I caught a swarm today, put tgem in an empty langstrth with new frames and tgey swarmed again after about .30mins. should i have left them in a tiny nuc box maybe?
Thank you for all your interesting and informative videos. I have learned so much from watching them and they have inspired me to start my own permaculture journey (albeit in a much more modest way.)
Maddy love the videos very helpful thanks. At the end there is a shot of bees drinking out of I think an old bath. Can you do a video on how to set up and care for a bath as a pond? Thanks
It is a butler sink. I put an iris in it, some English pond weed and a stone protruding above water level. The bees just came. They need the stone and plants to perch on to drink.
To breed, bees make a new Queen and the old Queen flies off with half of the worker bees from the hive. Before they go they gorge honey to sustain them. So you lose half your bees plus the stores. Ideally, you want to provide enough space for the Queen to lay eggs and the workers to make honey. Then you can harvest enough honey - but never too much. If the bees had swarmed from the little box because they had run out of room, leaving behind an unhatched Queen it would not have been ideal - because they would have taken honey and weakened the colony numbers. Better to rehome them into a bigger box so they can build up their numbers and lay down lots of honey for winter. We never take honey off a swarm in its first year of establishment - and we don't feed them with sugar syrup either. We prefer to let them grow and forage naturally so they are healthy and strong for the winter season.
@@PermacultureMagazine Thanks for the explanation. It's clear you care for the bees the best way possible, by letting them get strong and by building their immune system with all of the lovely nectar and pollen in your meadows. We need more beekeepers like you!
