Colony 11

A week ago I brought Colony 11 back to my apiary in Headington and combined it with Colony 1. I'm not sure whether to call it a success or a failure but it is now done.

I moved Colony 11 again from its temporary location back to Headington on the evening of Saturday 8th Sept. Early the next morning. I removed the top of Hive A and Hive B. I placed a sheet of newspaper over the crown board. I cracked the body of Hive B from its base and placed it on top of of the newspaper. The hives were now separated but joined.

I moved Colony 11 to another site in the hope that it would recover. I put honey in a feeder to bolster it. It didn't stop the robbing, although it did significantly reduce it.

Yesterday I plucked up courage and actually examined the comb in the brood area. There were no brood and I couldn't find a Queen. I decided that there was no point feeding wasps or other bees. It was time to combine Hive B (Colony 11) with Hive A (Colony 1).

The unfortunate Colony 11 has been robbed today by Colony 1. I think that I've stemmed the robbing but I will have to move Colony 11 for the second time tonight.

The action began around lunchtime today. There was a big increase in activity at the entrance of Colony 11 and Colony 1. There were bees flying widely around my garden; their flight paths were hard to follow. There were bees behind the hive and under it too. They crawled under the base board. I thought this was strange but didn't see immediately that it was robbing.

I moved Colony 11 on Thursday night (30th Aug). The move was simple and worked smoothly. I removed empty supers during the day and then strapped up the hive. I then waited until after dusk, blocked the entrance and then lifted the whole hive down to a waiting car. At the other end it was simple too. After half an hour on the stand in my garden I opened the door to the hive. No drama.

Yesterday morning (Friday) there were orientation flights leaving from the hive. All day there was activity. The bees were not even slightly defensive. I will look out for pollen coming in today.

Two weeks have passed since I declared that there was 'no drama'. Today Colony 11 is under severe pressure from wasp attack. Today there were maybe 3 or 4 wasps using the entrance for every bee. Inside there were far fewer bees than I would have expected and there was less honey. On the floor of the hive were a great many severed bee legs.

I harvested a super of honey from Colony 1 a couple of weeks ago. I also had some uncapped honey in frames which had been Hive C containing Colony 11 before I went through all the complicated rearrangements.

The conventional view is that the bees will thoroughly and carefully clean comb if you put it on their hive. In my wisdom I found an exception to this view.

My hives are surrounded by at least half a dozen wasps which want to rob them. They zig-zag in front of the entrance; they crawl in under the Varroa screen; they wait at the edges and drink from the water tray. They want the honey but they can't get in.

All of the hives in central Oxford have small doors and strong guards. Three of the four have at least 20 bees visible on the outside of the hive entrance. One hive had fewer visible but appeared to be just as effective at guarding.

Things seem to be going well in all my colonies. They're all busy at their entrances. There are wasps near the entrance to every hive but they don't appear to be getting in. The Varroa counts are very low and there's pollen on all the base boards.

Colony 11 is complicated. I may have just made it better, or worse.

The colony was probably evicted from a roof in the Grandpont area of Oxford by building work. A member of my bee group said that the colony was too aggressive for a domestic garden so I gladly took them. They arrived in a nucleus box which had no frames.

The complicated rearrangement of Hive C left a problem: a gap of a few millimetres where the nucleus box meets the hive body. Every time I approached the hive the bees from inside behaved defensively and I smelled the distinctive alarm pheromone (it's an ester somewhat like Bananas).