Swarm season - from one hive to five!

A couple of months back we had one colony, which we split into two. Then we found one swarm, then a second, then a third! So today we had a record five hives to inspect. So much has happened and this blog is very behind! Here's a potted history of the swarms.

Swarm one was found on 24 May in the bait hive which was left on the roof of the toilet:

The frames in the bait hive were of the conventional type (4-sided frames with foundation wax), suited to a 'national' hive rather than the top bar type used in 'natural' beekeeping. So we opted to build a 'national' hive to give them a more permanent home. Although our chosen route is the natural one, we hope we can use the national hive to show people the differences between a top bar hive and a national one.

The new cedar wood national hive arrived as a flat pack. Tue, Ann, Jon and I set to work, each of us making the roof, the boxes and the frames, with Steve as our supervisor:

 

Result. We placed the new hive as close as possible to the location of the bait box before introducing them to their new home on 11 June.

Swarm two was found on Sunday 21 June. Here's Alistair's photo:

The swarm was lifted into the other half of the first top bar hive we made - the entrance is the hole on the right in the photo below. The first colony is in the left half of the hive but their entrance is on the other side - best to separate the entrances rather than have them side by side, so the bees' flight paths to the entrances arrive from opposite sides. It's not quite Heathrow, but you see what I mean!

Swarm three was found hanging on a small tree in the garden on Tuesday 23rd June. It was coaxed down into the bait box, just below the tree in this picture from today's inspection:

So this is how we went from one hive to five. We will be keeping a close eye on them to see how they all get on. Fingers crossed!

Smartening up the apiary

Today we made a start on smartening the apiary up for our ‘Birds and Bees’ event on Sunday 12^th July.

Then we checked all our hives. What a change having gone from one hive to three (not to mention Jenny’s two)! We call them the ‘queenright’ (our second top bar hive to which we moved the queen and a few frames from our first top bar hive), ‘queenless’ (our first top bar hive - the removal of the queen would force the bees to rear a new one) and ‘national’ (the traditional square hive we built as a new home for the swarm we caught in the bait box).

News from the queenless hive: it needs a new name as it's no longer queenless – someone has been laying. But we found several queen cells (the nose-like protuberances in the photo below) so more queens are on the way! 

We considered splitting the hive. This would also be an opportunity to better manage the hive by moving the cross comb, so we broke the bars off (look at all that honey!). The cross comb isn't straight - it curves and overlaps across more than one bar so it isn't possible to move each one on its own and inspect it visually to see what's happening in the hive and detect any problems.

But we had a change of heart: what if there is a problem with the queen? Maybe they need a new one, hence the extra queen cells? So we left them in the end, rather than split the hive. Jenny wondered whether we might have what are called ‘caste swarms’, where a queen leaves with part of the colony but not all. So we wait and see.