A Swarm in May is worth a load of hay. But 19 swarms...!!!!!

Be sure to watch this amazzzing video of bees marching into their new hive. I can't believed I kept the phone so steady, especially with bees crashing into the screen!

This is the longest I've ever been without posting on my blog. There's nothing going on, it's just a reflection of just how incredibly busy we have been on the smallholding.

With the help of some volunteers the veg plot has been transformed. The poultry and sheep have not caused too many concerns, though an overnight rat attack on the ducklings was unpleasant to deal with.

But really it has been all about the bees. 19 swarms in 19 days!

We started May with 6 hives, though one contained only the remnants of a queenless colony. The first swarm occurred on 8th May and came from hive number 5. At this stage a swarm was still quite a novelty for us as we would only expect to come across one or two in a year. In fact Sue had never actually seen the bees swarm before this year, as they had an uncanny habit of avoiding weekends and usually waiting until she was away on headteachers conference.

An early swarm... little did we know what was to come

Since then all hell has let loose. We have had swarms from our hives, swarms coming in from elsewhere and even our bees pouring out of the hive to investigate other swarms, only to return to their own hive.

The bees have been pretty grouchy too. Working in the veg garden after about 11am has been a risky business. So much so that the decision has been taken to move the apiary down into the orchard. Hopefully most of the swarming is now over. Our bees certainly seem a lot more settled and kamikaze bees diving straight into your hair has become less than a daily event.


The overall result is that we now have NINE busy hives, including a new apiary down in the orchard.
I have been busy building new frames, brood boxes, rooves etc but we still had to give away three swarms as we ran out of spare hives to home them.

Most amazing has been our adoption of the marching in method of rehoming a swarm. For those who aren't familiar with bee-keeping, here's a quick description of the whole swarming and collection process:

Photos appear completely haphazardly due to Blogger making it virtually impossible to drop them where you want!

Swarming is a natural process which occurs when a colony of bees reaches capacity in its current home. It is their way of spreading and colonising. Before the swarm event, the bees start turning normal brood cells into queen cells, which appear completely different to the others. From these cells will hatch virgin queens, one of whom is destined to stay in the hive and begin a whole new generation of bees. On the day of swarming, usually a warm, sultry day, the old queen and about half the hive leave. They have filled up on honey before their departure. You can hear them inside the hive before they go. They then swirl around outside the hive and spread out over the garden. Eventually they start to congregate in one area, where the queen has settled, and after about twenty minutes they will have clustered into a protective ball around the queen. This is usually not too far from the hive they left.

At this point they are quite peaceful. I have walked right past them without even noticing them.

Sometimes they will remain in this cluster for up to a couple of days - one of my swarms got drenched overnight but was still able to be collected the next evening. On other occasions they quickly depart and head over the fields, gone forever. For they have sent out scouts to find a new home. This is a good time to observe their waggle dancing, as bees return to the swarm and communicate with the others in this amazing way, spinning, turning and shaking their bums!

This year has been a phenomenal year for swarms. It is still early in the season but the bee-keeping companies are working from 6am and have long back orders on hive parts. Goodness knows what is going on.
I do not see how all these swarms can be finding homes in a landscape devoid of natural cavities which would be suitable.

So you have a swarm settle in you garden. Typically they will be in a hedge or hanging from a branch. There are two ways to collect them. Ideally you can just snip the branch and the whole lot drop into a box. If you get the queen, they will stay in there and any that took to the air will find her too.
It's not always this easy though. Sometimes you have to give the branch a quick and violent shake so that the swarm falls into your box. This usually results in slightly more disturbance. Occasionally the queen remains on the branch and the whole lot return to her!

Once you've got the swarm in a box - nothing fancy, just a strong cardboard box is sufficient, you need to transfer them into a hive, assuming you have a spare one ready, and persuade them to stay in the nice new home you have created for them.
We always rub lemon balm leaves all over the frames inside the hive. Lemon balm is also known as bee balm and seems to be irresistible to our little friends. Before we did this, we would usually find our swarms departed the next morning.

To transfer the bees from your cardboard box to the hive there are two methods. You can tip them in the top and shut the lid. This is obviously quite disturbing for them and results in clouds of angry bees. It does usually work though.



But the second method is the one we have adopted this year. You construct a ramp in front of the hive you want them to move into. For some reason it is better if it is white, or we lay light fabric over the top. You then tip the bees onto this ramp and hope. What follows is astonishing.

The bees start marching up the ramp into the hive of their own accord. Some stand outside the hive, anchor themselves to the ground and fan the pheromones from the queen toward the swarm so they know which way to go.
Within half an hour most of the procession of bees is inside the hive. By the evening all of the stragglers are in.
We have now done this five times. There were a couple of glitches. One time the queen obviously stayed lodged in the corner of the box so they all marched the wrong way! I just shook them out again and it worked at the second time of asking.
Another time everything went smoothly until, a couple of hours later, I found the whole swarm back where I had collected them and the hive completely empty. It is just possible I had missed the queen when I collected them, or for some reason they didn't like the hive I had provided. I just rubbed more lemon balm inside the hive and collected the swarm again. I cut the remaining twigs to make sure there was nothing, queen or pheromones, to attract them back again. Four days later they are still in the hive.

During all of this, I have only picked up three stings. Two harmless on the head, but one full-on sting on the hand which swelled instantly and by the next day had my whole hand and lower arm double its normal size. Uncomfortable but nothing to worry about. It was my own fault. I decided to wear thinner gloves than normal whilst collecting a swarm in order to be able to use my phone to record the event. Not a wise move!

And now we head into June.
A swarm in June is worth a silver spoon.

Looking further forward
A swarm in July is worth not a fly!

A Swarm In May Is Worth A Load Of Hay

A Swarm In May

Is worth a load of hay.

A swarm in June

Is worth a silver spoon

A swarm in July

is worth not a fly.

A lot of a bee-keeper's time is spent trying to prevent colonies from swarming, for when this happens off goes half the hive and honey production for the year will be minimal from that hive while they build back their numbers. Too late in the year and they may even struggle to regain enough strength before heading into winter.

But if they are going to swarm, the earlier the better, for it is a chance to increase the number of colonies you hold, possibly making up for any losses over winter or during the hungry period in early spring. Of course you have to catch and keep hold of the swarm before it disappears over the horizon or up into someone's chimney pot!

There are other options to multiply your bees by deliberately splitting colonies which stimulates the queenless half to produce a new queen.


Of course, the reverse side of all this is that, if you are lucky, you might just be able to catch someone else's escaped swarm. In the world of bee-keeping the rule is finders keepers.

This spring was pretty disastrous for many bee-keepers, for winter kept poking its head back through the door and spring got off to a very slow start. There are tales of many beekeepers losing half or more of their colonies.

For us at Swallow Farm, all three of our hives were at one point in peril. The smallest, which was marginal whether or not to take into winter as a whole colony, almost vanished to nothing. The middle one looked just about ok. And the largest colony, which had been a real monster at the back end of 2017, well the queen started laying drone brood - males - pretty useless beings. 

The last post I wrote about Sue's bee-keeping saw her deliberately killing the queen and we were left hoping that the queenless colony would make itself a new queen. The other two colonies were looking precarious to say the least.

Sue also set up two empty hives and rubbed lemon balm on the frames inside in the vague hope of attracting any passing swarms, something we had previously completely failed to do.

So it was somewhat surprising when, after just a few days, we noticed there were a lot of bees entering and leaving one of the bait hives. We thought they might just be robbing out the old honey on the frames, but there did seem to be a lot of them. And when they were still there after a week, it did indeed seem as if we might just have gone and caught ourselves a colony of bees. Sue looked into the hive but could see no eggs or queen, so our best guess it that we maybe have a virgin queen who will by now have made her mating flight. Hopefully soon Sue will find new brood in the hive.

Meanwhile, the two smaller hives have made a comeback with the better weather. Patience is definitely a virtue in beekeeping.

And so forwards to last Friday. My peaceful pottering in the polytunnel was accompanied by a louder and louder buzzing of bees, enough to make me go outside and investigate. It was a warm muggy day so no real surprise to see thousands of bees over the central pathway near the stables and hives. I observed from a distance and it became apparent that the focus was inside the near end of the privet hedge I planted a few years back.

This was a swarm. In the past I have suited up and collected these for Sue, but I did not know where my bee suit was and would surely split Sue's if I tried to squeeze into it! Besides, the spare hives had been used as lures.

So Sue popped back in her lunch break. I lopped off all surrounding branches and twigs while Sue held an empty box under the swarm, which had now all settled down. One last snip and the whole swarm was in the box. I took shelter in the house, though swarming bees are in fact remarkably peaceful, while Sue shook the swarm into a quickly improvised spare hive.

In the past, these captured swarms have always quickly disappeared again. I don't know whether it was the lemon balm or not, but this swarm has stayed. We are now up to five hives.

Then a week later - it's Friday, it must be another swarm. I was weeding the onion patch after heavy overnight rain. It was getting quite late and I became aware of a couple of bees quite peacefully buzzing me. I could hear more bees somewhere nearby, though I could not imagine what was attracting them, especially when they would normaly all be heading back into the hive for the night. I looked above my head and there, on one of the willow arches, was a very settled swarm of bees.

I would guess they had been there for some time as swarming normally occurs early afternoon. Besides they looked settled and one or two were starting to act a bit more defensively, as if they had been there a while. Sue donned her suit and I grabbed the loppers, but this time the bees were just a tad too active for me to help out unarmoured. Instead, Sue shook the swarm into a box.

We had to beg and borrow spare hive parts for the last swarm and were supposed to be replacing them soon. Now the replacement parts, which had just arrived in the post, would be needed.

We left them be, but later when we returned to the willow arech there was still a small cluster of bees there. It was possible that the queen was still in this cluster.

Early Saturday morning, while I was still in a slumber Sue shook the remnants of the swarm and transferred them in with the others.

As I write they are still all in there. In a short period of time we have gone from struggling to hold onto three hives to having six hives!
Sue will be kept busy as a bee.

Edit: Sue has just inspected her hives. The ex-monster hive, where Sue killed the queen, is in trouble. Despite making two queen cells, there is no sign of eggs or brood. We may have to let this one go and hope they sort themselves out during the year, either that or kick them all out.
The small swarm we captured on Friday have gone! They obviously didn't like the nucleus box Sue shook them into. But very positively, the other two swarms which we have acquired this year both have eggs inside, so they are up and running.

But the story doesn't end there. For this morning Sue and I were busy making up some more frames and brood boxes for the bees. They must have heard us, for just now while I was hoeing the onions I came across an absolutely monster swarm hanging on one of the willow arches. I assumed it was the departed swarm, but there are far too many bees for that.

I didn't notice this monster swarm until I was hoeing the onions right next to them.

These swarms seem to like my willow arches.

Sue has now captured the swarm. Finders keepers!

A buzz about the place

15th February 2017

Yesterday Sue was worried that she had lost one of her bee colonies. Apparently if you put your ear up to the hive you can hear them buzzing, even when they are huddled together in a tight cluster to keep warm.
But today as the sun warmed the air there was a contented buzzing on the smallholding. You didn't have to put your ear up to the hive to hear it, for the bees were out and sounding happy.
Even better news. Both hives were out.
It's good for them to get out and get some fresh air and it is their first chance in the year to clean out the hive. But there is not much food around at this time of year. A few snowdrops and aconites, maybe a few hazel catkins and a couple of mahonias in flower, but it is lean pickings. This is the time of year when bees can starve, for it is a simple equation of energy in/energy out.

The bees weren't the only busy ones today. We were cleaning the stables in readiness for a change around when we get to the end of the month and some of the poultry can hopefully go out.

I trimmed the wildlife hedges right back. They need to be done when they are still dormant and before the birds are nesting. For a while the sparrows and dunnocks may need to find somewhere else to roost, but many of the hedgerow trees are budding up, their leaves about to unfurl and create a perfect place for feeding and nesting.

One sad sign of the times today. There was a female greenfinch at the feeders. Why is this sad? Because it is of note. Greenfinches are the latest of our farmland birds to be suffering a plummet in their numbers. Hopefully a male will appear and we will be treated to their delightfully wheezy song.

Finally, I got my car back! There had been bad news earlier in the day, The alternator had been replaced but no diesel was coming through the system. This was at the back of my mind all day, which is why I busied myself trying not to think about it. But all was ok in the end. It seems that the alternator failing had quite an effect on the electrics of the car.

My mechanic even got a hug!

Strawberry Moon Solstice or The Honey Moon Buzz

It's been a long day, 16 hours 51 minutes 30 seconds to be precise.

An awful lot has happened so the day deserves a blog post all to itself.

Allegedly the first day of summer too, though nobody told the weather gods.

Sunrise was 4.36am today. I didn't get up to see it, though I was up about an hour later. However, it wasn't till the afternoon that the sun finally put in an appearance after a thoroughly damp morning.

There's a full moon tonight too, a June full moon being known as a Strawberry moon. It's a nice name for a moon which is supposed to coincide with the start of strawberry picking season... if you are an Algonquin Indian in North America, which is where the name comes from.
Here my strawberries aren't quite ready yet, though I've been offered the chance to pick all that I want from next door this year.

One newspaper article described a June full moon coinciding with summer solstice as a "once in a life time" occurrence. They clearly don't understand statistics. As full moons come round every 28 days, surely you'd be unlucky if there was only one in your life time!

When I checked, the last time this occurred was 22 June 1967 - when I was almost one year of age. If I live to nearly 96 I'll see it again on June 21st 2062.

First Red Duke of Yorks
So with the strawberries stubbornly refusing to ripen I went for the next best thing and dug up my first outdoor grown new potatoes of the year. I could have waited longer and got bigger tubers, but there will be enough and the first potatoes of the year always feel special. I love the deep red colour of Red Duke of York and I love the fact that this early variety is so floury and makes excellent chips. For the classic new potato taste, though, I've grown Dunluce outside this year and Arran Pilot in the polytunnel, the last of which we have just consumed.

Two new lambs
First smallholding business of the day was to drop by in Upwell to pick up a bone saw and a few other bits and pieces. I don't do much butchery but it was going second hand and always handy to have.
Then on to Church Farm Rare Breeds Centre in Stow Bardolph to pick up two lambs. These are just  for fattening up - the farm buys in orphan lambs as this is their main attraction and income during the spring. Luckily for me, it means they have a supply of ready weaned, tame sheep all ready to go just as the grass is getting long. They'll join the Shetlands for five months before going off to slaughter, so I won't be giving them names or getting too attached to them.

Arthur and the turkeys
The turkey poults stayed in this morning. With the weather being cold and damp I thought it best to play safe. One of them jumped the stable wall with mum though and spent the day having some quality one to one time with her. The weather brightened up for the afternoon and the rest of the poults came out. Arthur joined them, He gets on well with the turkey family.

There's a but of a buzz round here
I'd been up for about eight hours and still there was half the day to go. Now another name for the Strawberry Moon is the Honey Moon, which turned out to be a far more appropriate name for today.
After a little early afternoon nap (it was, after all, a very, very long day), I took the dogs out to check on the sheep and turkeys. But something was amiss. There was a buzz in the air. And I mean a BUZZ.
Thousands and thousands of bees were swarming around hive number one. The cloud of bees stretched over toward the veg patch. There must be a swarm somewhere but I just couldn't get close enough to see. I gingerly skirted round, taking a very wide berth, until I eventually came across this.

Incoming!

The bees always swarm when Sue is not at home, so muggins here gets to don the bee suit and collect them up. While I was getting ready, the bees settled onto a wooden fence post. Not the ideal swarm location. There would be no shaking them into a box or simply cutting off the end of a branch. Swarm bees are not supposed to be aggressive and they did in fact allow very close approach. But there are limits to their patience and when you scoop them into a box by the glove full, there are some who suspect you of trying to hurt their queen who is somewhere at the centre of things )or hopefully by now in the box).

A solstice chick
Remember I said it was a long day. Well there was more. For when I came in from recapturing the bees one of the Ixworth chicks had hatched and several more were pipping. By tomorrow there could be eighteen of them to look after!



And so I sit here watching the first episode of the new Top Gear I've managed to catch up with before I turn over for the start of the England Match. It's now a beautiful evening to be watching the beautiful game.
When the sun sets at 21.28 I'll go and put the chickens away and hopefully get to admire the Strawberry Honey Moon.

Don't worry, bee happy!

As I write, the sweetcorn is still intact. I have however caught my first field mouse of the autumn in the polytunnel traps, plus two voles (short-tailed field voles to be precise). There was a single rat dropping in the polytunnel too and there is the familiar smell of rodents in the stables.

But on the whole it does not seem that we have suffered the sort of invasion which previous harvests have catalysed.

This morning is a beautiful morning and I'm off to see a Red-footed Falcon just up the road at Willow Tree Fen. Boris is coming along for his first ever birdwatching trip. Let's hope he behaves.

When I get back, I'll be planting up some of the plants I've raised this year and I'll be rotavating, for two days of significant rainfall have been welcome and have left the soil in perfect condition for planting, weeding and turning.

The veg garden is looking just about at its best now. The flower mixes are floribundant (no it's not a real word) and the grass is verdant. I even managed to mow it all before the rain came.

It is important to me not only that the veg plot is productive, but that it looks beautiful too and that it is a haven for wildlife, especially beneficial insects. I have plenty of space to produce more than enough to satisfy Sue and I, so devoting a few beds to easily grown flower mixes doesn't compromise anything.

The one drawback of attracting so many pollinators into the veg plot is that, just occasionally, our paths cross. Sue's bees can be a little tetchy at times, a little on the defensive side. They normally go straight for the head and end up tangled in your hair. There is then a choice to be made. Try to extract them risking a sting to the crown or to the hand, or hope that they get bored, manage to extricate themselves and fly off. The latter is not quite so easy to do in reality when you can feel a bee crawling on your head and hear its angry buzzing in your ears.

But last week, taking the first course of action did not work either. I was actually planting some bee-friendly plants, anise hyssop and verbena bonariensis, when the attack happened. A single kamikazee bee which had clearly got out of the wrong side of the hive this morning took exception to me. Seconds later I felt a familiar sharp, painful sting in my finger.  have to say, the actual sting doesn't actually hurt too much. It's more just the initial shock. But my reaction to bee stings is more the worry. For within an hour or so the swelling begins. It starts at the location of the sting and then creeps very slowly. Last time a sting on the top of the head resulted in a swollen cheek bone. This time, a sting on the middle finger, by the next day, had become a swollen hand.

It wasn't helped by the fact that, two hours after the first suicide attack, the same happened again! Another sting on the same finger. 

I posted my picture on Facebook and all my non-beekeeping friends were horrified. There was even talk of anaphylactic shock and epipens, which I considered an over-reaction to a fairly normal occurrence. 

But I did start to think. I know that different people tend to react differently to bee stings. Last time Sue got stung it was just above the eye and I had to spend the next week persuading everybody that I had not hit her, such was the swelling! She spent most of the week sporting a rather oversize pair of sunglasses.

I seem to suffer a similar reaction to Sue. No real pain apart from the initial sting, but a delayed swelling which spreads and looks rather shocking. Oh, how could I forget the itching. Intense itchiness which comes and goes for no apparent reason. Indescribably itchy.

I decided to take to the interweb for advice. Not always a wise move when it comes to medical matters, but I just wanted to know if this swelling was indicative of an allergy to bee venom and if the next step could be anaphylactic shock. The interweb was unusually unhelpful, leading me round in circles and not really giving an answer. So I took to one of the beekeeping Facebook groups.

The comments I received from actual beekeepers were most helpful and put my mind at rest. It seems that many people have a similar reaction to bee stings. Although not the normal reaction, and probably indicative of some level of allergy, it is certainly not unusual either. It seems I am about as likely to suddenly stop breathing as anybody else. Unless symptoms change or get worse I have little to worry about. More than that, several people said that after a few more stings my body would probably get used to being stung and the reaction would die down.

So today I shall be doing some more planting and if I get stung I shall take consolation in the fact that it's probably part of my journey toward immunity... hopefully.

At least the swollen hand took my mind off the pain I was already suffering all down my arm after I foolishly tried to change the angle of descent of a branch which fell the wrong way when I was up a ladder dismantling a willow tree which had outgrown its allotted space... but that's another story. Let's just say that the heavy rain we've had has allowed me to find the chinks in the repairs I made to the gutters!

First Frost Winter 2014/15

Well, I'm back!!!

The blog has been on a birding break for autumn. While it's been away, I've been to Shetland for a week (exciting birding with such waifs as White's Thrush, Siberian Rubythroat, Hornemann's Arctic Redpoll, Myrtle Warbler, Swainson's Thrush), Barra (Outer Hebrides) for a day trip (for a Scarlet Tanager which hid for 7 hours and only came out for half an hour - luckily just as we arrived), Cornwall (another day trip and a big 840 mile dip), Cleveland (another dip), Norfolk... Oh, and I've spent some time on the smallholding too, mostly gathering in the harvest.

I guess a quick catch up is in order.

 

Well, this morning we had the first frost of the year. With only one light frost during the whole of last winter, some of the poultry were clearly puzzled by their water being frozen!



Frosty fleeces.
Fortunately the Shetlands are well adapted
for tough conditions

Some of the sheep are almost ready to go off on their final journey. They've certainly been doing a good job of munching down the grass. I've moved my Shetland ram (really must think of a name for him) in with four of the Shetland ewes. The two who had twins last year are getting a rest. The White-faced Woodland continues to escape and has been moved to the top paddock to keep the two girls company. They do like to boss him about.

Is it Boxing Day yet?

With Christmas (yes, I've mentioned the 'C' word) looming, the turkeys are growing fast. They have proven to be very likeable characters, much friendlier than we expected. I'm sure that won't stop us enjoying one for Christmas dinner though!














I can't remember how many guinea fowl keets there were when I last blogged, but it's been a difficult time for them. Some very wet weather back in September made survival of the chicks a very precarious affair and we came out of that with just 7 youngsters. When they were big enough, mum stopped going into a hut for the night and took them onto the fence, which resulted in another two disappearing overnight. We then had the nightly ritual of catching the remaining five and putting them in with Elvis and her fast growing chicks. Just a few days ago I took the decision that they could fend for themselves at night. Unfortunately yesterday I found another one perished so we are down to four. It all sounds a bit sad, but it wouldn't be right to confine the guinea fowls. Of all the birds we keep, they behave the most like wild birds and in the wild four survivors would be plenty enough to sustain the size of the flock. It just means that we don't get to sell any and that guinea fowl will remain be a special treat on the menu.

I mentioned Elvis. Our faithful broody is now the last of the original chickens which came with the farm when we purchased it. She has successfully reared another clutch of chicks. They have grown well and are remarkably bold. In fact a couple of them hop up into the feed bucket even when I'm carrying it around!

Another hen was determined to have her own chicks too. She tried several corners of the stables before eventually managing to keep secret a stash of 18 eggs. But she was disturbed on the night the chicks started hatching which resulted in the loss of a couple of new born chicks and the abandonment of the unhatched eggs. However, she has come out of it with 5 healthy chicks (there were six, but one got stick under an overturned dish and Sue only discovered this unfortunate mishap when it was too late.)




And lastly the bees. They have finally gone to bed after staying out very late this year. Hopefully the weather won't trick them into coming out again and they can reappear stronger than ever in the spring.

So here's looking forward to 2015!