Swarming weather

I was just about to remove another bird box with bees living in it (I now have two on my allotment shed wall) when George's call came through. His garden was full of bees and they seem to be settling high up in one of his conifers. They were on his neighbours side of the tree and too high to get at. The best we could do was to set up another hive and hope that they would come down from the tree into it. By the time I left George's garden they hadn't and they had in fact moved further away and just about out of sight.

Misty's bees that didn't re-queen have three queen cells on the frame that I introduced from the Laburnham bees. So I need a home for two queen cells.

The other 2008 swarm queen that I moved to Postwick had also left her hive leaving a hive full of queen cells. Many open, some torn down and a couple still left intact. I removed a frame with an unopened queen cell on it and put it into a nuc box with a frame of bees. That hive was just about swarmed out. Bad management on my part.

I checked several of the boxes in Postwick. The Lakenham swarm looks a bit sad and I couldn't find the queen. The Bowthorp swarm was fine and slowly filling up the brood box of new frames. The Laburnham bees were making honey. The last of the 2008 queens that I can't find I still can't find. She is beginning to lay a little better now and they may well build up into a useful hive for next year.

The swarm I collected last year and took to Postwick I left in a box without a queen excluder. I thought I would leave them that way as an experiment and see how many boxes the queen would go up into to lay eggs in. I took five supers off today and there were eggs and brood in the top box. With so much swarming going on I thought I had better get these bees under control and find the queen if possible. When I had taken three boxes off and removed several frames that were mostly drone brood I was beginning to wonder if this was wise. I had to stop a couple of times to take out bees from inside the veil on my bee keeping smock. These bees were crawling bees and had crawled up inside. But they weren't stinging me. When there is no queen excluder the bees use the central frames for brood and put honey in the outside frames. In the brood box at the bottom there were still frames of undrawn foundation. The bees had moved up from the center of the brood box and ignored some of the outer frames. I had just got past the center frames and there she was, a red marked queen. There wasn't much red left on her but enough to say she was the queen that came with the swarm last year. I put another brood box on and a queen excluder on top of that. I may go back in a day or two and put all the frames with brood on in one super and put that under the queen excluder too as being so far away from the queen the bees could start making queen cells on those frames.

It was late when I got back to the allotment but not dark. As I walked up the path past the large dog rose I heard a humming. There, just above my left shoulder, was a small clump of bees in the rose. I cut the rose twigs into a nuc box with the bees on before gently shaking the bees off and putting some old frames in for them.

It's the weather for it.

Yesterday - two swarms. The UEA Permaculture Allotment Bees

I picked up a small swarm in Long Stratton that was in a garden shrub. I was able to cut the twigs with the bees on of and put them into my box.

For the second time this year I have been called to a garden that I have picked up a swarm from before. The Wymondham swarm was on a buddleia and with aid of some loppers a branch of that was also cut of with the bees on it and put into the box.

Both of these had an old sticky frame of stores put into the box first to help persuade them to stay. I will now be keen to see if it worked as the last swarm I collected and took to Postwick didn't stay in the box I put them in.

On the students plot, from one swarm picked up at the UEA in 2007, there are now four laying queens (three in hives and one in a nuc box) and there are two nuc boxes with bees in. I gave the two nuc boxes a small patch of queen eggs each (from my Greengage hive) to see if they need to make queen cells.

The UEA bees are quite tough and reasonably OK to handle but there are probably too many in the one place now. I had three hives last winter and will probably take the bees in the nuc box to Old Costessy soon.

Willow's hive. Georges bees

At last I have found a queen in Willow's hive. In the top brood box there were plenty of eggs but on one of the middle frames was a queen cell in the early stages of production so I took that frame out. In the bottom brood box was a fully formed queen cell with a hole in it's side. So what was going on in this hive? That is the sign of a queen destroyed by another queen. Once I got about three frames from the far edge of the bottom box I found a queen. An unmarked new queen. So Willow had been superceded. That explains why the bees are now better natured and why there was a break in honey production earlier on. It doesn't explain why I have always found eggs in the brood box. Initially I took the frame with the new queen out of the hive but changed my mind and put her back in the bottom brood box. And I put back the frame with the queen cell in production in the top brood box but I then removed that box and put it on it's own floor a few feet away from the hive. The bees that don't fly back to Willow's old hive can bring up a new queen in that hive. The question now is are the bees going to be happy with their new queen or are they still going to make queen cells.

There is also the brood box next to Willow's old hive that I put queen cells in before that had bees coming and going to it.

George's bees are getting the queen to lay in queen cups. I destroyed most but left one on one frame that I put into a nuc box with another frame of bees. They can proceed with making a queen cell with it if they wish but I want the bees in George's hive to make some honey.

Feral bees found in the bush

The bees that were found living in the car park shrubs are building up in number. They have got well established in the new brood box and only have a few more frame left to draw out. I looked for the queen today but didn't see her. I have treated them with thymol crystals and the newer frames of brood do seem to have less chalk brood than the earlier ones. The swarm from North Walsham also suffers very badly with chalk brood. If I do find the queen I will remove her. I think she should be called GW. Chalk brood Treatment? Bee disorders Chalk brood treatment -- Askotat