The Garden Beekeeper's First Swarm.

These days, the garden beekeeper noticed a swarm on an apple tree, immediately after having inspected his 5 colonies. Many signs indicated that this swarm did not come from one of his own colonies. After initial joy about his first swarm, he became increasingly suspicious, as many indications were untypical:

Swarms at the end of September are very unusual. This swarm was very small, just two handfuls of bees. Nevertheless it was put into an empty box, a few empty combs and some food were added and the box was placed about 5m away from the other colonies, directly under the apple tree.

Neither the garden beekeeper nor his beekeeper godfather could discover a queen. There were also signs that the swarm was without a queen: at dusk there were still many bees hanging from the tree, and under the tree was a cluster of bees. If there was a queen in the hive, the bees would enter the box quickly and purposefully. So was it a formic acid escape swarm from a neighboring beekeeper?

The garden beekeeper waited a week. And behold: Yesterday he saw bees with pollen panties in front of the flight hole, a sure sign that there is brood in the box. Today he discovered a queen and some pens (freshly laid eggs) on a piece of honeycomb, which was hanging from the lid of the hive. Who discovers the queen on it?

Actually it was not planned to increase the number of colonies further. However, the garden beekeeper does not want to turn down such a gift of nature. So this piece of honeycomb was carefully cut off and implanted into an empty honeycomb.

May this late mini colony get a fair chance.