we’ve had a very unusual occurrence.

The queen which swarmed from the old hive and we caught and put out in a new hive went missing.

We had no idea where she went until we looked in the original hive where she was from and hey presto there she was.

Shes left all the old bees behind and gone back home. The new bees seem to have accepted her but we will need to wait and see as they usually wouldn’t accept a new queen being introduced!

check back in a week or so to find out if there is an answer to this mystery!

We have been very vigilant over the last few years to make sure that our bees have been unable to swarm.

However we (I) made a few amateur mistakes this year. The main one was that I left more than one queen cell in the bee hive which means that when the first queen hatches she can swarm with some of the bees. This is called a “cast swarm”.

Fortunately we spotted that the bees were swarming and were able to hunt them down and catch them.

This was was the first time we have caught a swarm so messed it up a bit but got lucky and the bees liked the new home we moved them into and are happy there.

We we will move them into a full sized hive soon which was bought for us generously by Mr McMullan snr who is our main beekeeping mentor.

Enjoy the video and remember if you see a swarm of bees call Mr McMullan and he will come hunt them down!