After two weeks the oil seed rape honey has set really solid. As you can see from the curl of honey on the spoon in this photograph, when you scoop it out it resembles a wood shaving produced by carving. The colour is almost white but it is deliciously floral and still creamy when you eat it, albeit with just a hint of granularity. I don't particularly like honey but this is scrumptious.
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I missed a call from Sue last week reporting a swarm of bees in a flower bed outside the main door of her office building.
Luckily, she called Dad too and he went out straight away with the swarm gear to take a look.
Swarm gear:
straw skep (or carboard box)
beekeeper's suit, gloves, wellies
large sheet
smoker
board
saw and/or loppers (for cutting branches)
water spray
brick (for propping up skep/cardboard box)
He found a small swarm on flowers low down near the main office door. It was in an awkward position as he couldn't get his skep under the bees. Instead of dropping them in to the skep, he had to prop the skep slightly above the bees and try to use smoke to encourage them to crawl up inside.
Unfortunately, this didn't work, so wearing all his gear as a precaution, he scooped as many bees as he could with both hands, depositing them gently in the skep. Then he inverted the skep wedging it up on one side with a brick (which was part of the swarm kit), covered the whole thing including the rest of the swarm outside the skep with a large plastic sheet because it was raining and he left them overnight.
It was a relatively cold and blustery night. The next morning he returned before breakfast to find all the bees had crept into the warm, dark and cosy skep so he tied it in the sheet and took the bees back to the out apiary at the farm.
As the weather wasn't clement enough to prop the skep up on the ground outside the hive and let the bees walk up a board into a clean hive*, he shook them in to the top of an empty hive and left them to settle in. They were furnished with some empty frames in the brood chamber and a couple of frames of stores. By the afternoon they were starting to fly around the hive to orient themselves. This will be Queen Sue and the Sue Bees if they choose to stay with us.
* It is my ambition to watch bees process up into a hive - everyone who has seen it tells me it is really a magical sight to behold.
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Queen Joan hasn't been seen for two inspections.
Last year we didn't see Queen G ever but I saw Queen Joan when I marked her and the week after that so to miss her for two weeks is a bit of a concern. It's entirely possible that she has left the hive with a small swarm but, quite honestly, it's not obvious because the colony is so large.
Keep reading for more news........
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