Cats, thank you for that advice, if we still have our smaller swarm I will ring the beekeeper again tomorrow. I would like them re-housed safely because the world needs bees. He seemed to think he had gotten the queen yesterday morning, can there be more than one queen in a swarm?

Janie, I believe there are some problems in Ox with bee viruses, but a very large threat is the bees coming from Asia - they are wiping out the local populations.

Less than an hour to see the doctor.....

Cheers
JennieG