Tag Archives: bees

Two Swarms, and a non-Swarm

Although I have stacks that I want to post about, once again, today it’s bees, and swarms again, and I’ve spent the whole day, in a bee suit, in the sun, and I feel like I’ve got a hangover before I sink the first glass of red.

Today was not all successful, and I wanted to make sure that I record my failures as well as my successes, so here goes…

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Bees For Sale in Lincolnshire

With the main rush of swarming now over, and only one colony overdue for it’s turn, it’s time to turn my attention to the second part of the process, which is to re-distribute those colonies. Again, this is working with the bees, in that they want to spread away from the parent colonies, and have been prevented from doing so by me putting them into hives in my field.

If you’re looking for a bee colony then read on.

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Swarm Nine Safely Housed

Yesterday I boxed up the ninth swarm from my own colonies. This was a much smaller swarm, and was close to the hive from which I think the previous swarm came. The timing is about right too, with almost a week elapsing since the prime swarm came out. Having finished, I got a call to tell me that one of the colonies that I manage had swarmed.

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Scything and Swarm Eight

Today I had arranged to do some scything tuition, but had told Andy that I may have to pause to house a swarm. He picked up the peening pretty quickly, which was good, but by lateĀ  morning the sound of bees just kept getting louder. So I suited up, as did he, and we walked around the field looking for a swarm. There wasn’t one, but with thirteen colonies and a strong nectar flow, everywhere that you went sounded like a swarm.

I was pretty sure that at least one colony would go, so I did the rest of the session in my bee suit, and checked regularly. Again, no swarm. So we finished up, and I gave hime some lunch, and then, as he was interested in permaculture and Forest Gardening, I showed him around. On the way back down the hill, I saw some scout bees checking out the empty hive left strategically ready to use in the other field, and pointed them out, only to see more bees checking around the hive. No sooner had I said that there must be a swarm out, than I spotted a dark shadow on the far side of an apple tree, and had to say my goodbyes, and deal with the swarm. As I went back up the field, it was obvious that this was a big swarm, so I went and got my camera for a few pictures.

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Swarm Seven, and still more Questions

A late night preparing more hive equipment last night, has left me with an evening relatively free. So, with a bottle of red open, I wanted to share some pictures and thoughts about swarm seven of the season. I took three pictures of the queen of this swarm, but the intelligent autofocus of my camera was not intelligent enough to get those shots in focus, and after three of the ‘girls’ trying to sting my hands, I wasn’t going to risk taking my gloves off to focus the thing manually.

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