Swallows, swarms and a runaway Queen
You can tell summer is here: the bloody swallows are back. My wife thinks they are lovely as they swoop across the fields, silly moo. I try to explain that it's not just insects they are catching to feed their young - it’s my bees they are eating. As they swoop across the flight path of the bees, why fly around looking for a measly mosquito or an insomniac moth when there are all these sweet flavoured fat bees ready for the taking. I wouldn’t be surprised if they made sure to take them on the way back to the hive rather than on the way out. Ooh yummy this one has a dusting of pollen; the chicks will love that.
May was its usual crazy self, vacillating between too hot, too cold and rain. I was able to provide homes for some swarms that came my way; one did not look very healthy with a lot of dead and torpid bees below the entrance a couple of days after being hived. My book on diseases of honeybees lists several possible viruses that could cause this. I have one solution: shut them up at night and put in a tray of burning sulfur. The next morning, I hoover up everything (Makita makes a great battery vacuum), all the bees and debris are burned, and my brand-new wax and frames go through recycling, which involves a temperature of 125 degrees C.
Not all swarms are good news. I had one swarm of my own that I obviously thought wouldn’t happen; I had taken two frames with swarm cells and put them in a nuc in the sure knowledge that a small lot of bees wouldn’t swarm. They did, of course, the apiary coming alive as the bees rushed out like a gang of schoolgirls heading for the local disco. I was around and as they settled on a handy branch, I actually saw the queen joining the throng. I was slow to react having no veil on or anything to put the queen in; I know people have held the queen in their hand and then ended up with a swarm of bees hanging from their hand. This didn’t seem like a good idea, going back into the house to make my wife coffee while holding a swarm was not going to impress her at all.
My hesitation was enough and the queen took flight again, oddly enough back to her hive where she stayed long enough for me to see her, I was checking what the situation was with other queen cells, before she flew off again to rejoin her swarm. Enough was enough, now armed with some kit I gathered up the swarm, it came in very handy to boost up a hive in another apiary that was queenless. Of course, I might have reduced the queen cells down to one in the first stage except there is always the fear that you cannot know whether you are choosing the best queen cell.
I think one of the issues was that the two frames in the nuc were stuffed full of brood ready to emerge so there were a lot of young bees ready to accompany a queen on a day out. So, my thoughts are that if I am going to leave multiple queen cells in a small nuc, I need to make sure there are not a lot of teeny bees ready to accompany them on a girls’ day out.
My top tip for the month: Get a tube of high melting point grease £3.00 on flea bay. A touch of this around the lid of the smoker and you will be able to remove the spout easily without having to beat it with a hive tool. Ah well, time to slap some more supers on all the hives.
