Hive (B)

We were given a second swarm on Friday the 20th of June. Again they came in a skep and we expected them to behave similar to the last bees, where we remove the basket, and the bees remain on the roof of the skep waiting for us to thump them out. However, these bees were a little different, over the last few days they had built quite a lot of comb at the top of the hive and filled it with nectar. Moving the skep around had detached the comb and soaked the bees with nectar. They were not happy.

Anyway, we dumped the bees into the top bar hive and as there were so many bees mixed up with the comb, we dumped the comb in too, intending to remove it at a convenient time later. It was evening, so we left them alone.

Saturday, they seemed content to come and go, although quite a few seemed to be hanging around outside the entrance. Around lunchtime, I noticed a lot of bees flying and saw a swarm on one of the young trees we had plated in the orchard.

I phoned my bee mentor, and Mike gave me some ideas on how to capture them. It was not easy to collect all the bees from the trunk of the small tree, so I used a cardboard box with a slot to brush them into. I probably collected around 40% in the first go and put them onto a board in front of our spare national hive. I collected a second lot, but they seemed to be flying rather than walking into the hive. They eventually all moved to a new swarm in a log pile.

We dropped the majority of this swarm into another box and dumped them back on the slope into the national hive, and they still seemed reluctant to enter. We tried manually putting some in via the top of the hive and putting some of their comb inside. Eventually they got the hint and they started wandering in.

They did not all go in and the tide of bees soon turned as they all wandered back out and formed a swarm under the hive.

We had taken our beesuits on and off quite a few times now, and chasing this swarm was not fun anymore,

This time we were able to get the whole swarm into a box and drop it into the newly cleaned top bar hive. This is where they have been for 4 days. They have formed a cluster under the top bars, but I cannot see any comb building going on. Hopefully they are busy within the cluster.