I checked my bees today and found one colony had swarmed!! There were no eggs to be seen so the queen must have been gone 3 days, making her date of departure possibly April Fool's day? I like to think so.
Be warned folks. I carried out my first check 10 days ago, March 26th and found brood on 5 frames plus plenty of stores. I was a bit concerned about space so put a super on and then left them to it. No queens cells or cups seen - or so I thought. Why did i not check within the week? Because I thought it was too early in the year to disturb them again quite so soon. In previous years I've started regular checks early and been rewarded with foul tempered bees, which I was assured could be down to inspecting too early. Big mistake!
My main hope now is that I'll get a nice new queen from one of the two queen cells I left in and the colony will build up in time to take advantage of late summer flows. I really hope so as this was a lovely colony, given to me as a nuke by a friend towards the end of last season and they were building up so promisingly.
Proof again that the bees havn't read the same books I've read, and that they are always one jump ahead of the beekeeper - this beekeeper at any rate!
Anyone else had any super-early swarms, given this fine, dry spring weather we've been having over much of the country?