Friday, June 17, 2011

To Bee or not to Bee that is the question.........

We rarely have watches on while working on the field so we gauge the time by daily events on the road.  It is always around 7am and 3pm when the school bus goes by and our mail lady tends to drive by anytime between 12-1pm.  Once she has been we tend to stop for lunch.  Before heading back to the house we collect eggs and check on all the animals which is a pretty easy and uneventful chore.  Accept for Tuesday!  As I made my way down the field I heard a noise that makes me want to run in the other direction! I shouted for Michael and I have a certain tone that Michael knows something is wrong! He came heading over and did the same facial expression I had and then muttered about the weather! All these goings on means one thing the Bees had started to swarm!
Michael jumped in the truck, headed over to our neighbours to borrow the tractor as it was to high in the tree to reach from the ladder, suited himself up, collected a box and off we headed to catch the bees.  I remembered the camera this time! Michael gave me another quick lesson on how to drive the tractor and in the bucket he climbed.  He caught the  swarm but after re-homing them they all ended up going back to the hive they left, so it may have been a mating flight rather than a swarm.  Michael will have to keep a close eye on the hive over the next few days as this happened in our first year of having bees and a few days later they did swarm.

Update: 24 hours later they did swarm and settled in a tree in the horses paddock.  Michael managed to get up the tree on a ladder with a box and caught them again!  He has put them in a new hive and at present they seem rather happy.