Today I caught two swarms. It must be the weather.
Helen from my bee group is on holiday so I caught a very large swarm from one of her hives. It was tricky to catch. The swarm had settled around the trunk of a tree which had lots of stiff little branches. It was a little over 2m up.
It has been raining, windy and cold this week. From Monday 10th June to Thursday 13th June the number of flying hours may have only been 12 hours out of a possible 66 hours*. The constrain on flying hours is only hours above a minimum temperature:
Yesterday I collected a swarm in a box which originated in Tackley, near Bicester, Oxfordshire. The swarm was collected by Paul from Oxford Natural Beekeeping group.
Paul believes that it is a prime swarm and that it comes from an established feral colony. This is great news; I believe that feral colonies have adaptations which make them ideal for low intervention beekeeping.
I was away from Oxford for the last week of June. It seems that there was a swarm on the tree in front of my out apiary on 28th June. I suspect that this was from Colony 4.
I have no real evidence that this swarm was from any of my hives. There seems to be less going on in Colony 4 -- less pollen on the hive floor for example -- but I can't be sure.
The evidence on the floor of Hive E pointed to an occupation. That is exactly what has happened. At some point in the last few days a swarm has occupied Hive E. Welcome to Colony 12.
The signs that this was not a robbery included detritus which looked too dark to be from capped honey. That was a sign. The most striking thing though was the Wax Moth larvae. An infestation of Wax Moth must have been under way because there were 3 or 4 larvae on both times I looked.
It would appear that the hive which I put Colony 10 into didn't suit them. I checked this morning and they've left.
This isn't a big surprise. Swarms can be actively looking for sites even after they're put into hives. I did open the hive the day after I put them in and saw them mostly stuck to the hive wall. That suggested that they hadn't accepted the hive. I don't know why they didn't like it.
This morning there were 3 or 4 groggy and cold bees still there but it was otherwise empty. I think they may be scouts which were still out when the swarm left.
Our bee group was alerted to a swarm in Golden Cross square right in the heart of Oxford yesterday. The swarm had mustered under an umbrella at eye level. We scrambled to find somebody to collect but someone from outside our group attended before we could get organised.
I visited my out-apiary this morning to see how the new swarm was doing. I arrived early - about 6am - when the air was still chilly.
There was evidence of comb building on the floor of the hives: wax platelets which are dropped when wax is produced.
I took off the lid and found lots of bees in a strong cluster. I had left out two frames to make room for the swarm when I had hived it the day before. I eased one of these frames in but the bees were too tightly clustered to allow the last frame. I put on a queen excluder and a super and then the lid.
Today I caught the swarm which has been hanging next to my out apiary. It happened unexpectedly.
I had been worrying about whether the swarm would settle on the tree and then become a nuisance. The urge to build comb can be very strong so that the bees sometimes build in a place where they can't possibly survive. I saw this late last year when I attempted to recover an established colony which had exposed comb on an apple tree. They had been extensively robbed which must have aggravated the colony.
Yesterday I was called to my out-apiary because of a swarm. It had settled in a tree right in front of the building where my elevated hives are kept. The swarm was about 10m up the tree; the hives are at a height of about 20m. There was no way to reach the swarm.