Artifical Swarm

I attended my regular Warwickshire bee keepers practical session on Tuesday, at Sutton Park and checked on a brood and half of bees. It was scary, I don't normally wear gloves when checking my own hive and haven't worn them when attending the regular Tuesday sessions. However when I entered this hive with roughly 60,000 bees I wasn't scared. Not when I initially went and opened the hive, or when I removed the almost full super, but when I started to check on the brood frames and saw the number of bees in the hive I was. I found a number of queen cells but no queen, she may have swarmed already.

I went through the entire hive and not one sting. What's more I had an audience of 30+ people. Even if I had been stung what could they have done, not much and they wouldn't have been happy with me swearing or jumping around in pain. It would have been my own fault for not wearing gloves. Anyway did the job, and came out feeling a hero, but boy was I relived, didn't show it though. I have learn t' a lesson, I will be taking gloves in my pocket next time.

After seeing the queen cell on my own hive on Sunday. I decided to perform an artificial swarm.

Then yesterday I did a artificial swarm, it was difficult, as I can never find the queen. So I forced all the bees into a new brood box and then added the older one on top. Left them for several hours then came back and split the two brood boxes.

Now I have two hives, one still at the orchard with 2 queen cells and no queen and the other hive is at my parents.

Getting the second hive was an adventure. I had to carry the Bee hive across the orchard and then put it into my car and drive the 15 miles to my parents house and deposit the hive.

I am hoping that both hives will be fine. I have learn t that at times I do need help and I should ask for it. When I told other beekeepers of the trouble I had with the artificial swarm I had lots of volunteers that are willing to help me, when required. The artificial swarm was difficult especially on my own and some help would have been brilliant. Then carrying the hive to the car was painfully, as its heavy, well over 20Kgs.

Lets see how things are in a couple of weeks.

Queen cell with eggs

This week we have cut the grass, looked for more caterprillers and aphids and discovered a queen cell in the bee hive.

We have cut the grass around each tree and created a track so you can walk from one side to the other. This is good and as the grass gets longer it will make it easier for me to check on the trees and the bees.

We still have caterpillars but we seem to have less aphids, looks like the ladybirds and organic treatments are working and eating loads of the green sap sucking pests. My niece came down with me and visited the bees. Its always nice when new people come down and find it interesting. Thats a picture of my daughter and my niece hold some wax comb.

Caterpillars and Aphids

Checked on the bees they are fine and doing well. I may even have honey this year.

I have also spotted Aphids on some of the apple trees. I have sprayed them with organic spray. Hope that fixes it.

I have also seen some ladybirds around so I hope that they can massively reduce the number of aphids.

I have also see loads of caterpillars almost every tree had one or more. I manually went round and picked them off. I won't be able to do this when the trees are bigger but can for a while yet. I have seen two types of caterpillars small green ones and slightly larger black ones. I took them away with me and dumped them into the compost heap and piled on a couple of kilos of fallen magnolia flower petals.

I was planning on cutting the grass but I really need by brothers help with this as he's been busy this week it hasn't been possible. The lawn mower weighs about 250 Kg. This is far more than I can pick up on my own. Even with the two of us its heavy.