Swarm 2 17-18 May

Its been quite a few days. On Wednesday we had the initial swarm, the next morning the swarm had gone but Martin and I went through the hives to check for signs of swarming but found plenty of bees. We also found empty queen cells in both hives meaning that both have new 'princesses' awaiting their maiden flight. We removed the remaining sealed queen cells to prevent castes. While we were taking out one of the cells the queen 'hatched', Martin took her away to one of his queenless hives.

The bees gave me a small window of about 2 hours to lull me into a false sense of security then came the familiar call. 'Theres an awful lot of bees in the air!' First thought was that the swarm was back but Martin said no its unheard of for one to return. He also said it was unlikely that either swarm was from our hives given the size of the swarms and the bees still left in our hives. Apparently bees are attracted to places where there are other bees and where other swarms have been, so who knows! This morning Martin and I (well I held the ladder!) gather the bulk of the swarm into a box and off they went with Martin. There are no eggs in the hives as you'd expect with virgin queens so Ill do a check w/c 28 May to see whats going on. I'm hoping for less excitement for a few weeks