It has been the busiest week of the year so far on the bees. With the warmer weather some of the colonies have shown signs of wanting to swarm. As a beekeeper we have to try and stop this from happening otherwise we stand to lose our queen and the potential for a good honey crop that season. For this reason we carry out what is known as an artificial swarm, this involves finding and removing the queen from the hive and putting her in a new hive on a frame. We then place this

Good news, after two weeks of sitting on the window sill and a fair bit of interest from scout bees, we've caught our first swarm of the year. Unfortunately I was out at the time so missed this amazing event, however I had set up a camera to snap any action and managed to get a nice shot. The bees have now been transferred to my apiary in Essex where they are already very busy drawing comb.

Hi all, Well its that time of year again... bees try to follow their instincts and look to swarm to spread their population. I'm always willing to take advantage of this and try to catch some bees to add to my colonies. By putting out a bait hive I hope to catch 2 or 3 swarms like I did last year! One bait hive is already very busy with plenty of bees coming to take a look and even rival colonies fighting over the rights!