At last the apple blossom burst through the buds of May and erupted into full bloom. The honeybees celebrated, we all celebrated. Colour coming into our lives after, what has been a long stressful winter. Legs laden with pollen and honey stomach’s full of nectar the honeybees got busy with what they do best, filling their hives with everything needed for the brood that was both beginning and ending it’s confinement. A wonderful sight, but sadly short lived. The rain started to fall and with it the petals fell to the ground and the honeybees stayed in their hives.

Having split my hives in April , which as I said in my last blog, was an extraordinary thing for me to do at that time of year, I was now faced with four hives with new queens who could not get out to mate.

A queen will mate with up to 20 drones outside of the hive, out in the open while in flight. Once mated she returns to her hive and won’t leave again unless forced out by the workers, (in a swarm,) because of either over-crowding or she’s not laying properly.

Good weather is essential for a queen to mate properly. The optimal weather conditions being:

• 20c or above

• Little or no wind

• No rain

If the queen is unsuccessful in mating, after three weeks she will start to lay unfertilised eggs and therefore only produce drones, (male bees). If that happens the hive won’t survive.

As you can imagine as the rain continued to fall throughout most of May my heart was slowly sinking. I couldn’t go into the hives to check the queens had successfully hatched let alone mated. In normal weather conditions the queen hatches after 16 days, (workers after 21 days and the drone after 24 days), and 6 days after emerging, she will leave the hive on a mating flight. She then returns to the hive and after 3 days starts to lay eggs, (as many as 2,000 a day). This, she will do for the rest of her life in the hive. One of the most trying times for a beekeeper is waiting for the emergence of a new queen. It takes over 3 weeks, and one of the first things we are taught is to be patient! Three weeks is a long time to wait in order to have your mind put at ease! You then have a fine line to walk between the possibility of a drone laying queen or worse still, a laying worker. If it’s a drone laying queen she can be found and disposed of, harsh but the only thing you can do. The workers will know she’s gone and start building queen cells. A laying worker is a whole different ball game, she is not fertilised and therefore only lays drone eggs and because she is a worker you have no chance of finding her amongst 50,000 honeybees who all look the same. This results in the loss of a lot of bees and a lot of heartache for the beekeeper. None of us want to lose our bees. So, tense times. The continual rain and cold weather was not helping.

However, one day when the rain ceased, for a fleeting moment in the day, I decided to go to my apiary and have a look at the bees, to make sure they were at least flying and there was life in the hives! They were indeed flying, grasping every opportunity with all four wings to get out and about! So I stood for a few moments watching them, in ore as usual, when all of a sudden I heard a very loud humming noise overhead. I glanced up and there in the tree was a swarm. Heavy sigh, because that meant one of two things.

(a) I hadn’t managed to find all the queen cells when splitting the hives

(b) Challis’s bees had swarmed

Let me add another one in there…

(c) It was someone else’s bees. Highly unlikely given the proximity!

With little or no equipment left I really did feel exasperated. Bloody bees! I phoned my friend Chris and offered him another swarm! He came over immediately and as he walked over to the apiary he called out:

“I thought you said it was an easy one to catch.”

“It is” I replied pointing up to the swarm above my head.

“Well that one may be, but what about this one?” he said pointing to the base of a tree.

“Good Grief".” is about the politest interpretation I can give you of my response!

And so, Chris and I set to work. I put Swarm 1 in a Nuc box and set it up at the apiary and Chris took yet another swarm, (Swarm 2), home with him! Thank you Chris.

It then started to rain and so I was unable to go through the bees yet again.

However, we had a couple of days when the forecast was intermittent showers so I decided to ‘weather watch’ and inspect the hives in-between the showers.

Challis, who’d been away for a couple of days, popped up to see how I was getting on and enquire about the extra hive that had appeared during her absence. We were merrily chatting away when we looked up into the tree above us and hey presto… another swarm.

By now, seriously I wanted to cry, but instead we both laughed (maybe with a touch of hysteria thrown in) and set about catching it, starting with scrabbling around her barn to find enough equipment to put together for yet another hive for this latest swarm.

So now would seem as good a time as any to explain how to catch and re-hive a swarm of honeybees.

What you need

1. A sheet

2. Bee brush

3. Pruning shears

4. Bee suit

5. Cardboard box

6. Large umbrella (not essential but very useful if it’s a really hot day to protect the swarm from the sun)

7. Ladder (depending on how high up the swarm is)

8. Spray bottle with water (you can use a light sugar water solution if you want to)

9. Gaffa tape

10. Lemon oil or Lemon grass paste (very useful in a bate hive)

Once the swarm has been located lay the sheet on the ground as close to it as possible and place the open box on top.

• If the swarm is on a thick branch, get the box as close as you can and give it a good sharp shake so the bees fall into the box.

• If it’s hanging on a thin branch then prune the branch and gently place the swarm into the box.

• If it’s on a wall, lamp-post or fence, gently spray the swarm with a thin mist of the water which will make them less likely to fly about then carefully brush them into the box.

• If the swarm is on the ground, tip the box in front of them and spray inside it with lemon oil which hopefully will encourage the bees to go inside.

Close the box up leaving a small gap for any stray flying bees to go inside and leave the box in situ until after sunset. This ensures that all the flying bees that took off with the swarm and the scout bees who are out looking for their final destination will have come back to their queen. After sunset, when the temperature is cooling down go back and cover the gap in the box and secure with gaffa tape. If you have to take the swarm to another location then transport it as gently as you can. You can leave it in the box over night, as long as there is ventilation for the bees and re-hive them in the morning or you can do it when you get to your destination. The same applies if it’s at your apiary.

There are two methods of getting the swarm into their new hive. You can either:

(a) Remove some of the frames from the prepared brood box and shake the bees in with one short sharp shake and then gently brush the remaining bees in. Pop the frames back in, followed by the crown board and lid.

(b) Lay a plank down from the entrance of the hive to the ground. Spread the sheet over the plank. Again, give the box a short sharp shake so the bees land on the sheet and brush out the stragglers then stand and watch as the scout bees do their work. They will soon enough discover the entrance to the hive and then tell the swarm where to go. This takes about 45 minutes but is absolutely brilliant to watch and is my preferred method!

Do not feed the swarm. The honey they carry with them may be diseased and should be used to build the comb. After three days start feeding them as they will need all their energy to draw out the wax foundation into comb.

And now for something completely different! A tooting queen! Yes you heard me. When a queen hatches she heralds her own arrival by making a loud tooting sound. “Surely not” I hear you cry. Well, I have the evidence and am very proud to present it to you in this little video. On one of the rare occasions I could get into one of the split hives, I was looking to see if I could spot a queen. Not an easy task, considering she more than likely wouldn’t be mated and therefore still quite small and of course, as yet unmarked. *Never mark a queen before she’s mated, you could accidentally harm her}. However, imagine my excitement when (a) I heard her tooting and followed the sound and (b) had my iphone to hand so when I found her I video’d the occasion. And here it is. Not only can you hear her you can see her for yourself. Enjoy.

On that happy note (pardon the pun) I will love you and leave you for yet another month. What will June bring I wonder? Because of the rain everything is delayed, so the ‘June Gap’, as we call it will probably not occur. The ‘June Gap’ is when the spring blossoms finish and we wait until July for the summer blooms to appear. With the dryer, warmer weather all that should have happened in May perhaps will happen in June. Who knows. Watch this space and you’ll find out!

Oh… just one more thing… throughout all the inclement weather we have grudgingly been enduring the hardy humble bumble bees, as I love to call them, kept on going, braving the elements. I took this picture of this lady feasting on a beautiful Bistorta Officinalis by Challis’s pond. I too would feast on this if I were a bumble bee…wouldn't you?

Have a wonderful June, enjoy the easing of lockdown and take it easy. Don’t rush anything, we don’t want to go back inside and nor do my bees.