Ok I've been a bit lazy on the bee blog front, just as well my ladies haven't been as lazy.

Has been an eventful month, first I get back from a few days away to find this ball of bees waiting for me in the garden, I had suspected the previous week that Queenie was going to do a runner, but thought I had more time. Not too much harm done, collected swarm and dumped them into an empty hive I had. The first ever swarm I had collected, felt quite proud.

 Then a couple of weeks later on a Saturday morning I dropped a promised cucumber plant around to my neighbour, to be greeted with "What's that a peace offering?"

"Why what's wrong?", I say

"Your bees are in my garden again!"

Swarm number two, now I was in a hurry, so this wasn't a text book collection, it was raining too, I just swept them into a plastic box and snapped the lid on hoping I had the queen! The next problem was that I didn't have the right sort of starter hive to put them in, so just used an old travel box.

They are now in a neat little polystyrene starter hive that Thorne's, http://www.thorne.co.uk/  rushed out to me.

Just checked all three colonies today, all seemed to be doing ok, despite my best endeavours with the poly box when I managed to drop a load of bees on the ground! Don't think I dropped the queen! Time will tell.

All three Queens were laying, can my garden really support 150,000 bees? I think not, a new home/location required.

There is an old bee keepers saying, "A swarm in May is worth a bale of hay, a swarm in June is worth a silver spoon and a swarm in July isn't worth a fly", so I have two bales of hay, but fingers crossed will be a good year for honey :)

Promise I won't be as lazy with next post!