Newbie with a swarm of someone wants it......

[OhBeehave]

Strangely my preparations involved a lot planting that flowers all through the season and trying to create a meadow for them. Hours of research and missed the section on “ basic beekeeping skills”. Annoyingly we had a few alliums last year, no hive and they were covered in bees. Planted loads of alliums this year, 20m from the hive and......not a single bee spotted on them. Little buggers!

 

[Mickey]

Lengthy update on today....
So, whilst at work the gentleman my wife found on the local forum has come to collect the swarm. It turns out he is possibly the nicest guy ever and runs the Ashford Beekeeping Association! So along with removing the swarm he went through my hive and sorted it out, amazing.
So the outcome of having an expert as follows, some details maybe a bit off as this was repeated through my wife:
It is actually a second swarm, I completely missed the first one. Doh! Photo attached of the queen cell.
He has destroyed the other queen cells and left 2. This seems to be the same as some kind comments today on the forum?
He has taken another virgin queen with him so if I have any issues he is going to keep it “in reserve”
Bees were on the landing board and he said that the entrance block was restricting them and they were overheating so he has removed this.
I hadn’t put a dummy/ empty frame at each end of the brood box
As if he wasn’t a hero enough doing this for an hour in the torrential rain he also runs free beekeeping lessons on Saturdays! So my daughter and I are going tomorrow afternoon and for the foreseeable future.
I am definitely going to take him a nice bottle of something!
I do have another question which is probably ridiculous, but..... my wife filmed most of this and even after 2 swarms the brood box is absolutely full of bees. If this after 5 weeks what happens over the rest of the year if they keep reproducing at this rate??

What location are theses free beekeeping lessons please

 

[Katherine]

Yes I'm smitten too.

 

[linoleum bonypart]

Youve also learnt you need treble the equipment...... We never have enough bixes etc

 

[user 819]

Strangely my preparations involved a lot planting that flowers all through the season and trying to create a meadow for them. Hours of research and missed the section on “ basic beekeeping skills”. Annoyingly we had a few alliums last year, no hive and they were covered in bees. Planted loads of alliums this year, 20m from the hive and......not a single bee spotted on them. Little buggers!

Bees of all genus will use them in time, depends what else they find as well.
My Christophii Alliums are favoured by humbles in the main and honeybees prefer the Globe Alliums, throw some Phacelia seeds in the ground with them bees will soon arrive, it will self seed year after year. Nice thing about it is if you find it scraggly and untidy its easy to get rid with it's shallow rooting.

Phacelia a good soil conditioner as is Borage, both can't fail to attract.

 

[Nighthaunt]

Bees of all genus will use them in time, depends what else they find as well.
My Christophii Alliums are favoured by humbles in the main and honeybees prefer the Globe Alliums, throw some Phacelia seeds in the ground with them bees will soon arrive, it will self seed year after year. Nice thing about it is if you find it scraggly and untidy its easy to get rid with it's shallow rooting.

Phacelia a good soil conditioner as is Borage, both can't fail to attract.

I never have any luck with Alliums - Will (once they grow) have about 40’ of borders full of Dahlias and self seeded borage frollowing planting some last year - and a 9’ high Buddleia tree which hoping the bees will like.

It’s the novices training at Ashford beekeeping association - they do ask for donations to cover the cost of materials and the current planning permission battle to be able to put up a log cabin for storage / training materials

 

[OhBeehave]

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Youve also learnt you need treble the equipment...... We never have enough bixes etc

I am starting to realise that.....and also more hives!

 

[OhBeehave]

Bees of all genus will use them in time, depends what else they find as well.
My Christophii Alliums are favoured by humbles in the main and honeybees prefer the Globe Alliums, throw some Phacelia seeds in the ground with them bees will soon arrive, it will self seed year after year. Nice thing about it is if you find it scraggly and untidy its easy to get rid with it's shallow rooting.

Phacelia a good soil conditioner as is Borage, both can't fail to attract.

Thanks I will have a look, the bees favourite last year were echinops, they almost seem to go into some weird “drunken” crawl when on them!

 

[Erichalfbee]

Strangely my preparations involved a lot planting that flowers all through the season and trying to create a meadow for them. Hours of research and missed the section on “ basic beekeeping skills”. Annoyingly we had a few alliums last year, no hive and they were covered in bees. Planted loads of alliums this year, 20m from the hive and......not a single bee spotted on them. Little buggers!

It all depends on what else is flowering. I haven't seen anything on my Aliums this year. The Holly here usually sounds like helicopter in the mornings but Hawthorn is still out and Holly is being ignored. Ivy is good but sometimes the weather interferes. Dandelions are practically guaranteed to have bees on them.

 

[OhBeehave]

As stated by Nighthaunt, it was the novices training at Ashford and they ask for donations.
I went there yesterday and it was a fantastic afternoon, Michael and Wendy were brilliant and clearly experts in what they do! Considering my absolute lack of knowledge I learned so much about the basics. Also plenty of tea and coffee and amazing free cake. Everyone else on the course was friendly and welcoming and a pleasure to spend the afternoon with.
I genuinely can’t wait to go again next week and I am going to join their club.

 

[OhBeehave]

It all depends on what else is flowering. I haven't seen anything on my Aliums this year. The Holly here usually sounds like helicopter in the mornings but Hawthorn is still out and Holly is being ignored. Ivy is good but sometimes the weather interferes. Dandelions are practically guaranteed to have bees on them.

I find it amazing that the bees can be that selective on their food sources. When I watch them returning the the hive they are laden with a rainbow of different pollen colours! I had read about the dandelions so I left some of the grass and let them grow for them....going to regret that next year!!

 

[OhBeehave]

I never have any luck with Alliums - Will (once they grow) have about 40’ of borders full of Dahlias and self seeded borage frollowing planting some last year - and a 9’ high Buddleia tree which hoping the bees will like.

It’s the novices training at Ashford beekeeping association - they do ask for donations to cover the cost of materials and the current planning permission battle to be able to put up a log cabin for storage / training materials

I love dahlias too.....40’ borders of them is a lot of dead heading The bees last year seemed to love the multi headed bushy types and weren’t to fussed with the big showy ones....even more dead heading

 

[Erichalfbee]

Don't forget all the solitary bees. My bee hotels are filling nicely with mud capped cells and the leaf cutter bees will be busy cutting up rose leaves pretty soon.

 

[OhBeehave]

Don't forget all the solitary bees. My bee hotels are filling nicely with mud capped cells and the leaf cutter bees will be busy cutting up rose leaves pretty soon.

Did you make the bee hotels or buy them and where is the best place to site them?

 

[OhBeehave]

Ha ha they must have heard me....just been out there and 2 types of what I presume are bumblebees on them

 

[OhBeehave]

Relaxed to early! Bees have just swarmed againThis is going to sound weird but I was actually out watching the hive and didn’t see bees or swarm come out....10 mins later I heard the unmissable sound and they were swarming and just settling in a tree!
Daft question but could this be the first swarm come back or was there a queen missed on Friday?? They honestly just seemed to appear behind me
Now I have had a bit of training shall I done the gear and have a look in the hive and see if the queen is still there?
The photo isn’t that good but it appears the same size or maybe bigger than the last one but it is spread down a branch.

 

[user 819]

It was inevitable a cast swarm would leave, your bee guy who looked in the colony left two QC. Swarm fever hasn't diminished so they de - camped again, this time of year it is a lottery to hope and leave two QC & that a VQ will seek out and kill a rival.
They obviously were late stage 13/14th day cells for another to emerge so soon.
The advise of leaving two cells is common but ones needs to know the dating and age of the cells left, with experience one will leave two or three cells all on separate frames (in an ideal world) and then on day 14 make up nucs and use the two other frames with QC as back up or increase.

So, yes one can leave more cells then one but must go back in the hive before any emerge to reduce down to just one marked and selected cell only.

 

[user 819]

He has destroyed the other queen cells and left 2. This seems to be the same as some kind comments today on the forum?

As I said a swarm was inevitable, only one cell should have been left and reduced to one. He should have known they were likely late stage and only left the one cell.
Not much honey for you this year.

 

[OhBeehave]

That makes sense, so am I right in presuming that I should now only have 1 queen left in the hive? So I can order a second hive etc and it will be here Tuesday and catch this swarm and put it in there. In the meantime just leave the existing hive for a few days as it only has 1 queen in it.
I gave up on honey this year last week so I am ok with that

 

[user 819]

It's hard trying to keep someone else's bees from a far.
I was going to say something after your #35 but decided not to as you had someone (experienced ?) look at them and presumed maybe they would be on hand or offering more advice.

They first swarmed Thursday so likely there should still be some older larvae ( if the queen was still laying up 24hrs prior to swarming), young larvae can and will likely be present still so possible more cells may be present.
Most likely a VQ is due out imminently, the fact is the only guy who might know exactly the state of affairs within the hive is the guy who looked for you and in my mind made an error of judgement.

No offence we or you don't know the state of play, personally I don't think you are able to make a decision yet with your lack of knowledge /experience to decide what to remove or not. What isn't known is, were any of the cells marked on the top bar for their position.