Tuesday 19 June 2012

Two more bee swarms

I was weeding a bed on the allotment this afternoon and I happened to look up and was surprised to see a swirling black cloud above me. I had just witnessed another swarm from my beehives. The swirling bees began to accumulate on the hedge. This was the 4th swarm in the past 10 days. And to add to the excitement, this evening we discovered another, larger swarm, a few metres along the hedge. I understand from other beekeepers that hives are in swarm-overdrive this year. They are swarming at the drop of a hat. We have used up nearly all of our equipment to create 3 new hives for the swarms last week. As it turns out, one of the swarms has not taken so we have an empty hive which we can use again with one of the new swarms. We will have to scrape together what we can for the second swarm.

Quite how all this is going to affect honey production is not clear.

2 comments:

Fishcake_random said...

Sounds like you are having all the luck with your bees.
Have you thought about Ebay for bee keeping stuff? It might be cheaper expecially if you try using fat fingers or local bargain finder as well.
x x x

Jonathan Wallace said...

We use a couple of different suppliers here in the North East of England. They are very professional and I know I am buying quality material. I prefer to buy new to ensure there is no transmission of diseases.