First swarms

Its early May, the oil seed rape is in full flower and so obviously its swarm time.  Had a call yesterday from my neighbour who has a building firm to let me know that a swarm had arrived on one of the sites he is working on.  I turned up at the site early this morning. Only the site supervisors and a couple of scaffolders were working when I arrived so social distancing was easy.

As you can see the bees had decided that a pile of site tressles was the ideal place to relocate.  There was already signs of comb being formed.  Its a lovely day today, warm and sunny, so just as well I arrived early before they started to liven up and start foraging.  I gradually moved the tressles apart one at a time placing the tressle on top of my collection nuc.  The bees moved down on to the comb one tressle at a time, in the end only leaving a few flying bees behind, virtually impossible to get them all especially this weather.  They have now been safely moved into a new hive and are flying strongly.  Not sure if the queen is there, but I think it’s likely judging by the way the bees are behaving.