Wednesday 6 June 2018

Another swarm



We recently had a second bee swarm. Unlike the first swarm which rehoused itself in a spare hive, this one was more trouble. It formed up at the top of our apple tree on our Farside allotment. I spent a merry time on the top of a chair with a long arm set of loppers to chop off the branch with the swarm on it. It fell onto a sheet on the ground and I put a cardboard box over it. When I came back half an hour later, I found quite a few bees in the box but a large cluster of bees still at the top of the apple tree. Yet more standing on chairs and use of loppers followed. The cluster dropped to the ground and I left them, thinking the queen was in the hive - the other bees would follow her inside.

Alas, that was not the case. Virtually the whole swarm was sitting on the front of the hive when I returned a couple of hours later. It was still there in the evening. I took the decision to intervene, swept the bees into a box and then tipped them into the hive. It seems I was wrong about the location of the queen. She must have been on the outside of the hive rather than inside.

The good news is that the colony is now well settled in the hive and is very busy.

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