I don't usually feed my colonies. I'm especially cautious about feeding swarms because they arrive with honey which can contain spores from a variety of diseases including the devastating American Foulbrood. The usual advice is to leave the bees alone for a week. They will build comb and use up the honey which they arrive with.

When I put Colony 17 into their Commercial hive body I had too few full-sized frames. I increased the number by putting in shallow frames from a super. Yesterday I quickly opened the hive to replace the shallow frames with full-sized deep frames.

I was called by Mary, a member of my group. She had caught a swarm from her top-bar hive in Headington. She kindly offered me the swarm, knowing how much I value untreated colonies.

The swarm is from a colony which Mary has kept, untreated, for about 2 years in a Top Bar Hive. Before that they came from a feral swarm somewhere near Steeple Aston in Oxfordshire.

I took the swarm down to central Oxford in the early morning and walked them in. They went in very willingly. The swarm was a reasonable size. I didn't see the Queen going in.

On Sunday I harvested two supers of honey from Colony 1. They had filled three supers during the spring and had started building comb on top of the crown board.

Harvesting is fairly straightforward now. Cut; spin; strain; put into containers. Easy.