Bees gone Mad
We had a hectic day for us on Saturday – we don’t usually see anybody but it seemed as though everyone descended on us at one point.
An almost public spanking
First our septic tank pump stopped working so we got in touch with Celtic Waste and in no time at all ‘Smithy’ was here to take a look for us. I only noticed because the electrics kept tripping, I’d assumed it was the pump in the water feature but after cleaning and sorting that out it was still doing it so I managed to track it down to the pump in the septic tank.
I did some other gardening while I was out there. Some pre-bonsai trees were replanted, I did some tidying up here and there and admired one of my ferns which has some nice colours at the moment. The currants have been quite productive as well, we rarely pick many though, they tend to feed the birds instead!
Just before Smithy arrived I’d noticed that a swarm of bees had taken up residence in some of the hive hardware that we had stored under the lean-to. It was a warm, sunny day so the bees elsewhere were busy, as was this ‘new colony’.
I’d cleared the manhole covers over the septic tank and Smithy had taken a look inside and had returned to his van to get a pair of wire-cutters. Anna and I wandered up the garden and then I couple of bees attacked us. I was stung on my leg and arm, I think Anna got stung on her arm too!
So, after some flapping about trying to get them off we jumped into the conservatory to take cover. A bee followed us in and was on Anna so she was still flapping about trying to get rid of it. I then saw it stuck on the outside of her trousers trying to sting her bum so I picked up a flip-flop to knock it of. Fortunately, Smithy took a little longer to find his wire-cutters than expected. He already thought we were a bit mad but he really would have thought we were crazy had he returned to find us in the conservatory with me spanking Anna’s bum with a flip-flop!!!
The bees then had a go at him so we all ended up in the conservatory for a cup of tea! In the end I put on my bee-suit and went out to find out was going on. I did the wire cutting for him and put the man-hole covers back. I also retrieved his tools and his ear-piece that had gone flying into the flower border as he tried to swat bees from his head. The emptying of the septic tank was scheduled for Monday morning when he could send ‘his lads’ over rather than returning himself. They’ve just been and it went without incident but they couldn’t resist putting a bee suit on for a photo opportunity.
The doorbell works
During the excitement of having the drains people out, the neighbours rang the doorbell too – It’s nice to know the doorbell still works as it’s very rare that anyone uses it. They wanted to cut back some shrubs from our side of the wall – no problems there, except of course that they weren’t too far from the bees that had taken up residence under the lean-to. Needless to say I warned them but I thought they’d be OK out the front. Presumably they were as we didn’t hear any shouting or screaming!
Selling our camper
We then had another testing of the doorbell due to a visit from someone interested in buying our camper van. After showing him all the features he left to think about it and see if he could raise the necessary funds. He really liked it and was quite keen so we’ll wait to see what happens. It’s still for sale at the moment and having only advertised it locally it’s already had quite a bit of interest. It’s a somewhat reluctant sale, but we simply haven’t used it enough since lockdown and since my heart attack. It’s therefore silly to keep paying the tax, MOT and insurance costs when we’re doing less than 2,000 miles a year in it.
Back to the bees
As far as the pesky bees are concerned, they did settle back down and I had to decide what to do with the swarm that had taken up residence under the lean-to. We are fairly certain they are a swarm from one of our hives as we have lost at least one swarm recently. I did try to catch one from the fence post at the bottom of the garden but it didn’t stay put. It (or possibly a second swarm) then reappared on the fence post a few days later. Now there was one in spare hive hardware under the lean-to. We couldn’t leave them there.
The bees were clustered on a small amount of new comb that they had built stuck to a crown board in the cavity of an empty super box. I therefore made up a brood box, cleared some space in the apiary and decided I’d move them there – not ideal as you are supposed to move colonies less than 3 inches or more than 3 miles. This would be moving them about 50 metres. Hopefully, the fact that they had swarmed relatively recently would mean they’d be OK. If not, then we wouldn’t really have lost anything as we didn’t expect to have them in the first place.
I inspected the other bees while I was at it. The two colonies that were re-queening in the apiary looked OK. One was quite small (I think they swarmed after the split and that’s probably the swarm we now had under the lean-to). The other had lots of bees. I couldn’t be 100% sure if there was a new queen in either of them though. I was a little early to be looking really so that’s not unexpected. The big colony by the bedroom is huge. It has two completely full brood boxes and four pretty full supers at the moment and is bursting with bees. I didn’t go through it fully because even if I found queen cells there wouldn’t be much I could do as we don’t have the room to split them anyway – if they do swarm we’ll just have to leave them to it.
We then waited until bedtime (for us) and then went out and moved the swarm under the lean-to down to the new hive I’d built in the apiary.
We left them stuck to the crown board but put them into a brood box rather than an empty super and put some new frames of foundation in with them. We could only fit about 5 frames in but hopefully if they take up residence on those we’ll gradually be able to knock down the comb they’ve built on the crown board and replace it with proper frames. We also left the super they had been in on top of the crown board just to give them some familiar smells.
Phew, what a busy weekend!
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So not a relaxing week end then !