Quote Originally Posted by SDM View Post
I get the same timings too.They definitely run lines up and down my hives and circles around the mating nucs. Sadly this year I didnt have the option of using another site.
Good to know that 8 out of 10 insects eaten by swallows are flies and that the other 2 are not necessarily bees. Also - the usual shelter and aspect that we all try to give our apiaries encourages all sorts of insect concentrations. It is not just bees that prefer such warm sheltered areas. Casual observation shows blue-bottles for example, sunning themselves on my hive landing boards - it is hardly surprising that swallows have lunch here. We should not assume that they are after queens. It is easy to make spurious correlations based on a correlation between two variables.