- Joined
- Oct 29, 2013
- Messages
- 428
- Reaction score
- 264
- Location
- Romford
- Hive Type
- Commercial
- Number of Hives
- 25
Well what a frustrating reintroduction to this hobby it has been this year. It started promisingly when a swarm decided to move into some of my mentors spare kit. The colony of lovely light coloured bees covered three frames and were flying well. So they were moved to my apiary and a week later I went along to transfer them from the nuc box into my bb. This was when I discovered that HM was absent and I had a bunch of very enthusiastic drone laying workers.
Still all was not lost as a swarm also landed on a bait hive I had in my back garden. These lovely very dark bees seemed very happy going about their business so I left them be for three weeks so HM could mate and settle down to work. So when I finally opened them up you can imagine my disappointment to find no queen, eggs or brood.
Fast forward to last night and I had great pleasure in moving a nice colony split from one of mentors as part of his swarm control efforts. With a nice fat, clipped and marked queen who is happily laying out to the edges of frames as fast as the girls can draw them. With bias and 5 frames of bees hopefully this is the foundation of my future stocks.
Still all was not lost as a swarm also landed on a bait hive I had in my back garden. These lovely very dark bees seemed very happy going about their business so I left them be for three weeks so HM could mate and settle down to work. So when I finally opened them up you can imagine my disappointment to find no queen, eggs or brood.
Fast forward to last night and I had great pleasure in moving a nice colony split from one of mentors as part of his swarm control efforts. With a nice fat, clipped and marked queen who is happily laying out to the edges of frames as fast as the girls can draw them. With bias and 5 frames of bees hopefully this is the foundation of my future stocks.