I am breeding from three colonies this year. They are all sisters from my best Queen the year before, calm, good layers , hard working. All were showing the early signs of wanting to swarm. I don't wait, I artificially swarm (A/S), which I did with all three. So I now have six colonies, three with the original queens and all their flying bees, but broodless, sited in their original location. And three with all the brood a single remaining queen cell and all the house bees, still located in the apiary. Four days later as I was preparing to go through the hives at this apiary, when what looked like an incoming swarm appeared in the sky and landed at the top of an apple tree, I quickly raised a ladder and recovered the 'swarm' into an empty hive and then proceeded to go through the six A/S colonies. On opening the second of the hives that should have contained a Queen and all the flying bees from one of the A/S I found the hive almost empty, most of the brood frames contained some honey but no brood. The 'swarm' up the apple tree was in fact my colony that had vacated a hive after being there for four days. I swear they will drive me off the edge one day.
The oils seed rape is all over now apart from the wild stuff in the hedgerows, so I was surprised to see a lot of bees in one of my apiaries stained yellow, until I saw this just a half mile from the apiary.
