Bees in the Bushes

On Monday afternoon I got a call from the Council's Pest Control people asking if I wanted to collect a swarm of honey bees. They're pretty good with bees and tend to pass on accessible colonies to local beekeepers. So far I've been out for a couple of swarms that turned out to be Tree Bumblebees and once for Red Mason Bees. Standard advice for Tree Bumblebees and Mason Bees? Leave them alone and they'll die off in Autumn. So it was a nice chaneg to get a call from the Council as you know they'll've correctly identified the bees. These bees were in a rose bush over in Bransholme, the other side of the city.

I popped to my out apiary and piced up a 5 frame nuc a-when you have bees in two places what you soon realise is that whatever you need is *always* at the other location, even if you have two of everything. It's a quirk of physics or something. So a quick trip to my out apiary to grab the five frame nuc and I was on my merry way when the phone rang again, it was the council again. I thought she was going to tell me the bees had flown away but instead it was another honey bee swarm. I couldn't collect them too though as having been increasing my colonies I'm running out of hive parts -had to order a load of frames and a couple of roofs today.

I got to the location had a look around and couldn't find any bees but after a little hanging about and a little input from a couple of people in the building that'd reported them I was led to a rosebush and there they were.

Admiring the rosebush

It looked like a prime swarm clustered helpfully on an easily accessible branch of the bush. I drove the car round and unloaded my stuff -the nuc, smoker, a saw, usual bee tools, safety stuff and a water spray.
Cutting away a large branch of the bush so I could manouvere the Nuc brood box under the bees I gave the branch a sharp shake and as expected, a load of bees fell into it. I Placed the box on the ground and added three frames of foundation. Turned out the bees helpfully clustered on the easily accessible branch wasn't the whole cluster. There were bees deep inside the bush so I then went about removing smaller twigs from inside the bush and shaking them into the box too. It took a while.I then put the nuc on top of a plastic storage box to move it nearer to where the flying bees were buzzing about and put a crownboard over the top leaving two seams open for bees to enter through as well as the nuc entrance. At this point bees in the box were nosanoving to guide the other bees in too.

Bees Nosanoving on top of the Nuc

I peeled off my Marigolds er beekeeper gloves I mean, removed my jacket and wellies and sat on the ground waiting for the flying bees to make their way into the box. Occasionally a small cluster would reform on the bush so I'd get up and gave it a shake and a smoke. Ideally I'd've left the nuc sat there and come back in the dark but it was too public so I loitered for a couple of hours, talked to a few people who'd seen the bees arrive, stroked a Terrier and caught up on my Facebook newsfeed. Eventually I closed the crown board, put the roof on and ratchet strapped it together leaving just the entrance open. After a couple of hours there was still a lot of bees in the air and I was starting to suspect there were some orientation flights going on. Using the water I'd brought I sprayed over the flying bees and the entrance trying to fool the bees into thinking it was raining. It took a half litre of water and half the bottle I'd brought to drink but seemed to make a difference. I then blocked up the hive entrance before putting it in the car and driving them to their new home.

Okay so it's probably a cartoon wasp I found on Google Image Search.
Works better than a Keep Your Distance sticker.

I would've like to have left the hive closed up for a few days but the only crownboard I'd had available didn't have a feeding hole in it so ventilation was limited and daytime temperatures are pretty high at the moment. Using some ply I'd liberated from a skip previously I quickly made a new crown board and using my hive tool a little creatively managed to cut a round hole in more or less the middle. I then swapped the solid crownboard for the new one and opened the Nuc entrance so the bees who flew up could get back in. I'd moved the colony a good 4 miles as the crow flies so the bees should reorient themselves the the new hive and not return to their original location.

New arrivals