Ashlands Bees

Yesterday was an exciting day for our Ashlands bees! One or possibly two of our hives have swarmed and we wanted to share you all what this means and why it happens.

Swarming happens when the hive is getting too small for all the bees and they start ‘making’ a new queen. As soon as the new queen has hatched, she has had her mating flight and is ready to go and find a new home and she takes with her some of the worker bees. The old queen stays back with the rest of the hive and regrowth to a strong hive again.

The swarm flies off in a big loud cloud, which can look very scary. Swarming bees are very docile though, as they have just filled their tummy to the brim with honey, so that they can survive for a couple of days without food. All they are concerned about is keeping the queen safe and finding a new home. The cloud of bees congregate in one place and scout bees are sent out to find a suitable place to build a new hive.

Our beekeeping expert, came and shook the bees into a skep (a type of container). Some of the bees could not be persuaded to go into the skep and were last seen crossing Leeds Road towards the new development!

We have assembled a new hive and transferred the bees into it, we are hoping that the new queen is in there as well!