Our native bee hive splitting experiment seems to be going well. It's now been approx 3mths since my husband got all keen and he often grabs a beer and sits down the back watching the bees coming and going from the hive. WEIRDO!

The bees have been extremely busy inside the hive. When hubby built the box he added a layer of perspex under the lid, so we could take the lid off and still view the bees in action. Well now we need a torch to see inside, there is so much resin (I don't even know the correct terminology) on the walls and covering parts of the perspex. So we can only assume by their enthusiastic building that they like it.

We are very unsure of the correct time to split the new hive from the original hive - we've been told that we may have to wait up to 18mths, depending on how strong the hive is.

There could be trouble in the camp at present though. Since Sunday there has been a swarm of bees flying outside the hive. Been doing a bit of research and it could be one of three things.

1. It's a mating swarm and there is a virgin queen flying around outside looking for a lucky drone to mate with. Discounted that theory though because I doubt she would want to muck about for 4 days - gosh she'd be exhausted from all that flying. Plus it could be a little too soon for the new hive to have a queen already.
 
2. The bees are swarming. Again I doubt it as they are still fitting out the new home that hubby built them. A strong hive will start building a daughter nest, using the original hive as home base until the other is complete, when the work is done a virgin queen and a swarm of workers will fly off and start the egg laying process in the new home. But there is still room in the new hive so it's unlikely they would been going anywhere.

3. Battles!!! Stingless bees from another stronger hive are attacking the hive in our yard in a bid to take over and occupy. The most plausable theory, although I'm not sure if they usually fight for such a long time. Native bees fight to the death, so its all a bit gory and there will be losses, however the nest should recover and if the invasion is successful we may even end up with more bees!