May has been a very busy beekeeping month. As many predicted at the end of last season, there have been quite a few swarms this year. However, we have mostly been able to keep this at bay by performing artificial swarms early enough in the season so the bees’ impulse to swarm is reduced if not eliminated. This saves losing bees and also saves precious time at this busy point in the beekeeping calendar.

However, it is not just us who have been frantic this month; the bees have also been extremely busy, bringing in huge quantities of nectar and pollen. From this photo, you can see a wide range of colours of pollen, which gives you an indication of the variety of plants they are foraging on. This frame is particularly impressive with its range of colours from yellows to reds to greens – amazing stuff!

We have also been raising some queens this year. This operation has allowed us to increase our stocks and extra queens are always handy to have as insurance. If you look closely, you may see some of the queens in these hair roller cages. The queen cell at the bottom is a good example of one that has hatched, as you can see the bottom of it has been opened like a little flap.

Using the Quintrex cage, we have managed to successfully introduce several of these queens into nucs which we hope will go onto be big, strong colonies. These work by attaching the cage onto the comb where there is sealed, emerging brood, and of course, making sure the queen is placed in there. The newly emerged brood readily accept her as their queen and her pheromones get distributed around the colony through the mesh. This means that after a couple of days or so, the bees that were already in the nucleus when she was introduced will now accept her as their queen, rather than killing her as an intruder (which is definitely NOT what you want!).

Next month we will be busy consolidating what we have achieved in May and hopefully we will not be doing too much more in the way of swarm control. Fingers crossed!