3 Swarms Flooding Flowers and Rain damage

The Orchard

I was down the orchard this afternoon, a little worried after the terrible weather we have been having, and will have for a couple more weeks to come. Some of the newspaper reports have claimed we will have 3 months worth of rain in 3 days, a couple more weeks of bad weather yet to come. The soil at the orchard is very soggy, I can see lots of slugs and snails around. The ring of willow trees is doing well. They were planted in the most damp area of the orchard, in part to absorb water.

As I have left lots of the grasses grow this year I have an array of flowers and grasses growing, it actually looks very pretty, I have seen various insects some of which i can only identifiy as flies and beetles and wasps, they are doing well and fulrishng.

 We also found 3 swarms in various trees. Most to me seem primary swarms. I plan to collect the swarms and pass them on to bee keepers that want more hives or to new beekeepers. My wife found the first next to an apple tree. Its a was the smallest of the three. A couple of thousand bees. I have no idea how long any of these swarms have been around or when they swarmed. I know that the hive I moved to the orchard a couple of weeks ago had queen cells. The bees could have swarmed upto 2 weeks ago. I was away last week in the Isle of Wight and didn't carry out the usual checks.

Swarm two

The week prior my son got stung and I didn't check the bees as well as I should have, the weather wasn't ideal for checking bees. The location of the second swarm is practically above where my son got stung, so they may have swarmed about then.  The second swarm was a couple of meters off the ground in a large tree within the orchard. The swarm as you can see has lots of bees and I would presume its the biggest of the three swarms. It will be very difficult to collect. I would need a ladder that could reach that high and then be able to collect them. In reality I am going to monitor this swarm and I hope that it will move along and then I can collect it. I may lose this one if I can't capture it. I hope it doesn't fly off and bother any of the neighbours. The orchard is large enough to let swarms occur naturally and I have time to collect the bees. If a member of the public is walking through  its shouldn't affect them. My wife and I did just that and we were able to get these pictures.

Swarm three

The final  swarm as in a plum tree again they didn't seem to mind us walking through the orchard and very close to where they were. The picture below shows where the willow trees are planted and that area has so much water that it looks like we have a small pond. That's also how if feels at the moment.

Water logged part of the orchard, where willow trees have been  planted