Stewart Maher's First bees 2013.

As I had hoped one of our members has sent in some photos with a little bit of a story behind them. So this is Stewart Maher's account of what happened when he got his first lot of bees. All good, text book, boring stuff...NOT!!

These photos were from mid July....

 

In our first summer of bee keeping I followed our ‘mentor’s (Roy !!) advise and united two hives that I had just carried out my first swarm control on. That done I then accidentally ‘lost’ the Queen, so, what are we left with??? Two hives, no Queen !! 

Roy advised that I unite the hives,  he couldn’t imagine them swarming again so that was than plan I followed. A week and a half or so later Sue ( the better half!!) called me at work to say there was a swarm in our apple tree and could I come home a.s.a.p. to catch them. 

They turned out to be my bees and the first Queen who had hatched, rather than dispatching her sibling in the only other Queen cell she decided to fly the nest giving them both a fighting chance and terrify Sue instead !!

All’s well that end’s well and we caught and hived them, ironically into the hive I had already swarmed them into, the first one !! We now have two hives and after a good August and September laying prolific amounts of new brood, both are happy and content.

Just about all in now, only a few stragglers

Good old Roy !!

Thanks for sharing withus Stewart and if any of our other readers, (members or not) have any stories or photos to share then please feel free to contact me.