Every now and then, God’s “lower creatures” tend to humiliate, or, at the very least, humble me. This past week, it was a swarm of bees.
As a beekeeper, I try to stay up on my hives to make sure that they put up honey and don’t swarm. This year, it seems many beekeepers (due to the excessive rain) have had more than their fair share of swarms.
I, in particular, had three swarms. All in the course of 4 days. Of the three swarms, one stands out in my mind.
The first swarm was a “textbook case”. As the bees ramped up in the hive, the workers detected crowding in the hive and made several queen cells, alerting the queen, along with many of the bees in the colony, that it was time to take up residence elsewhere – and that it needed to be done before the new queen emerged.
The bees swarmed into bushes near the bee yard. I noticed the swarm while I was visiting with Nathan as he milked the cow. I setup another hive, donned my bee suit and took up a cardboard box and bee brush as my only defense.
With one hand, I held the box underneath the branch that the cluster of bees was on and with the other, I bent the branch down over the open box and shook the branch with much force. Most of the bees dropped into the box and I brushed the rest off of the branch and into the box.
I immediately took the box to the awaiting empty hive, sitting with the lid off. I banged the box on the ground and opened the lids. I shook the bees into the hive (which had half of the frames in it and half outside the hive). Once I had emptied the contents of the box into the hive, I put the rest of the frames into the hive and covered it.
I checked the bush about an hour later and brushed any stragglers into the box and put them in the hive as well. Pretty much textbook swarm capture.
The next afternoon, I noticed another swarm, but in a different location. I immediately checked the new hive and found the bees happily buzzing in the hive and going to – and – fro. This was not a re-swarm, it was a new swarm.
I followed the previous days method of swarm capture, except I had to take pruners and cut the branch free that they were swarming on, (since it was blackberry and raspberry bushes that they swarmed into) and all went as planned. I check later in the evening and they were still in the hive.
When I checked at mid-day, there was another swarm in the same place as that second swarm from the previous day. I checked the hive where I had installed the second swarm, and it was empty. So I set about capturing the swarm again (same method as the previous day, including having to cut the branch off so I could shake the bees free). I transferred the bees from the box to the hive one again.
Well, that evening, I checked, and they had swarmed yet again, into the bushes. This time, I removed the hive body and frames used and put in its place an Illinois (medium sized hive body and frames) with mostly all comb already on the frames. As an added measure, Marilyn put lemon grass essential oil in a corner of the hive. I then put it in place and re-captured the swarm.
When I checked the next day, they were happily working the hive. No more swarming. But I l;earned that bees can be pretty temperamental about their living quarters…
The third swarm came a day later – but it was a text-book capture with no unusual tales to tell.
I have now added 3 new bee hives to my bee yard and learned a few things along the way.
