Neighbours

Gary is one of our oldest neighbours (only 69, mind you!), he's lived on the bush block next door for yonkers with his wife Judy. They live a secluded life, much the same as Bianca and me, and I can't remember having seen either in years...

Yesterday Bianca got call from him, Gary asking if she would accept some of his surplus honey. They got chatting, and when I went to the gate to bring in the empties garbage drum, there was a plastic bag behind our gate with a 1.5 kg jar of honey and a number of Panama Red passionfruit.

I brought the bounty home - and promptly forgot the garbage drum at the roadside.

This morning I was woken by the phone around 8 a.m. (I normally go back to bed for an hour or two of sleep after our brekkie at around 6.30) and heard Bianca talking to Gary, saying thank you very much but I'd better consult Luis when he gets up... I gathered Gary had offered her the bees that had made the honey, perhaps - at any rate there was a swarm if we'd care to get it...

"Let's do it", I shouted down to Bianca from the loft, and she told Gary we'd ring as soon as we were on the way.

Now for some strange reason - we had not dabbled in bee-keeping since our last bees were wiped out by the Small Hive Beetle some 20-odd years ago - Bianca had just bought some fancy new beekeeper's suits with helmets and gloves for me; so these I donned quick smart and we drove to the neighbour's place up on the adjacent hill.

The swarm was still stationary on the branch of a small Banksia (?) so Gary fetched his ladder and a battery-driven saw to lop off the branch. As soon as he started his racket, the bees all rushed to drive him away, he duly got stung and decided to wait and see if the swarm would regroup.

Good girls! they did in due course, and it was my turn to climb onto the ladder, hold a big plastic box under the swarm, give the branch another shake and bingo, heaps of bees fell into the container and sought to swarm out again presto. I slammed the lid onto the box and brought it down to fasten it properly,  got stung of course through Bianca's old bee suit but managed to fasten the lid properly and ran to the van with it with bees all seemingly still in it. (Remind me to put on my own new triple-layer bee suit with zip-fastened helmet next time!)

I drove the van into some shady spot and waited for Bianca, the bees had fallen totally silent!

When she was in the van we drove off downhill carefully and up our own hill slowly, I took the box with the bees to Bianca's prepared spot, on concrete blocks at a convenient height, a single-frame hive with some foundation sheets, and a large white cloth leading up to the entrance from the ground at an angle.

Onto this cloth I emptied the bee box, and we were gratified to see how many of them got the idea at once and clambered up the sheet to the narrow hive entrance!

It seemed to us that they started foraging almost at once, shooting up straight into the air before veering off into tall eucalypts all around us.

The bees were so peaceful that Bianca dared to remove the blue container and lid as well as the cotton sheet leading up to the hive entrance even before it was dark - and without veil or helmet at that!

Today (Thursday) I spent an inordinate amount of time fixing my PC, router and IP telephony - partly with help from my provider - and then relaxed in front of the bee hive to watch the new inhabitants go about their business. Bianca had earlier put all several new frames into the hive to make up the regular number of eight.

Tonight I believe I smelt fresh honey from the hive - after all the newcomers must have been chockful of the stuff when they arrived, and appear to have placed it into the new sheets of foundation wax during the day...

I also observed their movements, which included chasing another, smaller bee from the entrance, or maybe some as yet unidentified insect?

Cheers, Gary, and thanks for the new pastime! I'll keep you posted.

MORE THAN A MONTH LATER

We looked for the queen three weeks ago during a nice sunny spell - couldn't see her. BUT: there were lots of new cells installed, some capped, some with visible brood in them. So even if the queen did not manage to come with the swarm, it seems the bees - as a species with millions of years of experience - have managed to start rearing a new queen...

Bianca talked to Gary the other day and learned that two days after we took the initial swarm from him, there was a second swarm! Could that have been the queen from the first one, with a heap of her attendants?

We can't know, of course - and Gary could not reach us because of the communications remake of the Lyle household... I must ask him how Optus is managing his new system.

My inclination is to wait until spring before we check on the new hive but for now the bees are numerous, new workers appear to sally forth uneasily on their first orientation outings and the bees seem to be lacking nothing!