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. 

Yet more swarms

A week after the swarm arrived and took up residence in a nuc (now moved into full hive), and another swarm turned up two or three metres away in the leylandii  (this has also been moved into a full hive, during that process I spotted the queen, my guess newly hatched.  They had been in the nuc for a couple of days and no eggs had been laid, so it will be a few weeks before I find out if she has been successfully mated).  Its likely that both these colonies came from the same hive, the first being the main swarm with the old queen the second a newly hatched princess.  Both these colonies have been moved to a new apiary.

 I had just finished preparing these two colonies to be moved when one of the people who live close to the apiary walked in and announced that a swarm had arrived in his garden. As he had once kept bees as boy at school I knew it was highly likely to be a true swarm and not bumblebees or wasps or any of the other insects I take calls for.

A five minute walk later and there it is, a small swarm in a young pear tree.  My guess is that is yet another newly hatched princess from the same hive as the last two swarms.  Dropped them straight into a nuc where they will spend the next few days.  If it is another new princess I will combine them with the last one, loads of small new queens is a waste of time, getting them up to a full colony asap is the priority. I'm not aware of any other beekeepers in the location but there must be one, and losing a lot of bees.  Not going to be much left of at least one of their hives.

While all this is going on honey is still coming in at a rate.  There is an enormous amount of blackberries growing wild in the hedgerows at the moment and the honey being extracted is very light and floral.

Swarms, queens and eggs

For the last couple of weeks the weather had definitely take a turn for the worse, but a week ago push came to shove and I had to do an inspection.  When I turned up at this apiary a swarm had taken residence since my last visit.

But not in a nice hive left there for artificial swarming, oh no, lets all cram into a totally empty nuc, and build a load of wild comb.  Nothing much I could do at the time except dump them all in the hive.  OK one week later and a nice weekend, so in I go, a bit apprehensive that the swarm might be one of my own colonies, always a possibility however unlikely. Started with the single super colony on the far left, saw the queen loads of eggs, good colony.  Next the colony far right with three supers, saw the queen loads of eggs good colony.  Now the newly established swarm,

This is the wild comb they had built on the crownboard of the nuc, covered in capped brood.  However imagine my surprise when going through the colony I came across this,

a green marked queen, 2019 if the marking is correct.  I don't mark my queens, so this strong colony is not out of my hives. 

Now there are quite a few novice beekeepers who have difficulty seeing eggs or really know what they are supposed to be looking for.  I know its not easy until you get used to it, so this is what you are looking for.

All through this inspection the bees were much more active than usual with huge numbers in the air.  Not thinking much more of it I closed up cleared away and prepared to leave.  Just above head height on a leylandii branch another swarm had rocked up.

Now I'm fairly good at handing out advice but taking my own, not so much.  No spare hive with me, so for now they are in the on site nuc.  Its a big swarm so whether they stay or not is even more uncertain than usual.
Both the swarms will be moved to a new site this week.

Mid May 2020

Its the 17th May and been a really nice day.  A good day to go through a few hives. The oil seed rape is nearly over around here so time to be taking a good look in the supers. Oil seed rape sets remarkably quickly and by set I mean fondant hard set.

This is a small apiary of mine, only two colonies here at the moment, both very busy.  One has three supers and the other just one.  Two colonies in the same location, starting at about the same strength at the beginning of the season and yet one has three nearly full supers and the other barely started on its first.
The third hive you can see is empty and will be used for artificial swarming if either colony starts to produce queen cells, I keep an empty hive in every apiary for this reason.  I use nucs to collect swarms, so there is always at least one available wherever I am, just in case.

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.