June: A swarm worth a silver spoon?

We do the best we can at Epsom Beekeepeers to deal with all the swarms we get calls about in the Epsom area.  Some are in more unusual places than others.

This call was about one in a compost bin, there was a young family trying to renovate a house and take care of an 11 week old baby.....and the builders couldn't get on with the work because the bees were getting in the way.  Mostly calls about bees in compost bins are about bumble bees.... but we're nice people..  we'll come round Sunday morning to check it out...

Certainly seems quiet enough...but there are a few honey bees buzzing about...

 




Ah! - there you all are...

There's actually quite a lot of bees in here, they've been in here long enough to draw several sections of honeycomb and there is a queen laying eggs.  There are quite a few sections of brood in all stages of development....

 

 

There's nothing else for it...we'll just have to cut it out one piece at a time...

Checking each piece over carefully to try to find the queen....

We couldn't find her and the bees did seem to be rather determined to return to the compost bin, repeatedly clustering on the side....and me.  They did seem to like sitting on me....

 




We smoked them, and sprayed them and eventually enough of them were in the box...

 

 

For us to declare "job done" and take the box away...

But that was only half the job.  There's no point rescuing bees from unwanted places if you don't put them in a place they are wanted.  So ...back to the apiary...

First assemble all the hive parts to keep the bees safe and sound...

And then, rather like children unwrapping and laying out all the toys that Santa left, we opened the box and sorted through the pieces of honeycomb, looking for the best ones to put into frames... 

 

This is definitely a job where four hands are better than two....squishing odd shaped pieces of honeycomb into frames and capturing them there with elastic bands...

 

 

There was still an amazing number of bees in the box, more frames were needed...

and the board to walk the rest into the hive...

 

Now if only we could see the queen....

 

but there's quite a few bees to look through...

Here's a bee's eye view of the way home....

and a bee's eye view of the apiary...

The bad news is that the battery then ran out on the camera.

The good news is that just after it did,we spotted the queen and popped her safely in the hive.

What a great way to spend three hours on a Sunday!