Hiving a swarm of bees

We were quite busy last week catching swarms. This is the first swarm which very conveniently came to rest in a low branch of a pear tree in the garden. Our son spotted it - or rather he heard it as buzzing around before it settled it made a fantastic noise! Subsequent swarms involved ladders and straw baskets but we forgot the camera. Suffice to say that we now have an additional three colonies and are waiting to see which of these are strong enough to continue on their own and which need to be united with another colony.

The swarm settles in the tree



Contemplation! Unfortunately we didn't get a shot of Max cutting the branch and lowering it into the box. I think our cameraman was preparing to do a runner!


Oh boy, did they buzz around!



All is calm -the first bees have found the queen in the hive and are fanning, indicating to the others where to go. It's amazing watching the swarm just march up the stand (well all right, the plastic box!) and straight into the hive.

Problem solved

I had a couple of hours last week - between rainstorms that is - and weeded the new potato patch. This is going to be an arduous exercise through the coming months as we didn't really clear the area of weeds very well and then we put the rotavator over it. Still, potatoes are a good veg to start with as all the earthing up helps with the weed clearing - sort of.

I got into a rhythm of weeding a line and earthing up as I went along. All was going well, Radio 4 was keeping me company and the rain held off. Then the chickens arrived just as I finished. Previously I've not minded. They clear the grubs and leave manure at the same time. But as I watched I realised they were getting their richest pickings by unearthing all my hard work. This was not good! I gave chase and they went elsewhere. I redid the job and went in just as the rain started.

The following morning I went out and once again a whole line of potato plants had been uncovered and some stems broken. The chickens were still locked up; this time it was rabbits! That was it. The electric fence which had been in our minds as a job to be done was bought to the front of the queue. The conversation was along the lines of:

"OK, I'll do it next week."

"No, today. Else I'm not planting another single vegetable and you can say goodbye to the French beans."

That was sufficient! We had a lovely afternoon which we thought of as "family time" and the two boys concerned thought of as "another chore". There were also a lot of laughs about not needing to fence the vegetables. "Why on earth are you fencing the vegetables Mum? They can't get out you know." But I was determined.

We now have two strands at tripping up height going all the way around the new veg patch and so far it's worked. Not a rabbit in sight and although the cockerel did get in, he didn't try a second time! Result!

Broad beans, onions and chard

I sowed the first of the broad beans just a few weeks ago and already they are coming up. I was worried that the intervening frosts would upset them but I shouldn't have been so concerned! I have now sown two more rows - I really do love broad beans straight from the garden. The rest of the family think they aren't worth the effort - all those pods to remove - but it doesn't stop them eating them in great quantities!

Broad bean seedlings

Onions, garlic and shallots are also coming along nicely. The garlic and half the shallots went in during the autumn then I put in two more beds of shallots and onions in the early spring. All are doing well. Last year I didn't really have enough so this year I have tripled the quantity!


Garlic and shallots

To my delight the chard has overwintered with very little help from a plastic tunnel and is now in great leaf. Given the three weeks of sub zero temperatures at the beginning of the year, I wasn't really expecting it to survive. However, over Easter we will be eating one of our favourite chard recipes: ricotta and chard filo parcels. It's a great standby for vegetarians too.

Chard - it looks a bit pathetic in the photo but it's doing well!

First crop is in the kitchen

Every year my mother-in-law comes to stay in late May for a week or two. The advantages of May are great - especially for an octogenarian who cannot see. The weather is warmer (believe me, in our house that matters!), the frogs are singing, the flowers are beginning to smell and we can often eat lunch outside. Unfortunately, though, late May misses the asparagus and this always upsets her, especially as it is the way with asparagus that there is always plenty more after the six week picking period but you have to leave it to feed the plant!



So perhaps the asparagus is the real reason she has come to stay for Easter! Yesterday I picked the third bunch of the year and we all enjoyed it at lunch. There is nothing like freshly picked asparagus: for us it's usually the first crop from the garden so it heralds the beginning of the vegetable patch year; when we are kind enough (sic!) to share it our friends are always amazed that we grow it thus giving us a feeling of both brilliance and largesse - although we don't often share it so the largesse is false; and actually it's not difficult to grow so the brilliance isn't exactly genuine either...oh well!



It won't be long before we start eating the lettuce from the greenhouse - oh I do love spring!

Bees - vocabulary problem!

A quick update and correction on the wild bees we have housed.

First off it has been pointed out to me that these are not a swarm but an established colony and of course I was a fool to describe them as a swarm. We were asked by a friend to collect a swarm and once in my head it stuck. But a colony it is. So Polly is right - even in this lovely climate (let's forget the last two summers!) the bees do not swarm in March. OK, my head is hung in shame. On with the update.

I have changed the super for a make-do brood box. We put a brood box on but of course it has openings and was no good. Instead we have put brood frames into two supers, one sitting on top of the other to give the height of a broodbox. If these bees do come up then we will be able to transfer the frames to a proper broodbox and go on from there.

Now, on to the second subject...

I have been criticised by someone here in France on another forum (this was the person who pointed out my vocab was way off). He doesn't explain very well but his comments are as follows:

"What can I say apart from it was not a swarm if it had taken up residence in a tree it was an established colony. It certainly was not from this year and why should it swarm from the tree in April? Had you had someone of experience and qualifications, not necessarily a keeper of bees long term, but a beekeeper with you it would have been easy to remove it and prevent it returning to the log. It is no different to a summer swarm in, say, a wall easy if you know what you are doing. If the bees are still in the green hive I wish you the best of luck in trying to manage it this year. I thought the bees used the suns position above them to build their comb in a true vertical plane. I always enjoy your postings as there is so little to bring cheer these days. I wish you well in your endeavours. I rest my case."

I have enormous faith in bees and less faith in my ability as a beekeeper but I do try and do my best. In an ideal world I would far rather be working alongside another beekeeper but unfortunately this isn't possible. I am always open to helpful suggestions (which seem to be lacking in the words above) - indeed I welcome them. Thank you to those of you who have taken the time to comment, both on the post and by email. Like I said constructive criticism is welcome and even more so is advice.

Donald the goose...

Remember this?



My, hasn't he grown!



He now has his very own pen in an outhouse for nightime (too many foxes around) and during the day he has a great time walking around "his" patch (he's not penned but seems to have adopted an area) and of course, swims very happily on the moat!

Bees again!

I had yesterday all planned out. Basically, to work all day and really get ahead with a chair that is promised for Tuesday next week. Things didn't work out that way...

On Monday Max took a call from a friend of ours saying that there was a lot of trees being cut down in a wood near her and there was a swarm of bees - could we collect it? Well, yes please and for several reasons. Firstly we've never taken a swarm before and getting some experience with a swarm at ground level is always better than one twenty feet up in the air! Secondly, I really want to increase our number of hives this year and swarms, if you can get them, are free. Thirdly, well, the chair is well on the road to being finished and I could work a bit this weekend...

So off we went. A-L wasn't there but a retired neighbour had been asked to look out for us and he solemnly took us to this swarm...which had flown away. A little disappointed we removed what remained of the honey comb and decided that wild honey made the trip worthwhile.

However, it turned out that Roger knew of a second swarm, this one inside the trunk of a tree which had been felled and, if we didn't take it the forestry company would simply gas the bees. (And I thought killing bees was illegal...) We went to have a look and realised very quickly that there was no way we were going to be able to get our hands through a hole the size of a tennis ball and remove a swarm of bees who had most likely been in residence for many years! Yes, they seemed quite docile but we were 100% certain that any enforced eviction order would soon change that!

Disappointed, but still looking forward to the wild honey, we went away swarmless. Roger rang us in the evening. He'd spoken to the forestry people and they were quite happy for us to chainsaw the trunk and take away the log with the swarm inside. The fact that the trunk is about a metre in diametre and we were talking about a log approximately 1.5 metres long didn't seem to worry Roger one bit. His 70+ years are not for nothing and he'd worked out a system to get it into the back of our (small) van.

Max went along this morning early (before the bees were awake was, I think, the theory!) and the operation was carried out after plugging the entrance with a piece of wood. Of course, Max and Roger could only estimate how much space the bees had created for themselves on the inside; they didn't want to cut right through the middle of the swarm and nest. Roger tackled the trunk with his chainsaw and was clever enough to notice that the sawdust changed indicating the proximity of the bees. So he moved up a bit and tried again. In this way they managed to cut the log leaving the nest inside completely intact.

There was, however, a hole at both ends where the wood had rotted so bees started to get a little interested in the proceedings - still very calmly though. Max put a cotton sheet at each end. That was the easy part of the operation; now for Roger's cunning system to get this trunk into the back of the car. It turned out to be a tractor with a grab.




The log rolled out of the car and lifted upright in the field. The top hole is cleary visible, as is the bees side entrance

When Max came back we then managed to roll it out into the field near the other hives and lift it upright; we put a lid temporarily on the top hole to stop any heat from coming out (the bottom hole I'm not worried about - all our hives have open mesh floors which are presumably the same thing) and then took the wood out of the entrance hole. A wedge under the front will prevent it from toppling over. So far so good.

The bees natural entrance

However, the top lid was not ideal as it had plenty of gaps between it and the trunk and I was worried that all that precious heat would be lost out the top; the nights are still cold at the moment, something had to be done.

We hummed and haahed and finally came up with a solution that "will either work or it won't". Max cut a piece of wood to fit over the trunk and cut a medium size hole in the middle. We then screwed this to the trunk. On top of this wood we put a super (which is where hived bees store surplus honey, ie. ours) with frames and then the crown board and finally the lid.

Max standing next to the final des res with adjoining larder.

We hope we have created an ideal home with attached delux larder for these wild bees. There is no guarantee they will stay of course; in fact they will almost certainly swarm in April and as far as I know we will have no way of preventing it as we can't get into the nest. If they go we will at least have the most amazing tree trunk to keep us warm in the winter - after extracting any remaining honey of course! I'll keep you posted on how this "hive" continues.