I came in this morning and found a swarm ball in a small pear tree growing at the bottom of the Terrace Apiary. I'll post a pic when the camera stops filming.
Not exactly certain which hive the swarm is from, if indeed it's from one of our hives at all although it seems likely. I think I'll just let the monitors run for a while and not have a close look yet. With any luck it will be from Pollenbee hive 1 and there will be some footage of the event from the Raspberry Pi camera. Other monitors should show something too, acoustics and of course weight.
It will be interesting to see where the bees decide to go. They're right now in the middle of doing a house choosing debate. The following image from Thomas Seeley's book Honeybee Democracy will give you an idea of what is going on.
But to get the real picture, listen to the lectures of the man himself on these links.
Swarming with Thomas Seeley - 3 minute version
Apologies if you could not open the videos from the last post. I'll have to work out how to turn my *.mts (a Leica format) files into something I can post.
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