Honey Bee Swarm Collection – The London Bee Company

This week has been pretty busy.  We’ve had swarm calls every day, and of the places we attended, 1 was a tiny swarm which we rehoused in a 5-frame nuc, the second was a case of mistaken identity (bumble bees) and today, it was quite a large swarm – probably the size of 2 pineapples.  The bees definitely have a sense of humour and chose to position their cluster about 1 foot from the footpath in an industrial estate near Heathrow airport.  They were considerate enough to stay only a few inches off the ground, so no precariously balanced ladders or yoga poses needed to reach them.

Initially, the company who contacted me had contacted a pest control company, but it’s good to know the pest control were not too keen on using pesticide on honeybees and asked them to contact me instead  with the hope they could be saved  and put into a shiny new hive.

Honey Bee swarm positioned close to the ground

It was quite an odd day for a swarm, they weather was not great, and we were really not expecting it, but hey, when they want to go they are going to go!!  I suppose the positive part of the rain was that the bees were tightly clustered and barely flying around.

Close-up of the Honey Bee cluster

The bees had clustered on 3-4 branches so I simply cut those branches at the base picked up the cluster and shook them off into my 5-frame polystyrene nucleus hive.

I didn’t get any pictures of this part but I only have 2 hands!!

Luckily we managed to get about 90% of the cluster into the nuc and I let the remaining stragglers make their own way into the hive once they had found the entrance.

Once they were happily making their way into the nuc, I managed to get a couple more pictures of them marching in.

Bees marching into the nuc

We will leave them in the nuc for a week or so with some feed and then transfer them into a full size hive.  If all is well and they are clear from infection, I’ll take them down to one of the apiaries where they can happily do their thing

Any questions, feel free to contact us