“The More I Learn, The More I Realise How Much I Don’t Know.”
Whilst the author of the above quote remains controversial, its meaning has buzzed in my head all through the summer!! That and a number of other quotes “baptism of fire’ “In at the deep end” etc. etc.
Swarming is a natural phenomenon that can occur any time from April to September but mostly during May, June and July. When a swarm happens you not only lose half your colony, but also all the honey the bees can carry with them. Whilst a new queen will emerge it takes time for her to mate and begin to lay eggs which of course usually means fewer bees and a reduced crop of honey for the beekeeper.
There are several reasons why bees swarm – mainly it’s their way of reproducing and one colony can split numerous times. Another is congestion in the brood box – the hive becomes overcrowded and the space for the queen to lay becomes restricted with incoming nectar and pollen. With the queen’s laying capacity at this point being greatly increased the overcrowding creates the conditions to trigger the swarming impulse.
So, there are various ways to attempt to manage the swarming impulse – swarm prevention and swarm control.
Starting the season with two colonies we felt very positive and thought we’d get ahead of the game with the swarm season approaching. One of the colonies was very strong, so we decided to take a preventative approach and split the colony taking the queen (Red Elizabeth) and a few frames of bees and placing them in a new hive which we took to a friend in Kingsdon. The remaining colony reared a new queen – great, job done! Weekly inspections were dutifully undertaken and swarm control action taken when we discovered new queen cells were being produced (a sign that a swarming is imminent). However, despite our best attempts at bee husbandry and me feeling that I was spending more time this summer in a bee-suit than shorts and t-shirt, ‘the girls’ decided they would just do their own thing – it was swarm city for us!
Picture a sunny Friday evening (remember that one!) you take a glass of wine out into the back garden, scan the flowers and then notice that a tree has developed a bunch of dead leaves, then it dawns – a perfect swarm. Wine abandoned, bee-suit on ‘again’ and two hours later a successful capture of the swarm. Then there were all the other times, up very wobbly trees risking life and limb etc. etc. The result was that we now had five colonies having managed to capture some of the swarms.
It has been a busy time inspecting these girls all summer and nurturing the two smaller swarms. We were pleased to have recently combined these two smaller colonies successfully so now have four colonies going into autumn/winter. Elizabeth over at Kingsdon has done extremely well producing a massive colony – sadly she too swarmed but left a daughter who does carry her prolific bee-making genes.
While the girls have been quite demanding this year it did give us a chance to engage some help in the shape of two granddaughters. They thoroughly enjoyed dressing up in their mini bee-suits and getting stuck in. It was a great opportunity to begin their beekeeping education.
I continued with the practical elements of the beekeeping course and really enjoyed improving my skills with the lovely Somerton beekeeping community. We met seven times over the spring/summer period and I found it really valuable to be able to tap into the wealth of knowledge that the experienced beekeepers possess.
