Honey bee nest

Thanks PG, I found one of them in my loft, I was wandering what had lived there.

 

I've seen my wasps' nest, the branch I sawed off collapsed and exposed part of it. It's difficult to tell how big it is, I reckon about as wide as a big canteloupe melon and about twice that in height. Does the queen seal herself in when she hibernates?

 

Amasis, towards the end of the Autumn, new queens and males are produced which leave the nest, mate and the new queens go off and hibernate somewhere. Your original 'founder' queen and the rest of the colony die, leaving your nest deserted.

 

Thank you, Rural Gardener. I knew the queens hibernated, but not that they moved elsewhere to do that. :o

I'm going to take photos of the nest when it's empty. I'll be interested to see how big it is. Right now it looks like a big grey swelling around the fork of a branch of an eleagnus.

 

That should be really interesting. Hope you don't get too many stings in the mean time! Julie