Catching the Swarm

Friday, May 11

My my. The bees have a sixth sense for being dramatic when I am very busy.  Yet again, I was at work when I received a text from Bill to say that Elizabeth was swarming again.  Really?  How in the world was this even possible?  Hadn't we already been through this?  This was becoming worse than raising teenagers!  Happily, I had planned on coming home early to check into what the bees were doing since the weather was beautiful--sunny, blue sky and about 21 degrees centigrade.  When I got home I headed right over to our neighbours cedar tree...my bees love that tree.  About 12' up I saw two balls of bees.  Bill, our neighbour and I decided that catching this swarm was totally do-able.  No bait hive here--I was going in!

Here is the story of my first swarm catch.

We set up the ladder at the cedar and got the lopper ready to chop off any branches in the way.  Don't worry, our neighbour was totally fine with any haircut the tree would get.

The balls of bees in the cedar

Going in for the catch!

Yours truly got into my suit and up the ladder I went feeling very powerful.  The bees were clumped altogether and buzzing.  Amazing to be nose to nose with them.  I showed Bill where to cut the branch in front of them and then got ready for him to cut their own branch off.

The ball of bees

My favourite part of this story is when I had the bees cut down and needed to come down the ladder.  I couldn't climb down with only one hand since I was fairly close to the "this is not a step" step!  I asked Bill to take the bees from me even though he did not have a veil on.  He looked astonished and then just took them.  I kept telling everyone that they are very docile when in a swarm but still...

Hero Bill with the swarm

I then took the swarm from him

Me with swarm

and  shook them into the box we had waiting.

Shaking the bees into the box

I did this with two more clumps and the swarm was ours again!  I put in the rest of the frames so the hive had 10 frames and put the lid on.

Brand new hive of bees

So this is my first capture.  I wrote my beekeeper mentor and told him that I had gone into both my hives and discovered that there were no queens, just queen cells and that I had captured a swarm from one.  He wrote back to tell me that I should do nothing and they would sort themselves out and then he wrote "You now have three hives"!  I could practically hear him chuckling.   Oh dear!  Not only was that not my plan, I have to think of another name for her!  (My youngest daughter has suggested Queen Latifa...ha ha)

We left the hive at the neighbours and then moved it to my beeyard late that night.  She is now very busy and I will have to add boxes and get a better lid and bottom board for her.  

I read in one of my bee books that the only way to learn about bees was to make lots of mistakes.  I am learning lots and lots.