August 2011 - Amazing Bees - Beekeepers from Melbourne Australia

Feature of the month

Sharing some of our joys, highlights and worries of beekeeping ...

August 2011 - Swarming preparations underway inside the hives.

24-Aug-2011 - According to our calendar it is still winter, but spring is just beyond the horizon of our weather forecast. The glorious weather we have had recently keeps not only us happy, but the bees in particular. Under a sunny sky with temperatures around 20°C degrees and hardly any wind, what beekeeper would not be tempted to find out how his/her bees are doing after this last winter.

It has been 140 days since I last opened my hives to "tuck them in" for winter and now is the time to check how they are doing. Over the last few days I have checked most of my hives and I am very happy with their condition, some have already grown their population demanding to expand the hive by stacking on a super.

Today I inspected a two tier hive in my backyard and I'm glad I did - they are in the middle of preparations for swarming. When I opened the lid of one of my favourite colonies, bees were pouring out and the lid was covered with layers of bees. That explains why they were gathering in front of the entrance lately, even on cooler days. My first thought was that I need to stack on a 3rd box to give them more room.

Inspecting frame by frame I discovered 4 queen cells, uncapped and filled with queen larvae, probably 5-6 days old - a week from now I would have had a nice swarm in our backyard from that colony.

Creating an artificial swarm or splitting the colony? - that was the question.

Given the uncertainty about the weather for the coming weeks I decided to spIit the colony and transferred the queen, 4 frames with brood (no queen cells), 3 frames with honey and pollen and one empty frame with foundation to give them a task to do instead of swarming - into one box, ensuring they are not struggling if the weather turns cold again.

The remaining frames, including all frames with queen cells were left in another box. As the bees needed new space to build up with comb I replaced two frames with honey by frames with foundation.

This colony is extremely friendly, no signs of aggression whatsoever, ideal for the suburbs. I hope the sucessor queen will produce equally friendly bees.