Freebies – Free Bees
We lost a few colonies of bees over the winter. Not only did we lose two small colonies at home, but the bees in our out-apiary at Laura’s house also succumbed. We never had particularly high hopes for them as they were already struggling and then got blown over several times during the autumn and winter gales. That meant this year has been all about increasing colony numbers rather than making honey.
Things have gone well. The hive at Laura’s was rebuilt and left empty. We had planned to retrieve it and clean it out but hadn’t got around to it yet, as we were waiting until we had a reason to do so.
Splits
At home, I split our one remaining colony early in the season and successfully reared a new queen. The new colony is now covering most of the frames and already has two honey supers, so it’s doing well. The queen is laying strongly and the colony is continuing to build.
The original colony recovered well after the split, so once the first split had successfully requeened, I divided it again. This third colony has now requeened successfully too. It hasn’t had much chance to build up in size yet, but the last inspection revealed eggs, young larvae, plenty of stores and all the signs of a healthy, developing colony.
The plan was to leave it for another couple of weeks before moving it to the out-apiary at Laura’s. Our home apiary can’t really support three large colonies, so relocating one made sense. While we were there, we planned to collect the old hive and bring it home to clean up and keep as spare equipment.
Freebies
Then we received a message from Laura to say it looked as though there were bees in the empty hive. Sure enough, the video she sent seemed to confirm it. Apparently, she’d seen a large swarm flying overhead but hadn’t expected them to stop and take up residence. That’s exactly what they did.
A quick inspection showed they were well settled. The queen looked healthy and was laying well, they already had some stores, and it appeared we’d gained ourselves a free swarm. Hopefully they’ll continue to build up over the coming months. You can’t complain about ‘freebies’.
We may still move one of our own colonies to the out-apiary to reduce competition for forage at home, but that’s a good problem to have.
Overall, things are looking very positive. We’ve gone from a single colony headed by a two- or three-year-old queen to four colonies in total. Two now have newly mated 2026 queens, while the fourth has a queen of unknown origin, bringing some different genetics into the apiaries.
Better still, the original colony now has four supers of honey and is once again absolutely packed with bees. That queen has survived multiple winters on our exposed site, has been split twice this season, and is still producing a remarkably productive colony. She has clearly proved herself well adapted to our local conditions, so having two new colonies carrying her genetics feels like a very worthwhile outcome from this year’s efforts.
I haven’t taken any photos of the bees lately, so here’s one of the garden from a couple of days ago instead.
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