Grass path ways cut and Bees sting

My son with a Teddy bear next to one of the hives

It was a warm weekend and I managed to get the lawn mower down into the orchard. I have cut out a path around the trees, the grass and weeds were as tall as my hip in some places. I have as left much of the grass and the flowers growing in place, which should still provide the animals with a good home. Its funny we have so many common buttercups in the orchard that the pollen covered the lawn mover, which a lovely yellow pollen that reminds me of watercolor paint block.

I checked on the bees and I believe that they may have swarmed as I didn't see any eggs in any of the hives. I could see loads of bees and a number of queen cells. This may have been because the space in the hive was getting limited and I have added an additional supper. The main things that I check when going through a hive include space, queen right colony (Queen Bee, adult bees and larvae and eggs), food, disease or illness. The lack of space and the very warm weather that we have had recently would have encouraged the bees to swarm, I can see lots of Queen cells so I can only hope that one of the queens emerges and then gets mated successfully and returns to the hive to starts laying eggs. Swarming is a natural phenomenon and something that modern bee keepers try and reduce. The plan is also to do a bailey comb change, but need to get some more brood wax in.

This weekend was the first the time that my son has also been into the hives with me. He also bought along his nursery teddy bear Boris. My son loved it, he has grown up with me being a beekeeper and is not really bothered by bees and knows when they are around you and you hear them buzzing you should stand perfectly still. When he was younger he would wonder right up to the entrance of a hive without fear at all. He was stung for the first time last year and is a little weary of them now, but not in a suit.

Normally when the bees in the orchard swarm, they are only a couple meters away or within the Orchard on one of the trees and I can easily collect them. On this occasion though I saw no sign of them. They may have swarm during the kids half term week, as I wasn't around.

Without a queen in the hive the bees can be a little more aggressive and this week both my wife and daughter got stung. This is what happen, my wife heard a bee it was in her hair, so she was trying to get it out. My daughter came to help not in a bee suit as did my son in his bee suit on. My son saw the bee and batted it directly away with a Frisbee straight into my daughters direction and the bee stung her on the side of her face. She looks like she has a black eye. I watched from the hive and as soon as I saw my son bat the bee away I knew what was about to happen. My wife yelled out and I had to run to them and somehow another bee had managed to get into may daughters ear, I used a match stick to keep the sting from stinging my daughter and then encourage him out.

Horse Rider in the orchard, after some of the grass was cut.

We also saw and spoke to a horse rider in the orchard who was enjoying a stroll through on his horse. Lucky him.