Topic: Caught on the hop by an early swarm

[bombus]

Yesterday was the first chance I have had to go through me Bees. To my suprise they are much further on than i had thought. while i was going round the Apiary adding supers to all hives, one of the very strong ones swarmed :-[. Luckily I managed to take the swarm ( massive) and have hived in new hive and foundation + 2 drawn combs, on the original site, moving the old hive to the side. In effect the same as an artificial swarm. This is the earliest swarm I've ever had, but the Bees have been working the oil seed rape nearby most of this week and its really brought them on. Happy days!

[OliveOil]

sounds really exciting!!!!!!!!  Don't have a clue what you meant precisely but i guess you got a swarm?  I'd love bees but prefer to swap eggs for honey from the others round me

[triffid]

What it means is that clever Bombus was on the scene ready to give a new des. res. to the bees that had decided they wanted to leave home.  :)

If Bombus hadn't been there, the swarm would have almost certainly flown away, taking with them about half the honey in the hive and half the bees too, from the size of that swarm. Which would have meant the remaining part of the colony wouldn't be strong enough this year to produce any spare honey for Bombus.

And this is early for swarms! :o

[Robert_Brenchley]

Very early, but I'm not too surprised to hear it. Yesterday I spotted the first drone of the season, and about a dozen drone cells scattered about. Early drones go with early swarms. No danger of mine swarming yet though; they winter with very small clusters, and so far there's only a small amount of brood, and maybe 10 000 bees. They'll expand very fast though, and be raising queen cells in a month or so.