So yesterday afternoon I noticed a small swarm down by my hives/nucs. Not being to concerned and due to inspect today I left them to it.
I started looking through the nucs some have been up and running for some time and I thought perhaps 1 had swarmed, I’d checked the bush they had been buzzing around but nothing. Then halfway through another nuc they partially took off from anotherbush and settled again. I broke the small branch they had clustered on and just dropped into a drone laying nuc I’d just banged out. Spotted a marked queen in the bottom of the box as the cluster broke up, so dropped frames in and closed lid fast.
Now convinced a nuc had swarmed I continued with the nucs. Nearing the end i popped a lid to be greated by about 20 newly emerged bees on the top of a couple of frames. The rest of the box was entirely empty and judging by the state of larvae had been for probably a couple of days.
This swarm had obviously absconded. Left behind was 2 frames of brood in all stages and a frame of stores, so no starvation there was even the odd bee emerging!
Goes to show we’ve really no idea on some occasions
I started looking through the nucs some have been up and running for some time and I thought perhaps 1 had swarmed, I’d checked the bush they had been buzzing around but nothing. Then halfway through another nuc they partially took off from anotherbush and settled again. I broke the small branch they had clustered on and just dropped into a drone laying nuc I’d just banged out. Spotted a marked queen in the bottom of the box as the cluster broke up, so dropped frames in and closed lid fast.
Now convinced a nuc had swarmed I continued with the nucs. Nearing the end i popped a lid to be greated by about 20 newly emerged bees on the top of a couple of frames. The rest of the box was entirely empty and judging by the state of larvae had been for probably a couple of days.
This swarm had obviously absconded. Left behind was 2 frames of brood in all stages and a frame of stores, so no starvation there was even the odd bee emerging!
Goes to show we’ve really no idea on some occasions
