BEWITCHED, BOTHERED AND BEEWILDERED

In other words ... what the hell is going on?

 I THINK my swarm has swarmed! "Impossible!" declared my mentor down the telephone line. And according to the experts and all the bee books on my bedside table it's not supposed to happen but unless about 8,000 bees have gone off for an away day to Oban, I think it has.

Happy days: The swarm from 

Ayr snapped just last week

 The swarm, if you remember, was collected on a rainy day in Ayr last month and they seemed perfectly happy in the Borders until the arrival of some Buckfast bees which were housed about 10 yards away in a Warré hive. That day their mood changed and I was stung three times but they seemed to recover from the arrival of the strangers however three more colonies were introduced to the apiary yesterday. May be that has triggered their departure unless they've been wiped out by some pesticides while foraging. He-who-should-be-obeyed-but-rarely-is insisted we take a peek to try and find the Queen and if she was there then all would be fine. Well we couldn't find her, but it's not that unusual ... she eluded us for nearly a month which almost made me go and buy a new Queen by mail order to save the colony. However there are six queen cups on one frame and one of them contains a larva which means the colony is preparing for a new queen. My mentor, who is President of the Caddenfoot Beekpeers Association is coming around tomorrow to make an assessment and he also wants to check my new hives.

BUZZIN' WITH EXCITEMENT ... and that's 

just hubby as he hovers over the Warré

 They came from Lincoln after a beekeeper there had a life-threatening reaction to a series of bee stings inflicted when he tripped over a hive. His eye-watering account of what happened made me realise you can not take the honey bee for granted. For a past-time which is supposed to take an hour a week I think I've already packed in a decade's worth of work, not to mention the sleepless nights, stings, homestudy, exams and volumes of reading. But you know what? I am completely bewitched as well as bothered and bewildered, as the song goes, by the honeybee and its lifestyle and work ethic, especially those in my backyard.  While pondering the whereabouts of the Ayshire swarm bees - there's still around 5,000 left - we decided to add another set of frames on to the Warré hive. Unlike most hives with the Warré the new supers are placed from the bottom upwards as the belief is that bees prefer to work downwards. My mentor says it's piffle and, as a dedicated National hive advocate he hates the Warré. It's amazing but nothing gets the bee community more polarised than a conversation about hives. While the rest of the world favours a model called the Langstroth in the UK the National is the predominant choice of beekeepers followed closely in Scotland by the Smith and then there's the WBC and a host of others as well as top bar hives like the Warré.

DOUBLE TOP: A new super has been added

to the Warré

 Apparently The Langstroth bee hive, patented in October 1852, was developed so that the bees could construct honeycomb into frames, which can be moved with ease. It was the brainchild of an American, the Reverend Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth (1810–1895), a native of Philadelphia, who discovered "bee space" and noted that when his bees had less than 1 cm (3/8 inch) of space available in which to move around, they would neither build comb into that space nor cement it closed with a sticky glue called propolis. He then set about creating a revolutionary, newly-designed frame

which would prevent the bees from attaching honeycomb to the inside of the hive box.  I'm told if Langstroth had been born in Birmingham, Brighton, Bognor or somewhere else in the UK, rather than in the 'New World' his hive might be in common usage over here today but the crusty old guard inside Britannia's upscale bee circles couldn't stomach the thought of embracing such an idea from a chap in the colonies!

HIVE FIVE: Our apiary is growing by

the day

 Thankfully the beefolk we've met on our journey have been kind, helpful and courteous and our new best friend and mentor Alex Turnbull is a gem. I will report back on his views about the missing bees from Ayr and reveal what we find inside the three new hives which have not been disturbed since they arrived from Lincoln 223 miles away.

 If you have a theory about the missing bees please share your view; all feedback welcome.