Beeing Busy

Well the weather doesn't know what to do- it's cold and wet and it looks like the bees don't know what to do either!
We thought that we had them under control- but life finds a way to show you it has a mind of it's own.
We knew that because of circumstance 2 hives had not been rechecked to ensure the bees had not tried to make emergency queen cells from larvae that is too old, but hoped that they would raise the one cell we had left and knock down the others. But no- too much to ask - they had obviously raised more because last Wednesday we had a swarm- a beauty, which luckily Rob spotted and tracked and we were able to collect.

What I don't understand though is why the bees in our garden hive raised a queen cell on the frame of egg and brood we had put in with the old queen when we did the artificial swarm- this had been checked and seemed fine, not drawing the comb very vigorously even though they had plenty of stores and there were lots of bees in the hive. They capped the queen cell and the old queen swarmed., in the garden the bees don't seem to go far- they were easy to catch, but made us realise that maybe the garden is not the place for them.

All equipment having been used, these bees went back in the hive they came from with a queen excluder under the brood box after knocking out the queen cell and checking there were no more. We will see what they do now- they are filling the 2 supers up, hopefully they put some effort into developing a strong colony as well.