Electric Feral Bees, Old Costessy

Electric Freal Bees

The bees I took out of the electrical box traveled back with their honey comb nestled carefully in an eiderdown taped into a cardboard box. I open the box just enough last night as I left it in the allotment for the bees to fly this morning.

Today's plan was to open the box and transfer the bees to a regular brood box and hopefully find the all important queen. There was a small cluster of bees on the honey comb in the middle of the eiderdown and yes they do have a queen. Quite small and grey and last seen on the floor of the new brood box.

In the brood box I had removed three of the empty frames and put in three a frames from my stores that had honey in them. I then proceed to watch the bees to see how they would settle. After half an hour or so it was becoming apparent that the frame of honey was attracting wasps and bees from other hives. The hive with feral bees next door was getting over excited. I came to the conclusion that there were just not enough bees to defend themselves in these circumstances and that more bees were needed to bolster the numbers of the Electric Feral colony.

I have been meaning to make a visit to the Old Costessy Apiary for some days now to give the youngest queen there more feed (which I did). Whilst I was there I stole the super with it's bees from the top of Sticky's hive. There was an empty bucket on the hive that I have now brought back too. The two other hives in the corner still had feed in their buckets. All of the hives had flying bees.

The super from Costessy is now on top of the Electric Feral bee's brood box with a sheet of newspaper between them. I have left a small space open at the top for now and taped the entrance to leave the smallest of spaces. I will close the top later today and wait for a few days until I see bees coming from the entrance before taking a look under the crown board. Hopefully the costessy bees will be happy to be with a queen and make up the numbers enough for them all to defend themselves and survive the winter. I will put the feed bucket on in a few days time.