Got a call from the Association swarm officer. He had a skep with a large swarm in it looking for a new home. In our apiary we have a [bait] hive, new frames all ready to go and another package of frames with foundation on order to prepare up another spare brood box into a hive ready to go.
Only problem was, key to the Apiary was halfway to Oxford, with my colleague, when he rung.
Having mulled my options over, torn because I really wanted to house the swarm and increase to two colonies, my aim for this year, I had to let the swarm go. If I couldn't find someone else up at the allotment to let me in, and more importantly be prepared to wait for me to finish and let me back out again, I'd have a problem in the form of a basket of bees and nowhere to put them.
Hopefully they'll have gone to a new guy without bees and another one will come up soon.
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Bait hive has worked for the first time!!
11 years ago
Do you not have a key to where you keep your bees?
ReplyDeleteWe should have two, the other one hasn't shown up yet. The gates where the apiary is are required to be locked when not coming in/out and the key can't be removed from the lock when it's unlocked so whoever is last out has to have the key.
ReplyDeleteOne key, two people, hilarity ensues!