I'm back!!

Wow.

Has it really been a whole year since I updated this blog?

Apologies for that, but life has become an awful lot busier as I became a Grandad which has taken up so much more time than I could have ever imagined that it would.

Anyway, back to business.

I still have my allotment, and it is slowly being brought back under control after being mostly neglected over the winter, there are crops in the ground and lots of seedlings in the polytunnel, and quite a few new beds as well.

I will do a much more detailed update later, I am writing this update now because we have finally managed to get some livestock - about 10,000 of them.

Yes, we are now keeping bees!

Angela and Diane about to inspect the hive

My wife Angela has been very interested in keeping bees from the first day we arrived on the allotment and discovered that there was one area set aside for an Apiary.

Towards the middle of last year we purchased a hive and other necessary bits from Ebay but were unable to get a swarm, despite us leaving the empty hive at my local church which had several bee colonies living in the walls.

This year we decided that trying to catch a swarm was too random an event, so I contacted a local beekeeper who sells bees to get us on her list for a nuc (a nucleus of bees including a queen, some frames of brood and stores of food)

Two weeks ago Diane, a friend who already has bees at the allotment, offered us a some bees as she had no room for them herself.

We weren't able to get down to the plot so she put them into our hive for us, but unfortunately they decided not to stay and left later the same day.

Last weekend started off as usual with me on the plot early on Saturday and all seemed normal until I strolled over to have a chat with a newly arrived plot neighbour.

As I got to him, Jimmy said 'I think we may have a bee problem' and pointed over towards Diane's shed where I could see loads of bees circling around.

I went to have a look, and could see loads of bees being very interested in a bait box (small empty box used to encourage swarms to take up residence) that Diane had left out balances on top of her compost heap.  It was a wild swarm that had decided that her box was where they wanted to be!

The bait box

I gave Diane a quick call, and as she lives next to the allotment she was soon on to watch the spectacle.  Within five minutes all the bees had gone inside the box, and she offered the swarm to us.

I eagerly accepted, and we agreed that we would return towards dusk to transfer the bees to our hive as we felt that the previous swarm had been transferred too early in the day which had given them enough time to re-swarm before night time.

We hadn't been home for long when Diane called me to say that she had just caught another swarm which was larger, and would I like that one instead?  Her brother in law had come down to see the first swarm, and on his way home had walked past a lot of bees in a nearby alleyway which Diane had also managed to catch in a large cardboard box

Wild Swarm

Wild Swarm

At 8pm on Saturday Angela and Diane, suitably dressed in beekeeping smocks and veils, emptied the box of bees into our hive.  All went well, and we watched the last of the bees join the queen inside as the sun went down.

Our hive at the back with bees in the blue parcel

Opening the package

The next morning was warm and sunny, and we went down to the allotment to check on the bees around 9.30am before we went out for the morning.

There was no sign of activity as we approached the hive, but as we got closer there was a definite loud buzzing sound coming from within, so we went away happy.

Tipping them in

The happiness was not to last, however,  as we had a text from Diane at about 12.30pm to say that the bees had swarmed again and we had an empty hive once more.

Later that afternoon we were sitting in our front garden with our grandson when I started to hear some loud buzzing, which I though was coming from a 40' sycamore at the bottom of the garden, but Angela pointed out what looked like a drifting cloud of smoke coming up the road towards us.

Unbelievably, it was another swarm!

Some needed a little encouragement to leave the box!

It flew right over our heads and eventually settled about 11' up in a neighbour's conifer hedge, two houses away.

Even though I had never done it before, I decided that I was going to catch this swarm myself.

After getting some advice from Diane I armed myself with a rickety pair of small steps, a pair of loppers, a cardboard box and an old shower curtain.

Finally in their new home

I put on Angela's bee smock and veil, placed the shower curtain on the ground under the hive, put the box on top and climbed the steps.  Now, these steps were only 3' high, I am 6' and so the bees were still 2-3' above my head, so I reached in with the loppers and blindly started to cut the branches that the swarm were sitting on.

The first small branch fell and missed the box completely so I jumped down and scooped up the bees and put them in the box.

Stragglers entering the hive

The second branch that I managed to cut was much larger, with loads more bees on it but unfortunately the additional weight caused it to swivel as it fell, and it landed straight on top of my head.

For a second or two my veil was completely covered in bees, but I carefully climbed down and brushed most of them off and into the box.

By this point there were quite a lot of bees flying around, so I moved a few feet away to watch to see if there was any indication that I had got the queen in the box already.

Note the bees in the entrance fanning to send the 'this is home'  pheromone to bring in the last few still outside

If I had caught the queen the rest of the bees would follow her scent and also join her in the box.

It took a couple more attempts up those rickety ladders before she was finally in the box, but about an hour after the first attempt almost all the bees were safely inside and I was able to secure the lid closed with some tape, wrap the box in the shower curtain to catch some of the bees that hadn't gone inside and move the whole thing into the shade to let them settle.

At 8pm on Sunday Angela and Diane repeated the process of tipping the swarm from the box into the empty hive, but this time we decided to trap the queen inside for a couple of days to prevent them from re-swarming again.  This was done by putting the queen excluder on the bottom of the hive - this allows the workers to pass through but not the larger queen.

The third swarm entering the box

This swarm was the largest of the three we had tried to house, and the bees were a very light brown and yellow which probably means that they are descended from and Italian strain of bees.

 

Securing the hive

To make sure that the bees had enough supplies to get them properly started off we decided to give them a feed of sugar syrup, so after they had had a couple of days to get used to their new hive we added a feeder to the box.

Feeder in place

The feeder we used is like a plastic dougnnut with a small central hole to allow the bees to enter the feeder, but with a cup covering the hole to stop them entering the super that the feeder is housed in.

I mixed 1kg of sugar with 1 liter of warm water and poured it into a plastic feeder

Lid removed so you can see the bees feeding

On Thursday night we decided that we now needed to remove the queen excluder from the base of the hive. 

Feeder removed

Although this will allow the queen to leave the hive and possibly take all the bees with her in a swarm, it is important to do just in case we have a virgin, unmated queen because if she does not fly to mate before she is 41 days old she never will. 

Excluder out

This would be disastrous as she would then not be able to lay any eggs and the hive would slowly die out.

Replacing the feeder

 We were anticipating the worst case scenario in that there would be loads of bees sat on the excluder, but in the end there were only a couple, and by placing the excluder in front of the entrance they soon climbed back in.

The stragglers going home

We also took the opportunity to slide out the baseboard which sits under the mesh floor and give it a basic inspection,  There were a small number of dead bees who must have tried to enter the hive the wrong way, but there was also a large amount of small wax scales which shows that the worker bees are hard at work in building up the comb inside the hive.

Wax scales on the baseboard