A very swarmy May!

It is only mid May and the weather seems to have been perfect for the bees to get into swarming mode. To prevent our bees from swarming we have been making up new colonies from splits.

We have been out on 9 bee rescues so far with people calling to report swarms. We get those swarms into a basket then move into a new hive or give them to another local people.

Last night we went to a swarm wrapped around a tree near Newbury Racecourse (picture bottom left). We managed to get most of the bees into our box, but then noticed that the bees were generally heading up into a higher branch rather than into our box. This is a sign the queen was in the tree and not our box. After a short period of time we had another attempt which fortunately worked. Those bees are now hived with another local beekeeper.