One Too Many Queens In This House - Our Bee Swarm

I'm still learning the ropes when it comes to beekeeping, and my bee's got the better of me this weekend. We had our very first bee swarm.

When a beehive gets too big for it's boots, they will naturally create a new Queen, and as we all know, two Queen's in one house, don't play nicely. So the original Queen takes half the hive with her to find a new home. The new Queen then starts rebuilding the original hive.

To prevent the swarming stage, you look for Queen cells, and destroy them, also you should make sure there is plenty of space in the hive. My one hive was rather big and busy, and I was preparing to split the hive, but the bee's decided themselves to split. So it became a bigger priority to prepare myself hive #2.

The swarm attached to a little mandarin tree, while the bee scouts went searching for a new home. In the middle of the swarm is the Queen. A little fact, when bee's are swarming, they are at their most docile. 

At this stage I didn't have a new hive for the bees, so I found a cardboard box, set up 3 frames, 1 with honey and 2 empty frames, and then I had to get the bee's into the box. This was tricky, as the tree was so small. You should be able to shake the tree branch and all the bees fall into the box below. In this instance, I got an old sack, which I placed around the bottom of the tree, and shook the tree with all the bee's falling onto the sack. I quickly collected up the sack and put the fees into the box, and quickly closed the lid. At this point I was hoping I had the Queen in the box. Without the Queen the bees would just fly out to be with her. Within an hour, all the other bee's who I had missed, and entered the box, and the tree was bare. Yay, I was relieved I had the Queen.

I had to make a trip to Beetopia to pick up a new hive/frames lid etc. I can't recommend them enough, Grass is amazing and very helpful and the prices are fair. Above I finally had a home for my swarming bee's. Hopefully all is happy now in hive #2.  

The entire experience was rather exciting and interesting, but a bugger at the same time, as I feel this is going to impact on my honey production this year, as I now have two weaker hives. But we will see in about 3 months time.