A Budget Day Merger

Well the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced his budget for growth a nondescript event if I must say so myself, 50p off a tank of diesel is no great shakes.

So I decided to conduct a merger, well the merging of two bee colonies at Hatton Road.

Hatton Road is a very noisy site, as it is located next to Heathrow Airport. The Hive is 775.5 meters from the end of the South Runway, so it is a great spot for plane spotting. Bees don't have ears so it doesn't worry them.

.

Well I had 2 Colonies there but (as in my previous post) sadly one colony didn't come through the winter with a surviving Queen (they checked out to be disease free), I confirmed this in another inspection before the merger. So the best thing to do as it is too early to get another Queen is to merge the colonies together. The main method if you have the time (which we have) is to separate the colonies with a sheet of newspaper you take the roof and crown board off the first colony which does have a queen and lay newspaper over the top of the hive and slit the paper in a few places, the old colony goes on top, and the roof and crown board on top of that. The bees eat their way through the paper over the next day or so, slowly becoming accustomed to each other.

This is a pleasant adventure, compared to the chaos method alternative where you have a sloping board running into the hive that you are keeping, you then need to isolate the queen ensuring she is safely in the home hive, while you shake all the bees from both hives on to the board and amid the chaos they all run into the hive with out too much fighting. This is not for the faint hearted  (only to be done if the area is generally public free) but a spectacular sight as it happens very quickly (like a film speeded up).