Today we had a surprise visit from Meik from Plan Bee Ltd to do some honey harvesting! It would seem that Queen Lorde has been very busy. Meik told us that he had to split our hive during the summer and will probably have to do it again next week because the hive is so overcrowded.
This was a huge surprise to us all as we were very concerned about the number of bees in the colony after replacing out first queen. Splitting the hive removes some of the bees from the colony, preventing a swarm.
When we think of a swarm with think of angry bees swirling around like a living tornado. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. A swarm is how a hive naturally reproduces.
The queen will leave the hive with a large group of workers, sometimes 60% of the hive. The rest of the colony stays behind with a new queen. The bees that leave with the other queen surround her and protect her while around 20-50 scouts go out to find a new place for them to live. While this is happening the queen releases a pheromone that keeps the bees relaxed. Bees are at their calmest when they swarm and can be handled quite safely, if you know what you are doing. NEVER APPROACH A SWARM WITHOUT A TRAINED BEEKEEPER PRESENT. The bees are very vulnerable during the swarm and will act to protect themselves if they feel threatened.
When the scouts find a safe place for the colony to live, they go back to tell the others where to go to find their new home. They do this by doing a ‘waggle dance’. This means the bees do a bit of twerking – shaking their bodies in a certain direction for a certain length of time. The direction of the dance lets the bees know which way to travel and the length of time they dance for tells them how far to travel. All the bees then travel together to their new home and start to build their combs again. Swarms usually happen in the spring to allow the bees time to stock up their new home with honey to get them through the winter.
Our colony has been split to stop the hive getting overcrowded and the bees swarming at the wrong time of year.
In my last post I was worried we might not have any honey to harvest this year, but Meik managed to get almost 10 frames full of delicious, organic honey from our hive. I managed to convince Meik to cut us a little from the comb and let our staff have a taste. It’s has a lovely, light floral flavour. Hopefully, we’ll have some jars of the yummy stuff soon! Which means the Bee Team better get on with their label designs. However, our ladies were less than impressed and poor Meik got a sting for his troubles.
Don’t worry though, we didn’t take all their honey, so the hive will have plenty to feed on over winter. We also gave them some lovely sugar crystals to keep them happy in return for all their hard work this summer.
