Absconding

The bees seem settled in the new hive and we have begun to work out a strategy to deal with the bees left in the original hive. On Saturday afternoon we go through carefully to find the queen cells which must be there otherwise the bees would not have swarmed the day before. Find them we do and mark the 3 frames where we find good queen cups and think we have destroyed all the others- we will go through the hive again in 6 to 7 days to check the progress of these and decide which to keep.
Sunday dawned fine and sunny- another lovely early spring day. All seemed well until about 3 o'clock when Trev rushed in to the house-'They're going again' -What a sight and sound it was. The whole sky appeared full of bees and the sound filled the air. It looked like they were going with a vengeance this time as they disappeared up the lane.
Nevertheless we decided to try and follow- and amazingly they settled in a front garden some way up the lane. They caused quite a stir but people seemed genuinely interested and happy to let us deal with them.
Not so easy this time, they had clustered half way up a tree on the trunk not easy to get a box under or to bang them into it. A different technique was called for- we used the same box- we hoped the smell of the queen might still be inside to help attract them inside- spread the sheet round the base of the tree and used a bee brush to brush the bees in to the box. Again we propped the box up- hoped we had the queen inside and left them to crawl in.
After about an hour all the bees had gone into the box, it looked as if we had succeeded in getting the queen inside, otherwise the bees would soon have flown away again. While the bees were crawling into the box I had nipped back home and got the same brood box ready again. It was just left to securely tie the sheet round the box of bees and carry them home. They were emptied back into the brood box- this time I left a smaller opening on the entrance block to make it a bit harder for them to get out!!

When bees leave like this it is not called swarming, apparently they are absconding. They had already drawn some of the comb on the new foundation ,there was pollen and some stores, so why they went who knows- I put on some light syrup feed to make them feel more like staying and left them to it. we will check on them in about a week, so watch this space!!