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I’m wondering if there’s a wild colony somewhere around here, as this group had settled well away from my own hives. Unfortunately it was also about ten metres up in a sycamore tree so there was no way I could reach it.

I did think about chainsawing through most of the branch and then allowing it to fall gently to the ground using a rope to control it, but I couldn’t be sure it wouldn’t fall on a barn roof, so I had to let them go.

My daughter woke me this morning to tell me that another swarm had arrived. I’ve no idea where it came from, but the bees were still in the air when I got to a window and were clearly starting to settle low down in an apple tree. Unfortunately the cardboard box I used to capture the last one wasn’t really in a fit state for another outing so I needed to get a new one and I didn’t have any of an appropriate size. In the end I decided to make one by cutting down a larger box, which actually means I now have something that should be a little more sturdy. Having spent half an hour or perhaps a little longer doing that I collected together everything I needed, laid it out on the grass next to the tree and went back inside to put on my bee suit. As I lifted it off the rail and turned to face the window I saw all the bees suddenly lift into the air again, clearly already intent on moving to a new home. They’d not even been there two hours. We watched as they moved off and I realised they were heading towards the apiary, so I followed them.

One of my hives died out a couple of weeks back despite all my efforts to keep it going. I think the weather had just ground them down to the point where they no longer had the numbers to remain viable despite making it through the winter. Dismantling it, melting down the comb and sterilising the hive parts for re-use was on my list of stuff to do this week, but the swarm had already found it and was busy moving in. This isn’t really a desirable state of affairs because any disease present in the hive can get picked up by the new inhabitants, and I prefer newly-housed swarms to draw out new comb from the honey they carried with them when they left their original colony rather than feeding it to larvae and potentially passing on disease that way. Too late now though. I guess I will just be happy that I have another colony and I’ll try to move them onto fresh comb as soon as I can.

On the first warm, dry day for weeks, I had noticed a higher level of activity than normal around the entrance to one of my hives, but I’ve not been opening the hives up when it’s been so cold and wet and it didn’t surprise me that the bees might suddenly get so active given the opportunity, so perhaps I should have expected to find this just after lunchtime today (26th May). The good news was that it settled near the ground where I could reach it. The bad news was that they settled on the post supporting a crab apple tree, so I couldn’t exactly trim it off and carry the bees away.

I decided to try something I’ve really not had much success with in the past, but I couldn’t think of much else. I put a cardboard box (upside down) over the top of the cluster (just visible at the top of the above photo) and then puffed smoke at the bottom of the cluster repeatedly until most of them climbed into the box. Once they’d moved I put the box on a sheet on the ground and propped it open at the bottom (spilling a few bees in the process).

Clearly they were happy enough there though. The one on the bottom right of the wooden block here is fanning pheromones out into the air to tell the stragglers where to come (as are a few of the others).

Now I just have to make up a new hive, which is all going to be a bit of a rush this evening as I really wasn’t expecting to have to provide new living quarters at the moment, and tomorrow morning I’ll put them inside. Gives me a convenient opportunity to try out my new 3d-printed hive entrances though.