Swarm!

We knew the bees were going to swarm as they were making new queen cells. But then when Doug set off to perform some swarm control measures, he  couldn’t find the queen. Her location was critical to allow us to fake them in to thinking they had already swarmed and not doing it.

Doug was strimming near the hives this afternoon and noticed they had swarmed. We followed them and they settled in a holly tree not far away.

I held a cardboard box under them and Doug snipped the branches off in to the box.

Then we knocked them out of the box in to our spare hive (which is there basically for this purpose). 

Then we put all the frames back in, and put the lid on and watched for a while to see that bees were heading in to the hive rather than away from it - suggesting the queen is in the hive as they all seek her out.

This is a bee sending out pheromones so all the other bees can find where they are...