Tales from Swallow Farm

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.