It's been a rotten May for Linda's bees: lots of pollen (eventually) but too cold for the flowers to produce nectar. This seems to have upset the poor little things: every five minutes they look as if they're about to swarm. Linda has been rushing about trying to find a solution - she's split the hives, called in another, more experienced keeper for help, but nothing seemed to be working... Then, at around 6.00pm, one of the hives did swarm! They flew all around the garden, before settling in a Magnolia tree: as I write, we're waiting for a beekeeper to come and collect them!
One interesting occurrence: while Linda was looking for 'spare' queens, she recorded two calling from one hive: most strange sounds - one was 'tooting', the other 'quacking'. Never heard that before!
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