so l packed my trug and set off.

Lots of bees was a good sign that none had swarmed.

My main concern was swarming and it was reassuring to see a large number of bees in the hive, it was looking a little overcrowded so I wasn't surprised to see queen cells on the second frame I removed. There were sealed queen cells on a number of frames and I felt that I may need to carry out an artificial swarm to prevent them from swarming naturally and thus losing half my bees.

However there was no sign of the red queen (the 2013 queen marked with red paint) and after a thorough look on all of the frames I concluded that she was no longer there. There was no sign of any eggs either so I guess she hadn't been there for a while. I couldn't do an artificial swarm without a queen so I left all of the queen cells and closed up the hive after adding a few new frames.

On my next visit the new queen should have emerged and I will need to find and mark her (she will be green because she is a 2014 queen). Hopefully she will have had a successful mating flight and be laying eggs by then.

We searched and searched for the queen.

A cluster of queen cells.