We have just learned a very hard lesson - bee keepers take heed - if you allow life to distract you from your hives, nature will take its course! Turbulent weather, a flooding pond and other issues led us to miss our hive inspections for a couple of weeks. Queen Cleo, who has been laying with abandon this spring, decided that her hive was becoming too cramped. At 11am sunday morning her pheromones instructed the colony the to 'vacate the premises'. The bees spiralled six feet into the air above the hive as they made their mass exodus, their buzz carried across the airwaves alerting us to the imminent disaster.
The advice in this situation is to just sit and wait for them to return within the next half an hour or so. Cleo's wings were clipped when she arrived, bee lore states that the colony will return to the hive as soon as they realise that the Queen is not with them. She will have walked out of the hive with her nurse bees intent on starting a new colony in a location identified by her scout bees. However, finding that she was unable to fly away with the swarm she will have fallen onto the ground.
The swarm appear to have taken refuge in the branches of the old Medlar tree, and as promised about forty five minutes later a bee-tornado above the hive announced their return. Within minutes the cedar front of the hive was covered with bees. Donning bee-suits we approached the hive to see if we could find Cleo below the landing stage. A huddle of bees six inches thick was suspended like a stalagtite. A gentle puff of smoke was enough to dislodge them and Cleo emerged unscathed from the middle. It appears that the nurse and worker bees had huddled around her as protection and to keep her insulated. I lay the blunt end of the hive tool infront of her, to my amazement the walked onto the hard steel and we were able to place her back into the centre of the brood box.
Now we have to wait a very long four days to see if the colony will re-integrate her or if in fact they will kill her in favor of a new Queen. During the subsequent hive inspection we saw two new Queens emerge from fully developed queen cells. It is possible that another may have hatched earlier, if this is the case it will be a royal fight to the death. We await the outcome with trepedation.
