Unexpected Guests
Published by Steve Jacklin in Bees · Friday 23 Jul 2021
Last weekend I brought home some nuc boxes (Half Hive) of old comb. The old comb I normally put in the solar wax extractor to recover the wax. The solar wax extractor only take two frames so it can take a while to cycle all the frames through it. So I left the nuc boxes near the solar extractor and forgot to seal them up. I went away on business, with the other full time job, for the week to come home on the Friday to find one of the nuc boxes had been occupied. They arrived apparently on the same day I left.
Bees will do this. They can smell the old comb and come to investigate and if the scout Bees from a swarm decide that the nuc box is suitable they all move in. If you want to know how Bees decide if they want to move in or not have a read of Honey Bee Democracy by Professor Tom Seeley. Fascinating book.
Anyway need to have a look through the box as this nuc should have five frames in it but I'd already removed two for extraction and as it shows in the video the Bees had started building wild comb in the unused space.
The Bees themselve look to be of either Italian or Buckfast in origin, definetly not the local Heinz 57s. They seem to be of nice temperament but we will see how they develop next year.
Checked through he nuc and first found eggs and then found the Queen.
Gave them some Sugar Syrup to help them build comb.
We'll try and have another look at these when we get them settles in the apiary.
Post sources:
- WebSite X5: http://www.websitex5.com