And again!!

Suzanne turned up at 1.30pm to go through the swarmed hive just before she arrived i was out hanging up the washing and heard the bees - went down the end of the garden and there was another swarm the air was full of bees and there were loads of bees around the hive that we made up on Friday.

At first I thought the swarm had moved but when we got behind the hedge the swarms we collected yesterday were still there. There was another in the scrub.

So we called L to see if she wanted a swarm and she did so we got a box and a sheet and when back next door to collect another swarm.

Then we went through the garden hive and destroyed all the queen cells bar two - an heir and a spare to try and revent more cast swarms.

Now I am writing this I think it is likely we missed some of the queen cells in the new hive and I am tempted to go back and double check as I am sure the swarm came from there. They must have more than two queen cells.

They swarmed again!

Yesterday we went to our next door neighbours for a Royal wedding party and as we arrived at about 2pm and went into the garden I could hear bees. Giles and I walked down to the hedge at the end and the sky was full of bees so the Garden hive had swarmed.

I eventually found that I could scramble through a gap in the hedge and fight my way through the brambles and nettles behind our gardens and I could see the girls clustered in some old brambles and scrub.

Suzanne came round and suited up. We became the party entertainment, trogging up and down the garden in our beesuits.

Armed with smoker and sheets secateurs and cardboard boxes we fought our way to the swarm and snipped away at bits of nettle and branches until we could catch them in the box, put it down on the sheet and propped it up with a branch. Giles found another cluster of bees a few feet away and we did the same again. I don't think there was a queen in this group so they had probably got separated from the others.

Later I went and covered the box with a black plastic bag to keep out the rain since I had no home for them that evening. They were all snug in there so hopefully they would stay put until I would be able to collect them tomorrow.

They have swarmed!

We looked through the hive on 15th April and the girls were very busy with lots of drone brood and not as many eggs I expected (I didn't realise what that meant at the time). We saw the Queen and I expected them to be planning to swarm but 13 days later they have gone.

We didn't realise at first because there seemed to be lots of bees and even when we found frame after frame with sealed queen cells we didn't twig straight away. So we started to do an artificial swarm but we couldn't find the queen and we looked through twice. So we followed the procedure for artificial swarm when you can't find the queen and shook the bees into the replaced brood box and put the original brood box on the top so that the bees could sort themselves out. But then it started to dawn on me that we hadn't found the queen and we hadn't seen any eggs and all the queen cells were already sealed that they had swarmed.

So we put a frame with two queen cells in the bottom box and left the frames with sealed queen cells in the top box and I will separate them tomorrow.

Goodness knows what will be going on in the garden hive when we open that on Saturday.