Bees attract bees! Less than a week after removing a 4 month old hive from a western cedar clad home in Palmwoods I was called back to deal with another colony the owners discovered when putting the weather boards back up. Scout bees had no doubt been attracted to this location by the smell of the previous hive and while they did not move into the exact same spot, they still found an equally attractive location a little further down the wall.

This colony had only been there 3 or 4 days, judging by the pristine white, super-fragile comb that they had built. Consequently I was able to treat them like a swarm, gently scrapping them into a bucket and dropping them onto a white sheet to march up into their new home while searching for the queen.

When I did catch the queen it was interesting to see she had an egg trailing from her abdomen. You can see it clearly in the video of her inside the queen cage. This is a positive sign as it indicates that she is a mated and laying queen. Sometimes swarms contain virgin queens who are yet to run the gauntlet of a mating flight. On a mating flight the queen will leave the hive (usually only once) to mate with up to 20 drones. Provided she makes it back to the hive, she will not leave again until the hive swarms again, perhaps the following season, perhaps in 3 or 4 years time.