Oh no!

2026:  CC Bee Blog 7

Catastrophe! When Andy and I checked the colony on Monday 1 June, we found that they had swarmed and we had a much-reduced number of bees, with a few eggs and larvae on 4 frames. Museum staff member, Sally Anne, advised that they had swarmed on Saturday 30 May. This was two days before we would have expected to find a newly mated queen laying eggs in the hive.

If you visited the museum over the half term holiday, you would have seen that the observation hive was “bursting” with bees. I must accept full responsibility for not responding swiftly enough, to prevent the swarm!

On inspecting the hive, we saw no signs of queen cells or of a new virgin queen. I didn’t feel that the number of bees left behind suggested the risk of a further swarm, and it seems unlikely that the remaining colony will be strong enough to continue at Cliffe Castle, but will need some time, in a smaller space, to build up in size.

As ever, with beekeeping, you need a plan B. So, I will bring a small colony that I have split from one of own my colonies (the one that has been supplying Cliffe Castle with bees in the past) on Monday 8 June and Lee and I will transfer the frames from the swarmed colony into a poly nucleus box. We will scorch the observation hive with a blow torch and transfer the small colony I have brought from home into the observation hive, to build up in size during the summer. I will take the Cliffe Castle bees back to my apiary, to keep an eye on whether they build up appropriately.

The queen of the new small colony is marked green, so she dates from 2024. We will need to keep a close eye on how quickly this colony builds up at the observation hive as older queens are more likely to swarm. We may still get a new white queen of 2026 at Cliffe Castle, if the colony we introduce on Monday 8 June grows quickly and needs to be split.

I’ll keep you posted.

Linda