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.

I got a call at work (yes, I work a real job, besides the fun I have farming) from a friend this past Monday.
“I have a buddy at work that has a bunch of bees in his house. I told him you might take care of them.”

So, I have him give the guy my number.
He called me and confirmed that he had honey bees somewhere inside his house or in the crawlspace under the house.

I told him to call me when he got home – after he confirmed that the bees were still there. (swarming bees don’t hang around their initial point of descent – it’s temporary until the scout bees find a “suitable” home for her majesty, the queen)
He called me back stating that the bees were in fact, there, so I headed out to Williamstown, KY to capture a swarm. I had my yougest son (10) and my buddy that called me (he thought it would be fun).

When I got there, the bees were coming and going through an opening at the bottom of the vinyl siding on the house, where his front porch/deck was.

I shined my flashlight into the gap and noticed that the bees were not going up inside the walls, so I asked him how to get into the crawlspace – he took a piece of siding off and removed some plywood. I crawled in and headed to where the front porch was.

Sure enough, there was a ball of bees about 14″ in diameter hanging on the sub-floor between 2 floor joists. There was another one in the corner of the floor joist and the sub-floor where they meet the exterior wall, but it was much smaller – maybe 5 – 6 inches in diameter. probably about 30,000 bees…
I had a small cardboard, portable “NUC” (a half-hive that only has room for 5 frames instead of the standard 8 or 10 frames in a full sized hive) with a frame of honey on one side and a frame of drawn wax comb on the other side. I held it under the ball of bees, and with by bee brush, I brushed that big ball o bees into the box – there were so many bees, it knocked the box right out of my hand! I oicked it up and started brushing again, until I had almost all of the bees on sub-floor swept into the box – I also got the smaller ball of bees.

of course, there were probably 6 – 10 thousand bees that either fell out of the box, or missed the box during my sweeping actions. So, I set the box down and crawled out and unzipped my beesuit ( it was in the 80′s outside and concentrated effort makes me sweat anyway).
I stood there giving the home owner an update on progress and cooling off, while my buddy was walking around in a beesuit checking things out. My son had gone in with me and was holding the flashlight for me under the house, and he didn’t want to take off his hooded veil because, like me, he had gotten stung through the bee suit! Needless to say, he would not be assisting me on my next venture under the house and he made this very obvious as he climbed into the van and shut the door!

After about a 5 – 10 minute cool-down, Iwent back in and repeated the process. I did this 3 more times in all, and when I was finished, there were still 3 or 4 thousand bees left. I hated to leave them, but there was no way I could get the rest of the bees, since it was getting dark.

On the way home, I thought buying a “bee vacuum” an some queen pheromone, or some lemongrass essential oil (my wife has some for her products, but I’d have to ask and them replace it anyway)…

I have the hive set up and it’s been there all week – of course, it’s been raining, so they wouldn’t choose to leave until after te weather clears, anyway. Today will be the big test – sunny and in the 70′s. I’m hoping to get in there today and find a good, laying queen. if not, I will be re-queening that hive tomorrow…

It was a lot of work, but the bees were free – and now the man’s young daughter (who is allergic to bees) doesn’t have to be afraid…