Exponential Increase
Created | Updated May 28, 2011
When I woke up on Friday, 6th May, I had two colonies of honey bees, but by the time I climbed into bed on Saturday, 7th May, I had five! How did that happen? I wasn't expecting it. This is how the story goes:
First, the swarm team co-ordinator asked whether I would put my name down for the swarm team and I said yes. All the half dozen or so calls I've had so far, have been for non-honey bees (just got another ‘bumble bee’ call as I'm writing this) – apart from one, that was about a mile up a very tall, mature Austrian pine tree. There wasn't a ladder long enough, although the lady whose garden the tree was in, gave me every encouragement to try for it.
Then I was staying over in Northants, where my bees are, for about a fortnight – so some distance from my home phone and swarm calls. What with one thing and another, my hopes of swarm-bagging weren't high and rising, but low and falling.
My own bees, however, were building up nicely. Both hives had two supers and a great many busy busy bees fetching in loads of bright yellow rape pollen. I suspected they might be hatching plans of their own, that were likely to be at odds with my own plans. So I prepared a couple of hives to carry out the artificial swarm manipulation that our excellent tutor, my wonderful mentor and all the books, tell us will save us losing half (or more) of our bees. But something stopped me in my tracks…
The house I was filling up with bees. They were getting in under the eaves and congregating by dozens and scores on every closed window. Scouts! I thought. (Don't ask me why. The answer is embarrassing, like much of the rest of this story/confession. It could have something to do with being an idiot, I think. But I just didn't think they were my bees.) Some poor beekeeper’s bees are about to swarm, I thought, and if I don't do something quickly, my brother is going to be beeset, beenighted and, possibly beestung when he gets back from his holiday. I took the two freshly prepared hives and set them up at two positions facing the spot where the bees were entering. They showed considerable interest in the one on the heavy iron stand, just in front of my brother's garage (the positioning of that stand is a whole other story) and a bit of interest in the one on his vegetable patch – but still persisted with their investigation of the eaves. It looked a lot of bees. I added a super to the one in front of the garage, then went off to do battle with a misbehaving computer.
The computer refused to co-operate. I looked up, muttering and cussing and happened to glance out of the window, only to see the sky darkening with a great brown vortex of bees, swirling around the hive with the super* on it (this was about 20-30 minutes after I added the super – so I'm guessing that's what clinched the deal). What a sight! I've never seen anything like it in my life. I went for a closer look from the back door, and the noise was astonishing: a steady roar. It looked like a hurricane being slowly sucked into the hive by a vacuum cleaner. Call me soft if you like (I'm not normally a gusher) but it really moved me. Talk about "a force of nature"! The splendour of the thing! The spectacle! Extraordinary!
And that was that. Except the hive was on this long, heavy, old iron hive-stand, right in front of the garage. But not to worry, my very clear-thinking and resourceful mentor was on the receiving end of all my oohs and ahhs and gasps of wonder, by telephone text message and she came all the way from the north of Leicestershire the next day to help me shift them, having established that there was a window of opportunity before they were fully and irrevocably orientated to the spot in front of the garage. (It worked – most but not all stayed with the hive.)
Then she went through my hives and discovered the shocking truth: they were my bees – the very bees that I'd prepared to artificially swarm – and by blind luck, they chose the very hive they would already have been AS'd into, had I been a better and more efficient beekeeper. My mentor is a very good and efficient beekeeper and, apart from that 'look' she gave me when she found the lovely big sealed queen cells in my hive two, she didn't even criticise me for my blunder. She used one of those big, juicy queen cells from hive two, in a second artificial swarm, from hive one – which had just one old queen and a smallish supercedure* cell. I did know about that but hadn't intended to AS them – not until Frances said that even that one cell would probably be enough to stimulate swarming at this time of year.
So that was my colonies increased from two to four. A few hours later (8.30pm), the phone rang and a lady (friend who lives near by) asked if I would collect this swarm, if she came over and guided me through the labyrinth of country tracks to where it was hanging off a fence. It was a dear little cluster – not very much bigger than a tennis ball. I got most of them in a small honey bucket and tipped them into a correx nuc* box, where most of the rest followed. We stayed until it was almost completely dark and starting to rain a bit, trying to get the last few stragglers, but had to leave maybe 5-10 bees behind. That night – Saturday night/Sunday morning – it rained heavily for 2-3 hours and there was a howling gale. I think those little ladies were very lucky… and so was I. And that's the five colonies accounted for.
~~~~~~~~~~
*1 - A "super" is a box (without a top or bottom) of a standard size that is added to the stack of boxes that make up the hive. When the bees are running out of space to store honey and accommodate the population of bees, adding a super gives them the extra space they need.
*2 - A "supercedure cell" is a queen cell that the bees make when they need to replace their old, failing queen - before she runs out of sperm to make worker bees (she can't just go out and mate again). This is different from a "swarm cell" as, when they make swarm cells, they commonly make many and the first to leave with the swarm, once these cells start to be sealed, is the old queen, who still has what it takes to establish a new colony.
*3 - A "nuc box" is a "nucleus hive" - ie, a small hive that takes 4 to 6 brood frames instead of the 11 or so that a full-sized brood box holds. Nuc boxes are good for nurturing small/new colonies.
First, the swarm team co-ordinator asked whether I would put my name down for the swarm team and I said yes. All the half dozen or so calls I've had so far, have been for non-honey bees (just got another ‘bumble bee’ call as I'm writing this) – apart from one, that was about a mile up a very tall, mature Austrian pine tree. There wasn't a ladder long enough, although the lady whose garden the tree was in, gave me every encouragement to try for it.
Then I was staying over in Northants, where my bees are, for about a fortnight – so some distance from my home phone and swarm calls. What with one thing and another, my hopes of swarm-bagging weren't high and rising, but low and falling.
My own bees, however, were building up nicely. Both hives had two supers and a great many busy busy bees fetching in loads of bright yellow rape pollen. I suspected they might be hatching plans of their own, that were likely to be at odds with my own plans. So I prepared a couple of hives to carry out the artificial swarm manipulation that our excellent tutor, my wonderful mentor and all the books, tell us will save us losing half (or more) of our bees. But something stopped me in my tracks…
The house I was filling up with bees. They were getting in under the eaves and congregating by dozens and scores on every closed window. Scouts! I thought. (Don't ask me why. The answer is embarrassing, like much of the rest of this story/confession. It could have something to do with being an idiot, I think. But I just didn't think they were my bees.) Some poor beekeeper’s bees are about to swarm, I thought, and if I don't do something quickly, my brother is going to be beeset, beenighted and, possibly beestung when he gets back from his holiday. I took the two freshly prepared hives and set them up at two positions facing the spot where the bees were entering. They showed considerable interest in the one on the heavy iron stand, just in front of my brother's garage (the positioning of that stand is a whole other story) and a bit of interest in the one on his vegetable patch – but still persisted with their investigation of the eaves. It looked a lot of bees. I added a super to the one in front of the garage, then went off to do battle with a misbehaving computer.
The computer refused to co-operate. I looked up, muttering and cussing and happened to glance out of the window, only to see the sky darkening with a great brown vortex of bees, swirling around the hive with the super* on it (this was about 20-30 minutes after I added the super – so I'm guessing that's what clinched the deal). What a sight! I've never seen anything like it in my life. I went for a closer look from the back door, and the noise was astonishing: a steady roar. It looked like a hurricane being slowly sucked into the hive by a vacuum cleaner. Call me soft if you like (I'm not normally a gusher) but it really moved me. Talk about "a force of nature"! The splendour of the thing! The spectacle! Extraordinary!
And that was that. Except the hive was on this long, heavy, old iron hive-stand, right in front of the garage. But not to worry, my very clear-thinking and resourceful mentor was on the receiving end of all my oohs and ahhs and gasps of wonder, by telephone text message and she came all the way from the north of Leicestershire the next day to help me shift them, having established that there was a window of opportunity before they were fully and irrevocably orientated to the spot in front of the garage. (It worked – most but not all stayed with the hive.)
Then she went through my hives and discovered the shocking truth: they were my bees – the very bees that I'd prepared to artificially swarm – and by blind luck, they chose the very hive they would already have been AS'd into, had I been a better and more efficient beekeeper. My mentor is a very good and efficient beekeeper and, apart from that 'look' she gave me when she found the lovely big sealed queen cells in my hive two, she didn't even criticise me for my blunder. She used one of those big, juicy queen cells from hive two, in a second artificial swarm, from hive one – which had just one old queen and a smallish supercedure* cell. I did know about that but hadn't intended to AS them – not until Frances said that even that one cell would probably be enough to stimulate swarming at this time of year.
So that was my colonies increased from two to four. A few hours later (8.30pm), the phone rang and a lady (friend who lives near by) asked if I would collect this swarm, if she came over and guided me through the labyrinth of country tracks to where it was hanging off a fence. It was a dear little cluster – not very much bigger than a tennis ball. I got most of them in a small honey bucket and tipped them into a correx nuc* box, where most of the rest followed. We stayed until it was almost completely dark and starting to rain a bit, trying to get the last few stragglers, but had to leave maybe 5-10 bees behind. That night – Saturday night/Sunday morning – it rained heavily for 2-3 hours and there was a howling gale. I think those little ladies were very lucky… and so was I. And that's the five colonies accounted for.
~~~~~~~~~~
*1 - A "super" is a box (without a top or bottom) of a standard size that is added to the stack of boxes that make up the hive. When the bees are running out of space to store honey and accommodate the population of bees, adding a super gives them the extra space they need.
*2 - A "supercedure cell" is a queen cell that the bees make when they need to replace their old, failing queen - before she runs out of sperm to make worker bees (she can't just go out and mate again). This is different from a "swarm cell" as, when they make swarm cells, they commonly make many and the first to leave with the swarm, once these cells start to be sealed, is the old queen, who still has what it takes to establish a new colony.
*3 - A "nuc box" is a "nucleus hive" - ie, a small hive that takes 4 to 6 brood frames instead of the 11 or so that a full-sized brood box holds. Nuc boxes are good for nurturing small/new colonies.
