Swarm!

Well, not quite a swarm, but almost. Sneaky things, bees. Last week, at Bee Keeping Part Six, you will remember we got involved in transfering a newly arrived full colony into its new home, with added loft apartment to prevent them swarming due to lack of space. We pinched out the few queen play cups that were apparent, and left the bees to their new extended accommodation.

This week, at Bee Keeping Part Seven, Scott handed over the equipment and said, 'There you go. You inspect the hive, and we'll watch.'

So, somewhat tentatively, I set about opening and checking the hive, with Andy in close attendance. So much to see, so much to remember. The bees had already, in the space of one week, moved into the new brood box and drawn out seven frames of comb. They were also starting to build their own free-form brace comb. There were balls of bees, and danglings of bees. The half brood box seemed fine; as fine as this newbie keeper could tell anyway, so we moved onto the main brood box, where we hoped to be able to locate the Queen.

And there, on the third frame in, was a MASSIVE Queen cell. Fully developed. Capped. Huge. As big as a thimble.

'Right,' said Scott. 'We must have missed that one last week. Now we have no option but to perform an artificial swarm, because if we don't, these bees will be off and away.

It was all very exciting! We had to find the Queen, who, it transpired, was unmarked. And just at the point of us finding her, Scott got stung. I was well impressed at how he managed to hang onto the frame he was holding, AND keep sight of the Queen whilst Geraldine grabbed the queen marking kit and cage. I mean, he hardly swore at all.

And then it was, 'Move this hive there, put that one there, put those frames in there, that excluder under there, those supers on there,' all systems go action packed bee-keeping, with me and Andy trying to be helpful, mostly by staying out of the way and holding things when instructed to do so. Thousands of bees were flying around, getting quite narky now because what was supposed to be a standard twenty minute hive inspection was turning into a marathon hour long artificial swarm malarkey.

But we did it! One hive became two, with the possibility of a third splitting next week as it was decided to leave a couple of new uncapped queen cells intact, as insurance against the capped cell not hatching, or being dud in some manner. It was quite thrilling to be in thick of it.

There is still no news of our own bee order being ready to collect. And now we've been offered the chance to buy a nucleus from Kent as early as next week. So I've e-mailed the guy we ordered our original nucleus from to see if they are ready for imminent collection. If not, we may buy this colony we've been offered, and then get another hive to take the original order as and when it's ready.

And that's not to mention the top-bar hive we've decided to build. But more of that later. That's a whole different kettle of...er...bees.

PS Andy says that his work colleagues are very excited to hear about his first experience of being stung. I say, 'Naughty colleagues, bad colleagues, no honey for YOU!'