I don't think I know what some of my bee colonies are doing. Trying to control bees is sometimes like pruning an overgrown shrub, where you can't see how the tangled mass of branches in front of you maps on to the 'before' picture in the book, never mind 'afterwards'. I have added space and split the brood, as the Telegraph article criticised middle class beekeepers for failing to do, the implication being that if they did then urban swarms wouldn't happen. If it had worked then half of my smaller split colonies would have the old queen still busily laying away, while the other half would be busying themselves making new queens. Instead I seem to have a lot of boxes with nectar stored in the brood area, a sign that laying is not imminent, and no young brood or eggs. So did they swarm anyway? Or had they swarmed shortly before I split them? Did I damage the queen I marked so that they killed her? Bees will dispose of defective leaders with a readiness that makes the Tories look like rank amateurs, never mind Labour.
Whatever they are doing, I can only leave them to get on with it. In the battle of the middle class beekeeper against swarming it is one human being set against about two hundred and fifty million years of evolution, so the odds were never stacked in my favour. My biggest and best colony has not yet swarmed, though they are thinking about it. I saw eggs, and the three supers were stuffed with bees and honey, the latter frustratingly not ready to take off. Disillusioned with the results of splitting colonies, and running out of equipment, I shook the bees off every frame in the brood box, destroyed every queen cell, and gave them two extra supers, one below the queen excluder to get them on to brood and a half. Some of the experienced beekeepers swear by brood and a half, but I hadn't thought it would be necessary with the large Commercial brood boxes. I'm still not keen on the idea, because at the next inspection I shall have to look at double the number of brood frames, but it might help in this case.
All the bees were very good natured, even when I was shaking them off the comb, and cutting free comb out that one lot had made in the roof space instead of using the full extent of their box. A very long standing beekeeper remarked recently that it was easy to have good tempered bees as long as there was a nectar flow on and weather fit for flying, it was when the food supply dried up or they were penned indoors that they got grumpy. I'm sure he's right, but in general this current generation of bees are nice. Beekeeping would be no fun at all with mean tempered stock.
After doing the bees I finished weeding outside the Systems Administrator's blue hut, marvelling at the distance the debris from the mechanical flail had been flung out of the hedge. You would definitely not want to be within thirty feet of anybody operating one of those unless you were kitted out with industrial strength eye protection. I planted out the three Phyteuma scheuchzeri, and gloated over the number of seedlings of Silene maritima, and the fact that one plant of evening primrose is suckering nicely. The other planted at the same time appears to be three quarters dead, but you can't always be lucky.
The rabbits are still showing up on the camera hopping out of the rose bank at six in the evening on nights when we're not there, but obstinately failed to show again as the SA spent the early part of this evening sitting on the far side of the lawn with a gun. He didn't think they'd seen him at that distance, but they appear to be less bunny brained and more alert and cunning than we initially gave them credit. Our Ginger went hunting, but only caught a mouse. I've told him, mice don't count, we want bunnies.
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