I uncapped and washed the grubs out of the two frames of drone brood that I removed from the hives yesterday. I didn't see a lot of mites but there were some.
Yesterday after I had finished working on the hive with queen cells in, the swarm hive near the path and the hive next to the hive with the queen cells the bees were not happy and stung Lucy.
This morning they were still not happy and stung Ceril, Roy and Bernie and so this evening the two without queen cells had to be moved and are now in Postwick. The boxes with the queens in are still there and I will move those soon.
I moved them after I picked up my second swarm of the year and my second swarm from the same garden. It is the garden that Stripes mother came from two years ago. Apparently the bees do have patterns and can often swarm in the same place - although no one seems to know how or why so my expert Paul tells me.
These were in a holly bush and after cutting a couple of branches out with the loppers were easy enough to shake down into a cardboard box. They are yellow bees and have swarmed much earlier in the year than the others two years ago. They were on a Willow tree that gets heavily pruned each year and so far this year has only grown few inches.
I have taken them to Old Costessy where I had left a hive set up should a wandering swarm want to move into one. It's next to the hive on bricks. I will leave them to settle down for a few days before inspecting to see if they have a laying queen.
It was interesting to see that the bees in the hive on bricks and the bees in Sticky's hive were obviously quite aware of my activity when introducing the swarm to the brood box whereas the bees in the south facing hive could not be bothered to even come to the entrance to look. I guess that's the difference between having a laying queen and not having a laying queen.
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