Bee horde on juniper branch
This spring our bee were starting to outgrow their excavation and were be after to pour . How do I cognize ? They made queen cup and jump put down eggs in them and producing queen larvae . Once they decide to make a new queen , it is hard to twist their mentation around . So when we saw a world-beater cup with a developing larva and majestic gelatin in it and another queen cup with a new egg in it , we knew they would teem and split their beehive unless we separate the hive before they did .
Swarming is well thing for a bee hive . It means it is doing well and has too many inhabitants and some need to move on . So we found the existing fairy and channel her and some brood and dearest and pollen bars to an empty beehive we had . Great ! They seem to be doing well . So now we have two hives . But there were still fagot cup in the original beehive with about 10 developing larva in them . We thought the other bees would take down the queen cups .
Bee swarm on juniper branch
We think that would be the destruction of it but no , there ’s more to the story . Last weekend , I was out in the part of the garden closest to the first beehive and comment they were getting very noisy and started leaving and circling around in a great wad of bees and I knew they were go to swarm . I assume that one queen hatched and encounter all the other queen loving cup with larvae in them and decided to leave with about half the hive before the others hatched . A hive can only have one queen and when a raw queen hachure , it will go along and vote down off any other poof that are quick to emerge with it except this one was quite further along in it ’s development while the other larvae were not very highly-developed yet .
The swarm terminate up on a tree branch about 30 feet off and had formed a long ball of bees about 30 inch foresighted by 12 inches astray where many thousands of bees had amass . I ’m guessing about 30 thousand ! From there the swarm sends out scouts to discover a young home in which to move to . The swarm delay to hear the composition from the talent scout before travel again which can take from 3 hr to 3 day depending what the scouts find . Of course we beseem up but when the hive swarmed , they are the most gentle as they are out of their chemical element so to utter . We run over to another empty beehive we had antecedently set up and put some more bars of brood and ambrosia in it from the original beehive .
Then we went back to the swarm and I cut the offset down while Elodie hold up a with child tupperware container underneath them and they flow about six column inch with the branch into the boxwood . We then carried the box over to the new hive and put them inside . Hopefully they are felicitous and have a dependable queen to get them become . The original hive now has a lot fewer bees in it so hopefully this is the remainder of swarming . It is exciting we catch them before they left the property but also it is a little newvewracking too ! Now we have three nettle rash !
