Bees

We are very inexperienced bee keepers who have acquired a hive of bees through a lady in the village who is quite senior in the British Beekeepers Association.

She has been guiding us through the process of bee keeping and explaining the amazing life of the honey bee. (For instance, new queens need to be mated by a drone- the only male bees in the hive- and they fly to a traditional place for the mating flight... but no other bee has ever shown them where that is. How do they know where to go??) I did know the bees were overdue an inspection but she was busy and the weather was cold and... this happened-

Not good. That large dark shape to the left of the trunk is the queen with half our bees. We took advice and promptly set them up in a new hive before they disappeared off into the great blue yonder. I think there are other (possibly better) ways but this worked for us on this occasion.

A swarm isn't aggressive, they're just looking for a new home. We put a blanket under the tree and, in our bee suits, I stood under the swarm with a cardboard box. My husband whacked the branch they were on and they fell into the box with a thud. I discovered at this point that actually I'm not very keen on a cloud of bees right in front of my face. I may have squealed and I certainly shut my eyes...

I looked a bit like this...

We quickly turned the box over onto the blanket and propped one corner of the box up with a block of wood so they could come and go.

Later that evening we set up a new hive, thumped the box to empty them onto the blanket (poor bees were not having a good day) and then parcelled them up in the blanket and emptied them into the new hive. Some food on top and they seem to be happy. We couldn't get all the bees off of the blanket and left it lying on the landing board so they could crawl in after the queen. Some did but the next morning there were a few groups of bees huddled together to maintain their temperature (another bee fact is that a single honey bee can't maintain it's own body temperature but with other bees can raise or lower the temperature of a group as necessary.) It wasn't a particularly cold night but chilly enough for a bee by itself.

You can see varying sized groups of bees that moved together for warmth the next morning

All these bees flew off (and presumably into the hive) when the sun warmed them up

We added another couple of supers (extra boxes with framed wax sheets in) for the original hive to give them a bit more space. Our friend helped us inspect both hives and both seem to be doing ok. There were quite a few queen larvae cells developing in the original hive and so all but two (one and a spare) have been destroyed to avoid casting, a small  swarm which would struggle to survive. We could have spilt the colony again but we decided for the moment to stick to two strong colonies. The original hive is full of honey which looks promising for a first harvest.

It's been a steep learning curve, having bees, but one I'm glad we're doing. There's so much to learn, we're very lucky having practical support round the corner. Back to the books! And planting more pollinator friendly plants to keep them happy.