What a start to the season, here we are late May and the weather is dreadful. It’s probably just as well that I have drastically reduced the number of hives that I have. Late last year I sold off a lot of my colonies and merged some of the rest. I have been cleaning and restoring all the hardware over Winter, so a lot of kit is going on ebay through the summer months.
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Yesterday, Friday the 21st at 2pm in a howling gale and pouring rain, this arrived in one of my bait hives. This one is on top of an old shed about 2 metres up, a nice flying height for bees. They are definitely not mine as I have no colonies within 5 miles of this location and because of the weather I have not been able to take a look yet. Its possible the Queen didn’t make it in the high winds. I’m not really wanting any swarms this year, but I would rather catch them in bait hives than be called out to a swarm 5 metres up a tree, or worse, that a pest controller had been called to kill them.
I’m amazed that there any swarms at all as its been so cold and very few of the farmers in my area are growing oil seed rape this year, they tell me its due to the pesticide ban. Oil seed rape always seemed to be the main driver of early swarms.
