Sunday 26th April, 2020.

A marked queen bee in the swarm hive - Hive 2 - Sunday 26th April, 2020.

I was relieved to find the queen bee in the brood box I used for re-collecting the swarm on Thursday 23rd April. I had doubts about the success of the re-collection because so many bees visited the swarm/cluster site, on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I wondered if the bees were visiting the cluster site because the queen bee might still have been there? Where were the bees coming from? Were they visiting the cluster site because there were scents left there that are very attractive to bees? I wanted to be confident I had collected the swarm and contained it.

Between Thursday evening and midday Sunday, the bees in the swarm hive, Hive 2, had produced a lot of new honeycomb - drawing it out on new frames of wax foundation. 

Should I keep this queen bee? The temperament of her progeny is relatively good, that is, they do not seem aggressive, however, there does seem to be a very strong swarming impulse in the colony and that may not be a desirable trait for bees in an apiary in the middle of an increasingly busy allotment site. 

It was an error on my part, in the execution of a 'Pagden's artificial swarm', that led to that colony swarming and leaving the apiary. If I had done the 'Pagden's' properly they would not have swarmed and left the apiary. 

A very warm (and dry) April has brought on a lot of salad crops that would not normally be ready yet - at least, not as plentifully. 

Lettuce - red & green / mizuna / mibuna / claytonia / florence fennel / mustard inc' oriental ruby streaks / parsley / coriander / mint / chervil / dill / tarragon / ransoms flowers / wild garlic flowers / borage flowers / watercress / american landcress - flowers and leaves / salad burnet / kale flowers / corn salad / sculpit 

I could have added dead nettle tops, jack-by-the-hedge leaves. dandelion and dittander leaves and some ransoms leaves - and possibly more, from what is growing around the site.

Other harvested crops were radishes, asparagus, and rhubarb.

Radishes - 26/4/20.

Around the allotment garden of Nowhere in particular