A cut-out from a Hedgehog House!

We were called to assist with a colony of bees which had decided to make their home in a hedgehog house - whilst the hedgehog still lived their! We opened up the roof of the hive and found the bees had made 6 combs with eggs, larvae and stores. It is always fascinating to see the way that combs are made in the wild, straight, with exactly the right amount of space between the wax.

We carefully cut each of the combs out of the box and then fixed them into frames within our nucleus box using elastic bands.

Once all the frames were transferred we shook the rest of the bees into the box and left them for a 24 hours until all of the bees had worked their way into the box.

We have now transferred this colony to one of our apiaries and we will help to them to build up strongly ready for the winter.