332. On the Bees

A very interesting week.

On Wednesday one of our 2 colonies swarmed. (If you remember, we split one colony into the two hives at the end of May.) Probably the busier hive, the National (the hive on the right in the photo - but this photo was NOT taken on Saturday).

I was in the front paddock and when I returned to the veg. garden area I could hear a tremendous buzzing. Thousands of bees on the front of the hive but the noise seemed elsewhere too. I looked up and spotted a cloud of them. Not a football, but a cloud, about 5 metres x 5 metres by 3 metres high, several metres above the hedge at the side of the veg garden. Buzzing around loudly, manically.

On Saturday, we looked through both colonies, me with a heavy heart. Expecting half the bees in the National and not very much happening in the WBC, possibly laying workers (a nightmare).

But, no. The National was busy with bees, had plenty of brood and reasonable levels of honey in the super. If they had swarmed, then they seemed to be coping.

Then, to the WBC. We found 2 and a half frames of brood. Which means a laying queen. Amazing! Our experiment a few weeks ago of removing a frame of brood from the National and putting it in the WBC, HOPING that the bees might draw one of the eggs out as a queen seemed to have worked. A bit of a miracle.

We seem to have two hives, both with laying queens. Prospects look good.

Saturday afternoon. Thousands of bees streaming out of the National, crawling all over it. See photo. Another swarm? I couldn't believe it. However, no bees flying high, no cloud of bees.


I looked it up. It's called bearding. It can be a pre-cursor to swarming but it may just be that the bees are cooling down, the temperature in the hive having got too high (tends to happen on busy nectar-collecting days when thousands of bees are flying in and out.)

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