Radio New Zealand - Te Reo Irirangi o Aotearoa

6 - Merging swarm with hive

A few weeks back I caught a swarm of bees with pest controller Paul. Since then we've moved my young queen and a few thousand bees into their hive and the job today is to merge the swarm with my bee colony.

Now the reason for merging the two colonies is to boost the total number of bees in my hive and take advantage of the honey flow that's on as a result of the blossom around the place. The more bees we have over the next few months will mean the more honey they'll produce, and if there's enough for them to survive the winter we'll steal some in the autumn!

So in this episode, Frank Lindsay (pictured left), who's a commercial beekeeper, drops round with the swarm he's been looking after and gets me to open my hive and merge the two colonies. Now as you can imagine there are a few unhappy bees, and yes I get stung!

For more photos do drop into the photo gallery on the right.

Left: A chain of bees
Right: The queen bee, marked in the centre

Comb built in a week on our hive

Larvae

Swarm merged with my older colony - get that honey flowing!!

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