Swarm!

Being known as the teacher who does the bees has its advantages. One of them manifested itself today when a pupil called me, saying there was a swarm on the premises. Basically I have over 200 little helpers who can alert me to anything untoward or unusual in the apian world.

Having decided to check up on the Moon today, fearing the new queen might be ready to swarm, this news worried me. I admit I didn't do my maths properly, but I was pretty sure the new queen would have had enough time to hatch, practise flying, mate and populate queen cells so the colony would be ready to swarm. The Moon had wanted to swarm before, so why not again? The irony of it all was that the swarm had obviously emerged today, so possibly the Moon bees had beaten me by a matter of a few hours.

A swarm among brambles

As I still do not have the necessary equipment to catch a swarm, I merely inspected the swarm and persuaded myself that the bees looked smaller than the school bees and so were probably a wild swarm, probably from the bees that live in the masonry of the school building, funnily enough just above my classroom window.

Nevertheless I rushed to the school apiary to check up on the Moon.