2026 Cliffe Castle Bee Blog 15
Steve and I checked the hive on Monday 3 August, only to find no eggs, no queen, but several emergency queen cells! Really looks as if she has made off, as we did not find her dead in the hive. Given she was a clipped queen, from one of my colonies at home, if the bees had decided
to swarm they would soon have returned to the hive after finding the queen was not with them.
The hive certainly has plenty of bees in it and some frames of sealed brood, that will emerge as new bees over the next week or so. It is too late in the season now to introduce another new colony, so we will wait until the end of August to check whether the queen cell we left has
developed into a new queen. Lee and I will check them next on Monday 24 August.
At home, I clip off one third of a wing of each of my queens to avoid my colonies leaving in a warm and possibly starting a new nest in neighbouring properties! This doesn’t prevent the bees attempting to swarm, but it does mean that all the swarming bees (about half of the original colony) return to the hive, as they cannot set up a new home without a queen. The queen can’t fly with them because of her clipped wing. Either she will be found on the floor at the hive entrance, or sometimes underneath the hive, if it is a normal hive outdoors – if she is
not found, the beekeeper needs to wait for a new queen to develop from one of the queen cells left behind.
I’ve added some photos of what happened when one of my colonies, with a clipped queen, set off to swarm, only to return when they found the queen was missing. In fact, she had crawled under the hive floor and a mass of bees joined her there. I needed to take the hive apart, to put
the bees back into the boxes. As you can see, I ended up with bees all over my legs and boots and guess who I found on my jeans leg? Yes, the clipped queen!
At Cliffe Castle, if the queen had left the hive, she would have fallen on to the roof (where we cannot go) and been lost there. Usually, we do not have clipped queens in the observation hive. At this late stage in the season it’s going to be touch and go whether the colony can build up enough to survive the winter. If this looks to be the case when we take them back to the apiary to over winter in early September, we can unite them with another small colony to boost their numbers.
Yesterday (Tuesday 4 August) a few of us had the chance to meet lots of visitors at the Busy Bees Day at Cliffe Castle. It was good to chat and answer questions about honey bees and our Beekeeper by the Hive, John, was kept busy all afternoon doing the same. Look out for Mike, the Beekeeper by the Hive next Tuesday afternoon; Louise the following Tuesday and then Gill, who will cover the last Tuesday of the school holidays.
Linda
