Last year we were pleasantly surprised to find Tree Bees nesting in our bird box. Apparently they are quite rare, so we were quite smug that they’d chosen our garden to camp out in.
Anyway, after a couple of months of nerdily telling everyone about our beekeeping venture (well, bee keeping may have been a slight exaggeration), they upped and offed without a by your leave and we never saw them again. Gutted!
Last week, I thought a couple of blue tits had their eye on the bird box, and deciding to give them a helping hand with moving in, I took the bottom off the box to give it a quick tidy up. A ball of fluff dropped to the ground, and a quick poke with a stick revealed a comb-like structure, a couple of bees and the Queen. They’d obviously slipped back in unnoticed.
After guiding the Queen back into the box, I donned my beekeeping outfit (aka my gardening gloves) and carefully put the nest back in the box, and put the bottom back in place.
Hoping I’d not disturbed the budding colony too much, I tentatively watched the bird box over the next couple of days.
Yesterday, there was definite bee action in there, so hopefully all is not lost.
Only a couple of weeks ago I was investigating keeping bees, and have to say the honey extraction slightly put me off – it all seemed a lot more involved than I probably had time for.
Therefore, it’s great that the bees have decided to return, as I get all the pomp and grandeur of keeping bees, without any of the work!
