2 swarms caught by Uli & Conor.
The nice weather had arrived finally so myself and Uli met up to go through 2 of my hives. After a very long winter and very few opportunities to go through the hives at ease, Friday was looking very promising!
All was set up nicely except for the fact that my smoker had gone missing . We had a choice of going without a smoker and proving our manliness or driving all the way out to Uli’s house to get his. We opted for the smoker (Uli’s choice… just saying) and drove out to Faha.
While grabbing the smoker we noticed a bit of commotion with the bees and Uli spotted a swarm hanging from a branch only about 10 meters from his hive.
After getting the swarm down from the tree and successfully getting them set up in their new home, we continued on our merry way(a few hours behind} to a site near lough Guitane. The weather continued to be on our side and we began to tackle one of my hives. Our main aim was to identify newly formed queen cells and find the ever elusive queen. We noticed the brood box was very quiet as for once could have been forgiven for not finding the queen as our attention was drawn to the bottom of the garden and there was her majesty and all the lads hanging from a branch only 4 feet off the ground.
Again we successfully collected the swarm and everything settled back down over the next few hours. Over a beer in the back garden we recounted the days events and surely could be forgiven for throwing in a few slight exagerations to spice things up!
