Things had gone seriously wrong and there were very few bees still there and the hive had become infested with white moth.

Interestingly the queen was still present and being protected by the workers.

The white moth takes hold when the colony is failing. There ware no honey stores left and only dead larval stage bees.

I think the queen has been a poor producer and the final outcome was lack of food as not enough foragers to go out and then not enough food to develop young.

Other hive continues to look good. I am fighting the yellow legged hornets.

I am however trying to to fight the frelons.

Why they swarmed is not clear. Stress from the travel? Too long in nuc and overcrowding? Did not like the new hive? There were no clear queen cells that I saw before the swarm, but that does not mean that they were not there!

Fortunately they went to a low branch in a tree in the garden.

I quickly read my bee manual to find out what to do and they behaved well and were a textbook case.

I shook the swarm into the box, turned it upside down and the rest of he bees walked in so that they could find the queen.

The process was completed when I then transferred them back to the nuc.

It was certainly a steep learning curve.

A week on and the swarm in the nuc are active and I think that I have seen the queen. In the original hive the remainers are there and active. Too early to see a new queen? Next week will be instructive.

I ordered the bees in January and they arrived 2 days ago. They are Buckfast which are meant to be a more mild mannered breed. The queen is 2025 so the colony is small and relatively immature.

The colony arrived in the polystyrene ‘nuc’ after another hour in the car. I think the bees were somewhat stressed.

I followed the advice of the man in shop and bought and used an insulated frame to help conserve heat as the colony only takes up half of the ruche. I also have used feed – glucose sirop – to give them a boost and because it is a low time currently for availability of pollen and nectar.

They do seem to have come to life a bit today. The weather has been warmer and maybe the bees are more settled.

I have been concerned as some bees have congregated under la ruche today. Are they stressed? Are they disoriented because they left the nuc first and then cannot find the opening? I did lift some up to the landing strip and they did wobble slowly inside.

I rechecked la ruche today. The bees are feeding from the nourisseur and I think I saw the queen. There seemed to be a lot of activity. Some maybe all ok really. On verra.