When they say caucasian bees have a tendency to swarm they weren't kidding. Since the start of April we have had 3 swarms. I find myself running out to check for swarms if I've been out all day. We now have 3 hives going and all seems well. We have verified the queen in both of the smaller hives but our large hive just had too many bees to actually find her.
The second and third swarms actually happened at the same time and fortunately in a more accessible place than last time. We kept the second swarm but gave away the third because we didn't have the space for it. This collection went much, much smoother. See, we are learning!
We also decided it was time to go into the big hive and look for swarm cells. I'm not keen to lose any more bees. Jon ended up doing this hive inspection and found 15 swarm cells! So glad he removed them before we have to repeat this procedure over and over again.
We are carefully watching our bees now. Doing regular inspections, making sure we have given them enough space for honey and brood, keeping an eye on mites. They have a really good nectar flow at the moment so they are very very busy. Let's all hope that these bees are happy enough where the are not to take off again.
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