- Joined
- Jul 20, 2019
- Messages
- 68
- Reaction score
- 27
- Location
- Fife
- Hive Type
- National
- Number of Hives
- 6
I'm the first to admit, I'm a beginner!, loads of technical theoretical knowledge from books, associations, club meetings and of course the rather marvelous Beekeeping forum ( my no1 go to for advise /banter
)
Now in my second year beekeeping. First year felt like a steep learning curve but I now realise that compared to my second year the first year was a doddle.
Last Friday I saw my first swarm, safely contained on a bush in my garden. I do think on reflection this was a possible combination cast swarm, with more than one queen, That's my excuse anyway for managing to catch most of them only to find a few pockets of maybe 150 or so, clinging onto fence posts, laying on the grass, or finding whatever awkward bush they could find to make my reclamation more challenging.
Since last Friday I have now witnessed 7! swarms from my 2 hives, the one today 1 hour ago, I saw coming out of the hive, building up outside ( great noise), all captured on video, watched them do the twister, and follow the queen or queens approximately, 25 feet to the West and settle on a blackberry bush. So I have another opportunity later this afternoon to practice another swarm capture. So far I've found the most effective has been to use a 5 frame poly nuc, shake majority of bees into nuc, lid on, small hole opening and just let the rest make their way in.
When adding the swarm nuc to a new hive a couple of days ago I tried the walk up the ramp method, on first appearance this looked like a really successful method, they all dutifully started marching up the ramp, massed around the entrance, some going in, it was a warm night so I thought best leave them to get on with it and ill check them later. This was a disaster, as when I went out a few hours later around 21:00 they had all stayed outside the entrance and chilled, looked dead, I put them in hive but this was not a good outcome, gutted and disappointed in my ineptness.
My next attempt, I just decided to remove lid, shake second swarm into new hive, slowly add frames allowing them to move to settle frame, added a small amount of sugar water via English feeder to set them up . They are flying in and out of hive seem ok after only 3 days. So this swarm I found today I will do same, later tonight around 4pm remove lid, shake them in, I might not feed and see how they manage as just left original hive and will be full of honey. I'm open to all constructive criticism, I'm thick skinned and if any lessons learned improve my bee keeping and the health wellbeing of my bees then great. Going forward I will remember to focus on removal of multiple queen cells when inspecting.
)Now in my second year beekeeping. First year felt like a steep learning curve but I now realise that compared to my second year the first year was a doddle.
Last Friday I saw my first swarm, safely contained on a bush in my garden. I do think on reflection this was a possible combination cast swarm, with more than one queen, That's my excuse anyway for managing to catch most of them only to find a few pockets of maybe 150 or so, clinging onto fence posts, laying on the grass, or finding whatever awkward bush they could find to make my reclamation more challenging.
Since last Friday I have now witnessed 7! swarms from my 2 hives, the one today 1 hour ago, I saw coming out of the hive, building up outside ( great noise), all captured on video, watched them do the twister, and follow the queen or queens approximately, 25 feet to the West and settle on a blackberry bush. So I have another opportunity later this afternoon to practice another swarm capture. So far I've found the most effective has been to use a 5 frame poly nuc, shake majority of bees into nuc, lid on, small hole opening and just let the rest make their way in.
When adding the swarm nuc to a new hive a couple of days ago I tried the walk up the ramp method, on first appearance this looked like a really successful method, they all dutifully started marching up the ramp, massed around the entrance, some going in, it was a warm night so I thought best leave them to get on with it and ill check them later. This was a disaster, as when I went out a few hours later around 21:00 they had all stayed outside the entrance and chilled, looked dead, I put them in hive but this was not a good outcome, gutted and disappointed in my ineptness.
My next attempt, I just decided to remove lid, shake second swarm into new hive, slowly add frames allowing them to move to settle frame, added a small amount of sugar water via English feeder to set them up . They are flying in and out of hive seem ok after only 3 days. So this swarm I found today I will do same, later tonight around 4pm remove lid, shake them in, I might not feed and see how they manage as just left original hive and will be full of honey. I'm open to all constructive criticism, I'm thick skinned and if any lessons learned improve my bee keeping and the health wellbeing of my bees then great. Going forward I will remember to focus on removal of multiple queen cells when inspecting.
