Swarm season

My third full year of beekeeping and the season kicked off with a lovely warm early spring, which resulted in lots of swarms!! I learnt how to gather up a swarm for a tree last Spring when Antony from the Braintree Beekeepers Association helped me grab one from a tree in our garden, so when the calls started to come through this year I was partially prepared (well, mentally at least!)

The first one was pretty straight forward, it hung from a buddlea bush in a lady’s back garden, about 5ft off the ground - perfect - easily collected and brought back to the home apiary. A week later another call from the same lady and this time a swarm had landed in her blackberry bush at the front of the house, a little trickier this required a ladder and some balance but all were gathered happily and again brought into the home apiary.

Then was one in our own garden! whoops, likely this one was from our own colonies and missed during inspection time! and another 10ft in the air, attached to a pine tree (hubby helped with this one and nearly ended up with a full colony in his face but they made their way home with us eventually!)

We had one in an out apiary, one arrive at home and decide to make an old hive it’s new home (easiest collection by far!), several at chest height in easy to grab bushes and trees and one that required a bate hive on a low roof to encourage them out of the homeowner’s roof space - which surprisingly worked!

The trickiest collection came when a call from the gas board reported a swarm that had made its home in one of the gas pipes near Braintree Freeport (now Braintree Village), the bees would not play ball, deciding their hole in the ground was much more suitable than a lovely warm hive; this resulted in me standing in a hole up to my armpits, scooping bees out and into a skep - my gloves took a battering and a chill caught due to over an hour in the pouring rain at 7pm but eventually the majority were collected and transported home where several months later they’re happily ensconced in a wooden hive and building up into a strong colony for winter.

All swarms seem to be of good temperament and have built up to nice colonies over the summer, hopefully next year they’ll produce some honey for me as rent!

Next year I’ll be more prepared earlier in the season with a swarm kit ready to go in the car at all times so I’m not seen running around the house, garden and garage gathering suit, boots, skeps, hives, secateurs, lures, sheets etc- now if only I could have permission for a stripy yellow siren, now that would be fun!