Like most tales there is a history of events and like most
tales that involve me it contains a somewhat casual randomness of action that is
characteristic of my approach to life.
In the spring of last year I collected some bees in a ruchette,
(small hive box), and returned home with them around dusk and spotting an empty
African Top Bar Hive with a flat lid I thought that will do and put them on top
of it. The colony grew as most of them do and as this was now their orientated spot
I transferred them into a full hive in the same position.
Click on images to enlarge.
This spring I added a honey super along with all the other
hives that required them and left them to it just keeping an eye on things in
case anything went seriously wrong and also when and if supers need adding or
changing. Then about four weeks ago when I was by that particular hive I saw an
Asian Hornet fly into the empty Top Bar Hive and not come back out. Ooooop’s
thought I, better keep an eye on that and see what’s happening as it wasn’t
possible for me to easily move the occupied hive on top and should it be an
Asian Hornet nest there would be plenty of time to deal with it before it could
even be considered a nuisance.
Time passed as it does and last week I observed that there
was an increase in activity with the odd Hornet coming and going. The problem
was that I managed to injure my back the other week which has made lifting and
heaving impossible or as good as impossible without risking an even worse back
situation with the honey harvest due in 3 or 4 weeks.
Anyway, yesterday Fred Woolford a bee keeper friend came
round to give me a hand to move things to enable us to access to the Hornet
nest. In the event it wasn’t complicated
with two people simply using some blocks and another empty hive to stand the
occupied one on. For the bees this only meant moving their entrance forward by
60 or 70 cm on their existing flight path. When we did this it rocked the Top
Bar Hive a bit and a small number of not very happy Hornets came out to buzz us
and having left them to settle a bit I removed the lid from the hornet hive to
reveal a lovely little nest as you can see in the photos.
I’m sure some people may have looked at that and thought “What’s
the fuss about?” but it’s at this time
of year that an Asian Hornet colony will increase in size exponentially and can
reach huge proportions in both physical size and population by September.