Swarm Spotter and swarm collector

The Orchard this week

We are right in the middle of the year, almost the summer solstice and the bees must know it, they have swarmed and I have located them and collected them. It's strange when I immediately see a swarm, I still get scared. Your not sure how many bees are in the mass huddle, it could be 20/30,000n if its a prime swarm. I know that its unlikely for them to sting if your just passing by, but its still risky. You can see them, you are hear them and you can even get the faint hint of wax. Fresh wax is a great smell. I have been storing old wax in the garage and the recent warm spell means the whole garage smells like a bee hive, and I like it.

Cherries almost ripe

 The past week was warm, wet with good sunny periods, the ideal growing weather. The grass paths that I carved out have started to grow. They have been invigorated with the recent trim. It needs to be cut again, but with the wet weather it hasn't happened. On the trees themselves I can the cherries are almost fully grown they just need to ripen and plums still the size of plum stones. The pears are beginning to stretch and apples small but full of promise. I'm loving it.

Tracks carved by rabbits to the rabbit den

 The whole orchard is alive. You can feel the energy. Lots of young rabbits around the orchard, darting around when I arrive. Then while I'm in the orchard I don't see them, though, because of the long grass I see when they have created paths back to there warrens. So many insects around, strange wasps and beetles, caterpillars, butterflies and loads of different flies come and greet you at they land on leaves, hover past, some even landing on you. I haven't heard many grass hoppers this year and its only as a write this that it makes me want to get back to the orchard and listen out for them. I never hear them in the garden, as I did as a child, and I like the sound of they and watching them jumping around.

My daughter helping to collect a swarm

Swarm my daughter and I collected

 My daughter was stung by a bee last week, and I really don't want her to be scared of bee's so I got her to help me collect one of the swarms. So what we did was placed the swarms into a nuc and then leave them all day to be collected later the same evening. I have moved the nuc boxes with the bees to my parents, for a little while. I will return them back to the orchard soon. The reason for this is that bees generally return to the location they were previously. So if I moved the bees and it wasn't more than 5kms away they would return to the same location. I actually move them about 9pm so they don't come out of the hive till after dawn and then believe that the location of the hive is the new home location. If I collected the swarm and then immediately moved them to a new site 2 kms away they would return to the original location.

Ryton Gardens this week

 It was fathers day over the weekend and we decided to visit Ryton gardens, they have wonderful gardens and orchards and bee hives, even some woodland. My wife spotted a number of bees buzzing around and looked, as it normally means bees collecting pollen, its nice to see from which plants they like, and in most cases its bumble bees, not honey bees. However when I had a closer look it was a honey bee swarm. We notified the volunteers that work at the gardens and they cornered of that section. The swarm was huge, I kinda wish it was me that collect that swarm too. But I didn't have the kit with me at the time.

The orchard this week

 Even at Ryton gardens the flowers and plants and trees are enjoying the time of year and absorbing the suns energy. The wisteria looks great, the place was practically empty, which meant that my kids practically had the run of the place. We played hide and seek, then chased each other around. A fun day out.