Weather, swarms and pesticides

 First off, the weather. I know you can’t rely on England having a great Summer, but for goodness sake its been dreadful. With almost continual easterly winds, overcast miserable skies and lower temperatures than  should be expected at this time of year its been a tough time for the bees.

Having never lost any colonies to pesticides or any other kind of poison I have mixed feelings about the ban on neonicotinoids. While reducing chemicals used anywhere near our food supply has to be a good thing the ban has meant that on the fens there is virtually no oil seed rape being grown this year. Oil seed rape usually makes up over 50% of my honey crop. None of my hives are sitting on osr fields and only one of my farmers intends to sow it next year. So I expect my honey take this year to be severely reduced.

Despite all of the above the swarms still keep coming, so they are managing to build numbers in their colonies no matter what is thrown at them. Its now about six weeks since I picked up the first swarm this year, thats when I expect the second run of swarms and this week has been hectic. I no longer have the kit or the time to maintain any more colonies, so any future swarms will be united with smaller hives.

Swarms, swarms and more swarms

 I have no idea where all the swarms have been coming from over the last few weeks, but it’s been fairly full on. The latest on arrived in one of my apiaries. I had just extracted three supers and had them stored on a spare stand. Somehow they managed to squeeze through a tiny gap and made their way into the supers.

I think the gap they found was too small for the queen, that’s why some of the swarm stayed outside. The bulk of the swarm were inside.

Again a really easy swarm to deal with, just gave them access to a hive and left them to it. They had started to build comb, so they had been there for a day or so. All done and dusted in ten minutes.

I went through the colony today, that’s two days after rehousing. Definitely a queen in there somewhere as there are loads of eggs. A really calm colony unusually, perhaps they are going to be the exception to the usual nightmare swarms I collect. A lot of nectar brought in considering how new they are, so much that I have given them a super to free up space in the brood.

Another day. Another swarm.

 A call from a local farmer took me a few miles out on the fen to this swarm.

It is as you can see a sizeable swarm, certainly the largest I have collected this year, and again in an ideal location. I have left them to make their own way into the hive and will return later this evening around dusk. As usual they will be moved to isolation so I can assess for mood and over the next few weeks any disease problems. All being well they will be moved to one of my working sites until I can raise some new queens for all this year’s swarms.

Swarm update

 Just a quick update on the swarm that arrived last week, in the meantime two bees in birdboxes (bumblebees), three swarms in chimneys (really annoying) and last night at 9.30pm a call to a swarm only a mile from me. It was on the end of a conifer branch just 600mm off the ground, left the hive in place overnight and will collect them late this evening. Easy swarms like this happen once in a blue moon. Usually I’m up a tree balancing a box on one shoulder while shaking the swarm in with the hand and hanging on for dear life with my third hand.

Anyway back to last weeks swarm, as expected with just about every swarm around here it’s horrific, a large number of very angry bees stayed with me for over 100 metres after I checked the colony over. However there is a queen and she is laying, I will requeen as soon as I have one available.

Another Season Begins

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.

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.