⚠️They Look Calm Here... But They Battered ME! 🐝

There is an absolutely massive swarm in my neighbour's garden, and I'm going to go there and collect it now. I saw it come straight over my garden, like the sky literally turned black, clustered up in a tree in my neighbour's garden. And I'm going to go and get a box, I'm going to go get a sheet, I'm going to get all my beekeeping stuff, and we're going to go and catch a swarm. So we're going to go catch a swarm. First up, let's go and get our kit. Okay, so first thing I need is my bee suit. Next thing I need is my smoker. Get some bits for the smoker. So this is the box that I'm going to use here. I'm going to clear it off and give it a brand new roof so there's no comb in it. And then inside I've just got some frames of foundation. All of the bees we're going to get into this box here. All right, final thing is my Hive Cube caddy that's got a little bit of everything in it. Time to go catch some swarms. So in all the excitement, I've literally just jumped in my car and driven up to the forest to get some stuff. I've forgotten that the queens are being collected. I've got like 300 queens that I am Literally late for, and then this is what happens in North Wales. You get stuck behind tractors like that. Oh my goodness! Right, I need to rush back, get back in time for the postman, let the queens out, and then we need to go swarm catching. Right, so it's time to rock and roll. We have got a big, big swarm there. We're going to shake it down onto the sheet. I just had the owner of the house come and say hello, and she said that her nephews are going to be super excited about this video. So hello, Diane's nephews, I hope you enjoy it. This was a super, super cool swarm. Veil up. There's only one thing left to do, and that is shake the bees down and get them into the box. Okay, so not the friendliest swarm. I've been stung a few times on the hands. I'm really glad I put my veil up. You can see them going though, can't you? Oh my goodness, look at that! I've seen the queen. She's there. We have got a queen. Ah, okay, that was really, really annoying because I saw the virgin twice there and I didn't have a chance to get her in the cage. I was trying to show the camera. Foolish mistake. Loads have gone back up there. Hopefully they're clustered up again. Take 2. Okay, so while I wait to try and find this one, I've got another queen here, and I'm just going to put this other queen in the nuc box there and put the swarm a little bit closer. Never know, might be able to lure them in with another queen just while I wait to see if I can find the one that I should have found first time round. Very annoying. Right, it looks like that has worked because look where all of these bees are going now. Oh, I'm not gonna lie, I'm a little bit gutted there because I found the virgin or the queen and where's she gone? I tried to pick her up and put her in the cage to get them to go in, but hey ho, they're going in anyway. Let's see if we can see that virgin. She must be around somewhere. So still no sign of that queen. They're obviously going up there and making their way into the hive anyway, so not an issue. I'm sure the queen will be in there, but I'll stay here, keep an eye out, see if I can see her whilst the last few go in. So this is the reason I like bringing my box of tools with me. Secateurs are needed here, little saws needed. I'm going to get that branch off because there's still just too many bees clustering up there. There's obviously pheromone up there, so I'm going to cut that branch off, lay it back down there on the floor, and then leave all the bees to go in. So you can see the bees clustering up now on the same branch, and that branch is loose, so I'll just be able to take it off and pop it on the floor. Okay, so now we play the waiting game. The bees always take forever to go and do this, so I'm gonna go back home, I'm gonna go have some dinner because I literally live 20 meters away, and I'm going to come back and hopefully all the bees— most of the bees will be in the box and we'll go and take them back up to the forest. Right, so Ivy, so when you were at school today, there was like a massive swarm that came over the house. Mum said, oh, there's a big swarm! So I went up there and there was a big swarm. Lily tried to climb over a wall to get it. Yeah, I know, it's crazy. But it landed in John and Diane's garden. Let's go and find her. Just get a quick one of Ivy there. Doing a good job, Ives. I'm very proud. Go on. It's like they've been on Ninja Kids. Isn't it? Right, let's go. Well, it's looking pretty good actually, because there's not a lot of bees in that box, and there's not that many left in the tree either. There you can see all of those bees have gone in there now, and if I open it up here, I've— you can see we have got all those bees inside. Did you enjoy that? Yeah. Yeah? What was the best bit? Seeing the bees. Seeing the bees? Okay, cool. You gonna come with me in the morning? Yeah. I don't think you'll be up. I am. Do you think you will? Yeah. Okay, we'll see. You'll wake me up. We'll wake you up. Okay, right, high five. Good job. So Ivy really, really enjoyed that. I'm going to go back in and make sure that little cluster that was in the roof goes back into the box. And now that it's darker, even though it's still blue sky, it's going to be much, much easier to do it. So I've just popped back to make sure that that cluster up there gets into the beehive. Now that they're not flying, I should be able to get the majority of them off by taking the lid off the hive and just bumping them in. I've not got my bee suit though, so fingers crossed. So majority of the bees have gone in, and you can see if I take the lid off now— oh, you can feel the warmth coming out of it! That is crazy. Um, you can hear it as well. Listen to the roar here. So all of the bees— it is incredible the amount of heat coming off that. What's difficult here is trying to show you it on camera as well. So what I want to do is I want to get the bees from up there to kind of like fall onto this roof, just get the majority of them in. Um, but I'm not going to be able to do it and film it at the same time, so I'll get this camera, I'll put it down. A lot of stings. Oh, and the bloody roof's falling off as well. I've taken my hair out there, literally all through my hair. Oh. Swarms are normally pretty chilled out, but they are everywhere in my hair here and like pulling out these stings. Look at that. Oh, sting, sting, sting, sting. Obviously don't do that. I was thinking they were just going to be a nice little drop down, put them on there, and then they started getting me very, very badly there. That is an angry swarm of bees. Which is surprising, I have to say, because normally swarms are like pretty chilled out once they've just swarmed, and I saw this swarm come in. So yeah, don't want to do that again in our area. At least the bees are going in where I want them to go in now. There is a lot of bees in there. So John and Diane, if you're watching this video later on, I'm gonna have to leave a little small cluster up in your tree. I'm not coming back to get them. Probably going to leave like a tennis ball-shaped cluster up there. And all of the other bees will end up in this box. And I'll be back here first thing in the morning to get every single one. Well, that was eventful. I'm glad that I didn't have Ivy there when that happened. That would've been very, very dangerous. But what we need now is a little bit of darkness. So I'm off to bed. I'll see you in the morning. Oh man, it's way too early to be doing this. It's half past 4. I'm up. Let's go and get that swarm. Right, so made it up to the forest apiary. I'm gonna put them somewhere. I've got like a little mini quarantine zone just on this side here. I keep this just in case of emergencies like this. It's not a perfect quarantine apiary, but it is completely separate from kind of all the rest of the bees here, so nothing over this side. This is where my nuc is going to live. Okay, so we've got the nuc up at the forest. The next step for this nuc here is to hive them up into— I've got a bellow beehive that I'm going to put them in, but that is going to be next time. The final thing I need to do is take this tape off here and let the bees out. Hopefully they're not too angry after their journey, but there we go, the bees are going. I'm gonna get out of the way so I do not get stung anymore. I get so used to nice, calm Buckfast genetics. I don't get used to bees stinging you as soon as they come out like this. First sting of the morning, 5 o'clock.