The Swarms are coming!!!!!!

The Swarms are coming!!

Yes its that time of the year when the what are laughingly called 'journalists' of the The Express, The Mirror, The Mail and The Sun print their ill-informed, scare mongering rubbish about apocalyptic, biblical hordes of killer bees sweeping the country killing puppies, old age pensioners, small children etc etc with headlines that have  headlines with words in capital letters FOR no APPARENT reason.
I collect some of the more lunatic examples which I use in my talk on bees.

The all time 'greatest' is the following

As I hope both of you know, the opposite is actually true. When bees are swarming they are at their calmest and will only sting if people attack them with sticks, try to wash them away with a hose, or set fire to them. All have been tried in Bedford
A leaflet about swarming is here.

So if you have a swarm in your garden, what should you do?
First thing to do is this.

Next up is to see if you actually have a swarm of honey bees. A survey carried out by YouGov for Friends of the Earth asked people to identify a honey bee from pictures of a bumblebee, solitary bee, hover fly and a honey bee. Two-thirds got it wrong.
I suspect if they had included a picture of a wasp the percentage would have been higher.
You can download a leaflet about identifying a honey bee here.

Next get hold of someone who can help.
The Bedfordshire Beekeepers Association run a service where you log onto their site where there is a map with contact details of people who will come and see what can be done.
Normally there is  no charge for this and the swarms collected are passed onto new beekeepers in the county.
I am on the list so can collect swarms within 10 miles of Ravensden.

Some points to make about the swarm collectors:-
- they can only deal with honey bees.
- they cannot deal with swarms in dangerous or difficult situations e.g on roofs, on chimneys, in wall cavities.
- they cannot do structural work to get to the swarm.