Swarm Logic on a Windy Roof

Found it on frame six of Lark: a queen cell the size of the top joint of my thumb, charged, larva swimming in royal jelly, with four more cups along the bottom bars in various states of ambition. Not a drill. A colony that has decided to swarm cannot be talked out of it with more space alone — by the time cells are charged, the vote has been counted.

So the roof got its first artificial swarm of the year, performed in a 20 mph crosswind while two herring gulls supervised from the parapet with the expressions of men watching someone parallel park badly.

The logic, for my own future reference, since I re-derive it from scratch every April: the old queen goes to a new box on the original site with the flying bees and the open brood-free frames; the cells and the nurse bees stay together and get moved aside. Flying bees return to the place, not the colony. Split the location from the queen cells and you have split the swarm from the swarming impulse.

Execution: new floor and brood box onto Lark's stand, one frame of open brood plus the old queen (seen, seized, caged for the move — my hands do not shake less with practice, but they shake more usefully), the rest foundation. The original box, cells and all, went to the west end of the roof next to Vesper, entrance turned ninety degrees. Every forager that left the old box that afternoon drifted home to the new one, exactly as the book says and exactly as I never quite believe until I watch it.

Knocked down all but the two best cells in the moved box — one open, one sealed, insurance against my own clumsiness. New queen should emerge around May Day, mate over the harbour if the wind ever drops, and lay by mid-May. If she fails, I recombine over newspaper in June and Lark goes back to being one enormous hive with opinions.

Vesper, inspected second, has built up slowly and shows no cups with contents. The evening hive keeps evening hours in spring too. For once, her laziness reads as wisdom.