So, another bee update!
We have 3 log beehives, all of them are doing well and are often busy when the weather is good. One is slightly weaker because it was a small and late swarm. But it survived the winter and is now flourishing.
It is swarming season again in Cornwall. The weather has been mostly sunny, if a bit windy, and the bees have been buzzing. Two of the people who live in our little valley home have recently started working as an off-shoot Matt Somerville’s Bee Kind Hives and are making and setting up log hives around the local area. This has included helping our nearest neighbour set one up. We have all been watching and hoping that he gets bees soon. Everyone has been quite excited… but as the season worn on and none of our bees swarmed our neighbour became slightly disheartened.
It has been a windy and late spring and I blame this for the bees’ slow start to swarming. But now finally it has happened. The hive that I witnessed a swarm settling in last year (as recounted here) has swarmed!
We arrived home from an early morning sea swim to find the air filled with bees, humming their warm hum, even in the light wind. They settled in a small elderflower tree beside the hive, and bearded there while scouts went out to find the best places to make a new home. The swarm was massive, and the bearded bees seemed almost to drip from the branches they clustered on. We all stood around the little tree watching them and then one by one, and slowly we reached out and lightly stroked the clustered bees. They were soft and surprisingly warm, and an almost electrical current could be felt from their thousand bodies and the beating of their wings.
We all really wanted them to choose to go to our neighbours waiting hive, and as we watched one of the bee experts noticed that some of the scout bees were performing their ‘waggle dance’ in the direction of that hive. But there were others performing it in a different direction, meaning that there were at least two possible places that the bees could choose to settle. We discussed the possibility of putting the cluster of bees into a box and transporting them to our neighbours’ hive, but in the end decided against it. We wanted the bees to choose the hive, not be forced there. For me that is a big part of non-interventional bee keeping, and important as it shows a respect for nature that manually moving the bees would undermine. Plus, it is really lovely and magical if and when the bees choose to move into a hive that we have created for them on their own.
It seemed that they were set to stay there for a little while and so we all went about our day. Then, a couple of hours later the call went out:
‘The bees are in the air, they’re on the move!’
We gathered outside again and with hope and excitement watched as they made their way off, up the hill towards our neighbours’ house and waiting hive.
Someone ran up the hill to tell our neighbour and the rest of us followed the bees, the wind was picking up and we were worried that they would be blown off course. But they arrived safely. I lay in the grass as they flew low over us. The hum surrounded me as they began to pour into the hive. It was a truly magical experience. There is something so sweet and ancient and holy in the thousands of bodies and the knowledge of bees. I waited until the last of them had entered the hive before making my way back down the hill, and home.
What this goes to show is both how good the log hives are, they are the perfect habitat for bees and the bees love them and will seek them and out and choose them over other places. It also shows that there is a lack of natural habitat for bees. If the best and only places they can find to live are human made habitats, what does that say about our landscape, our countryside?
Wild Oats 