Ivy Pollen

The warm weather over the past few days has meant the bees are still very active with a lot of pollen being brought in.  This is a bit surprising as brood rearing must be almost over for the year.  Perhaps they are stocking up for spring while there is a good supply available.

At this time of year about 90% of the pollen comes from ivy.  Ivy pollen has a high level of amino acids and the nectar is rich in sugar, 49% w/w.

The bees are still on guard against intruders.  This wasp is probably a queen so I don't know if she was looking for honey or for somewhere to hibernate.  Either way she was quickly shown the door.

Another lesson learned

I have been trying so hard not to have a swarm this year.  Fourteen days ago two of my three colonies had charged but unsealed queen cells so I split them both, putting the queens into nucs. Seven days later I re-inspected them both, reducing each to one queen cell.  Job done.  When the postman came yesterday morning he told me he had seen a "massive" swarm around the holly bush in my neighbour's garden on Saturday, two days before, and wondered if they might still be there.  I explained that the bees move off to their chosen site within a few hours, especially in fine weather as we have had.

Yesterday afternoon I was gardening and could hear a lot of bees.  I noticed them flying around the eaves and thought the swarm must have taken up residence in my roof.  I put on my suit and went up into the roof to see what was going on and found - no bees. Then I realised the bees had been flying around rather than in and out so I wondered if they might be scouts.  I went round to my neighbour's garden and found this, 55 hours after the swarm departed.

Thinking they might be nearly ready to move off I hurried home to fetch some kit and whizzed back again to collect them. Although they were in a holly bush it was an easy catch as almost the whole swarm was hanging from one branch.

When I went back to collect them all was quiet, with no sign of a bee.  I thought they may have absconded but when I looked in the box they were all there, waiting patiently.

The box I had chosen was larger than the nuc, which presented difficulties in tipping them in.  I decided to risk walking them in, something I have read about but have not seen or done before.  I tipped all the bees onto the sheet and watched.  Slowly they started to make their way upwards but it was slow.  There seemed to be so many bees Nasanov fanning that they were almost blocking the entrance and even though I had removed the entrance block it was hard to get in.

After an hour there was some progress and it looked like this.

After an hour and a half it looked like this - 9.30 pm and getting dark.  The bees were placid but seemed lethargic, perhaps they were cold and hungry.  Whatever they felt like they didn't have much option but to go in.

And at 10 pm and pitch dark.

And this morning, almost all in.  I managed to coax the last dozen or so cold tired bees inside.

Now they are safely back here in a nuc I am very relieved, as putting them in box was a lot easier than trying to get them out of the roof would have been.  I don't know why they were taking so long to make their minds up about where to settle down.  Next time the postman tells me he's seen a swarm I'll check straight away, except I hope there won't be a next time.

Squatters

Another big surprise from the bees.  One of my splits from the spring ended up with a drone-laying queen.  After giving them the benefit of the doubt for a few weeks, 19 days ago I shook them out in the meadow about 50m away, expecting that the flyers would return to the hive stand and charm their way into the adjacent hive.  By next morning all the bees had gone from the meadow and I noticed a group on the stand where their hive had been.  It gradually disappeared and I thought no more about it.

This morning I came to change the floor and put in slatted rack on the next-door hive because I had noticed a lot of burr comb on the floor.  When I turned the floor over I found five combs underneath, hanging from the mesh of the floor and covered in bees.  After sorting the new floor I shook the bees from the wild comb into the hive but then realised that the comb contained brood as well as nectar and pollen!  As far as I could see it was all drone brood.  The combs were pretty bashed up by this stage but this is what they looked like.

My first thought had been that the bees underneath were all part of the colony in the hive but now I don't know what has produced the drone brood underneath.  Could it be that the drone-laying queen returned with the flyers and set up camp under the next door hive?  Or are there now (or were there all along?) laying workers?  I am a bit concerned I may have shaken a drone-laying queen into the hive along with all the bees from the wild comb but there is nothing I can do about that now.

I didn't have a camera with me at the hive today but did take a picture of the drone brood a few weeks ago.  I never saw the (presumed) drone-laying queen but it was difficult with so many drones in the hive.  There weren't multiple eggs in cells and the brood extended over several frames so I thought then that laying workers was an unlikely diagnosis.

I am not sure how to work this all out.  Any comments will be welcome.

Front page news

Next month's BBKA News arrived this morning.  On the front is a photo of five of my bees having a gossip while waiting for their new queen to return from a mating flight.

Inbound

I had been expecting a swarm because there had been lots of scout bees around my bait hive but I didn't know when it would arrive or where it was coming from.  I have had a few swarms of my own after the very cold weather in most of May followed by sudden warmth at the end of the month and I suspected it would be from one of my hives.  I also heard news of a swarm in a tree not far away on the other side of the golf course.

In the end the swarm's arrival was very sudden so I didn't see from which direction it came.  I had walked past the bait hive a minute before with no sign of bees and when I returned there were thousands and thousands of bees in the air.  Almost immediately they started filing into the box.

In retrospect the bait hive wasn't well situated as it was on top of a wall with quite an overhang.  Many of the bees landed on the side of the wall and walked up towards the hive entrance.

Such was their weight as they climbed up over each other that great clumps of them broke off and fell into the grass so they had to start all over again.

It was fascinating to see how they formed chains so that the others could climb up to the entrance.

It was also interesting to see quite a few drones and some workers with pollen, all swept along in the excitement. I can tell from their colour these were not my bees and I hadn't lost a swarm that morning so I think this may have been the swarm from the golf course.

This was the scene 25 minutes after they arrived, with some still under the overhang but nearly all inside the box.

By the following morning the bees were safely installed on a friend's allotment in Jesmond.  I hope they turn out to be well behaved.

A mating flight (I think)

Glancing out of the window this morning I saw a lot of bees in the air.  At first I thought this was another swarm but it was coming from hive 4, which shouldn't be able to swarm as it was reduced to one sealed queen cell 10 days before.  I went over to watch and there were thousands of bees in the air - and on the hive roofs and nearby raspberry canes and cane supports.

Most of the bees were just sitting around while others flew about excitedly but there was no sign of them coalescing, as in a swarm.  There were a lot on the front of the hive and a clump under the landing board.

I guessed this was a mating flight but wasn't sure what stage it was at - whether this was the virgin queen leaving or returning.  I watched for about an hour, hoping I might see the queen return.  As I did so the fanning slowly subsided and the number of bees gradually diminished as they moved back inside.

It was cool (11℃), grey and breezy, perhaps not the best weather for a mating flight, but it has been worse recently.  I read since that mating flights last for between 5 and 30 minutes so my guess is that the queen was probably already back in the hive by the time I got there.  I'll wait another two or three weeks before checking that she is laying well.

Playing it safe

I had a swarm this afternoon.  I am still not sure where it came from but probably the crazy hive 4 I wrote about last time - where four days ago I found several frames of eggs but no obvious queen, a newly opened queen cell and several sealed queen cells, a combination I still haven't worked out.

Unusually this swarm landed on my side of the fence, in my blackcurrant bush (they usually prefer my neighbour's garden)   I noticed more bees than I would expect flying round the blackcurrant flowers and when I went to investigate I found this.

I watched for a while as I have two bait hives set up - one about 2m away and one about 20m away.  When I checked there were only a few scouts investigating each.  It was very hard to tell but I thought that most of the scouts from the swarm were flying over the fence rather than to the bait hives.  I had been hoping to video the swarm taking off and then landing on the bait hive but in the end my nerve failed and I put them in a nuc.  Here they are with three frames of foundation added.

When I was cutting them out of the blackcurrant bush one chunk of the swarm fell but it landed on a rhubarb leaf so it was easy to pick them up and move them to the hive.  They immediately started walking in so I was confident the queen was inside.

While I was watching the swarm I could see several bees carrying pollen - obviously returning foragers caught up in the excitement - but no drones.  Once almost all the bees were in the nuc I did see a few drones amongst the small number of bees left in the bush.

Here are the bees fanning around the entrance, encouraging the stragglers to go in.

Tonight I have moved the nuc onto a stand, only a couple of metres from where they started.  I put on a feeder and I expect them to build up quickly.  In a few days I'll have a look in and see if I recognise the queen.