Hiving a swarm

The thing about swarms is that it can be a blooming disappointing (verging on soul-destroying) when you lose one, but rather brilliant when you catch one. And it can even be pretty good when your beekeeping mentor catches one – and you benefit from it…

At 8.08pm I got a text from Jonathan saying that he had caught a swarm. His hive had swarmed (sad to say, this was music to my ears, see Swarmy Bees post, and made me feel a bit less of an idiot). He didn’t want any more hives and he very kindly thought of me as he knew I wanted a second one to play with. (At this stage he didn’t know I’d partially lost the first colony).

It was only as I was driving home with a box of Angry Bees in a cardboard box in the back of the car that I began to wonder … what would Jonathan have done if I didn’t want them. The Queen Bee is laying about 2,000 eggs a day (I have even read up to 6,000 in the BBKA News, I’m scared to read it these days). That’s 60,000 new bees a month and they only take about 21 days to hatch out.

I have visions of my beehives doubling every year and my life generally getting out of control in proportion to the number of beehives. Is this how people suddenly find themselves with 25 dogs, 13 cats and 8 budgies living in a one bed flat? Am I just going to have to be a beekeeper in-denial and ignore the fact they need to swarm and just let them? Is that what beekeepers do? Or am I going to wake up one day with 100 beehives somehow integrated into my house?

I am going to have to stop writing this post as I’m starting to feel a bit queasy.

…………………………………………………………………..

OK. I got over it and I’m back. In short, I had another beekeeping session in the dark, with my Dad, and chucked the bees in the hive we made a month ago. There were some issues about me getting in a panic, not opening the cardboard box properly and shaking the bees around and making them angrier. But Dad saved the day. One day … I’ll save the day. One day I’ll be a Dad.

Oh by the way, I should mention my wife is 15 weeks pregnant. The vicar was a bit surprised when I told him the day after the wedding.

Here we are hiving the swarm.

Beekeepers - Dad & I Hiving a swarm

And here’s a video:

Post script: Funny, how looking at my old posts I was worrying about varroa, but I haven’t thought about varroa for 3 weeks now. CRIKEY!!! The varroa!!! I’d forgot about the varroa!

Author: Roger

regaining my sanity through beekeeping

2 thoughts on “Hiving a swarm”

  1. “I have visions of my beehives doubling every year”….you’ll be alright, some colonies will die off and there’s always some innocent beginners happy to take on free bees.

    Congratulations on the pregnancy news!

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