Bumblebees and Swarms - update

Bumblebees
The Bird Box bumblebees are now hatching and there are loads of bees coming and going from the box.
As for the Ice Cream Tub bees ,when I put them in the spare bird box I thought I ought to put some bedding/nesting material in there. It dawned on me that my posh Bumblebee box would be where I should put them so I retrieved it from the nettles, put the eggs in it and put it next to the Bird Box Bumblebees.
Both appear to be doing well as can be seen from the video here.
The Ice cream Tub bees are much younger and seem to be hatching now.
I'm no expert on bumblebee identification and they could be:-

Garden Bumblebee

Buff tailed Bumblbee

White tailed bumblebee

Little Staughton Swarm.
I've been putting syrup in their feeder from time to time and they are taking it down.
Stupidly when I put the bees in the nuc I left a space at one side of the nuc and they have built comb to fill it up. It will have to be left there for now but I might get a little honey out of it when I transfer the frames to the main hive.

Stevington Manor Swarm
Same for this one. Syrup has been added and taken.

At the beginning of the week I got another call from Stevington Manor. There was another swarm in an apple tree in a house across the road.
I turned up to find a sizeable swarm very high up in a tree, out of reach of my step ladder.
Fortunately The Manor had a much bigger ladder but even then it was very difficult to get to.

I couldn't get loppers near enough to cut the branch so just held the skep out in front of me, shook the branch and hoped for the best.
I slowly descended and put the skep on a blanket on the lawn and watched.
After a little while a clump of bees started to form back up in the tree so it was back up the ladder with the skep, shake the branch, get down again.
This seemed to be sucessful and after a while the number of flying bees reduced and there were numerous bees out side the skep fanning.

Bees communicate by pheromones and when a swarm has found a suitable new home there are bees at the entrance secreting a pheromone that tells the other bees 'this is our new home, come inside its lovely'. They flap their wings to disperse the pheromone and other bees can smell it and know where to go.
The following morning I went back collected it up and took it to Scald End. The next day it was transferred to a nuc with a feeder on top and left to get on with it.

When I put the bees in the nuc I didn't have enough frames to fill it up.
Today I put the extra frame to find the bees had done what bees do - fill it up with a lovely sheet of snow white comb.

Solitary Bees

I thought she had finished her nest making as nothing seemed to be happening for a while.

However when I had a quick look I saw she had finished off the tunnel.

 

I took the cassette out to have a proper look and on the top most tunnel on the other side there was another row of eggs.

They must have been started earlier as there are live larvae.

 

Just when things seem to get a bit mad, they lurched completely out of control.
I was contacted by someone I know who also keeps bees. Unfortunately he has now developed a severe reaction to bee stings. He has been told he shouldn't keep bees any more and did I want them?
I'll spare you the gory details but suffice it to say the collection and transportation of the hives to Scald End was no fun.
My friend had a very hand off approach to the bees.- he hardly ever inspected them, never treated them for varroa nor did any swarm control but they were active and look OK.
One problem is going to that because they haven't been looked at for well over a year, the bees have propolised the hive into a solid block.
There is something on the website about propolis here,
When I had finally set them up I tried to get the roof off one of the hives but it wouldn't move.
Another possible problem is that the comb in the hives, which will have been in there for a very long time, will be in a bad state and will need to be changed.
The process by which this is done is called a Bailey Comb Change but this involves finding the queen which may not be easy.