7th July with the first break in the cool weather since the nucs arrived, 3 volunteers visited the apiary: 2 local guests arrived as well, and were loaned suits so they could have a good look at the hives. The intention was to check the original colonies and put the new nucs into hives. We immediately noticed that two colonies of bees had taken advantage of the first warm day in a week or so, and swarmed: 2 swarms were tucked up in a large shrub, one at shoulder height, the other about 12 feet up. The first priority was to recover the swarms: a good demonstration for our 2 guests, who were new to beekeeping. We have yet to check which colonies produced the swarms – we thought we’d pre-empted the swarming, but they’d defied our preparations!
2 of our colonies were quite small, with no queen cells visible at the last check, and looked unlikely to swarm. Out of the other 2 – both already on double brood boxes so they could be split easily and reduce the risk of swarming – one had already been reduced by taking out bees and combs to create 2 small nuclei.
So a rapid change of plans followed. The first job was to recover the lower swarm, which was fairly straight forward – it was put into a brood box that had been readied for one one the newly arrived nucs, with a queen excluder between floor and brood box, so that the queen was unable to leave. A super with feeder and syrup was added, and this colony settled down in a couple of days – the excluder was removed, and they consumed a full feeder of syrup every 2 days. They must be drawing out the foundation very rapidly, to produce combs so that the queen can start laying as soon as possible.
The second swarm was too high to reach with the equipment we had to hand, so we concentrated on transferring the newly arrived nucs into hives: we transferred 3 but the drizzle started up, then turned to rain, and we had to stop. The remaining nucs were put into hives the next day.
The swarm high up in the tree was finally caught by David, who returned with a ladder and the newly-purchased Association swarm catcher: it worked beautifully, and the swarm was taken away (the apiary having run out of brood boxes!)
Two of the new nucs will be cared for by a trio of beginners, at a separate site; three will be going to another apiary site, to be the core of a teaching apiary in another local area.