This year was definitely a different year as a beekeeper. The warm winter caused some problems for many of the beekeepers. Some beekeepers lost hives due to the hives running out of food stores and starving to death and other beekeepers had hives that went gangbusters and swarmed. This was my first year that I got called for swarms. I have been on the list for years, but those calls have always turned out to yellow jackets and not honey bees. This year I received three calls for swarms that were not mine. I was able to catch two of the three swarms.
Small swarm from a fellow beekeep, was queenless.
One swarm was small and turned out queenless, so I combined this with another hive. The other was a nice size swarm caught at a soccer field, but they decided that they didn't like their new home and swarmed again. One swarm call was about 50 feet up in an oak tree and was too high for me to even try. The other two (2) swarms were my own. The first was on April 13th. That's right Friday the 13th. This one swarmed across a neighbors back yard and up into another neighbors pine tree. This tree was about 50 feet tall and the swarm was up about 35 feet. I was able catch this swarm by climbing up the middle of the tree and knocking them into a 30 gallon Rubber Made container with lid. This was a huge swarm, i think around 40,000 bees. A month later I checked on this swarm and it turned out being queenless too. There were worker bees laying eggs and lots of brood. I have not combined this hive yet and just might wait for them to die off. It is almost two months and honey bees only live 4 to 6 weeks in the summer. The bees were drawing out the comb and filling it with honey and pollen, so i can just use these frames in another hive. The last swarm that I caught was also mine. Funny story. When the first hive swarmed on April 13th, a few days later I split this hive. I found a bunch of frames with queen cells. In fact two (2) frames had 4 to 5 queen cells on them. I left one of the queen cells in the swarm hive. The other two (2) frames with multiple queen cells i put into an observation hive with some nurse bees. We watched the bees for days and then eventually saw a queen that hatched. We watched the queen for days. She was not laying any eggs. I know that they wait for days until leaving the hive and mating. It seemed like over a week and on a sunny day I went to check on the hive. I could not believe the timing ! The queen was climbing out the tube. I saw her leave the tube, orient herself and fly out into the sky. Later that evening, the queen was back. About three (3) days later, still no eggs. On the third day I checked the hive before lunch and the queen was still not laying. The hive was full of bees. At 3pm I checked again, and the observation hive was empty ! I looked out the window and attached to the entrance tube and landing platform was a swarm. I quickly went out onto the roof and put the swarm into a NUC box. A week later the bees built out the new foundation and the queen was laying eggs. This NUC is doing well.
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| What a great little swarm ! I think I need to paint !! |
