i heard through a series of emails that a friend of mine, rhonda, had a swarm of bees bearding in a tree in her back yard. i had never caught one before but was very excited at the opportunity! i wanted the experience of catching a swarm, and i liked the idea of adding some new bees to agnes' hive, the weaker of my 3.
rhonda had been out of town for a few days, so she didn't have any idea of how long the bees had been there. now, there's a lot about beekeeping that i don't know yet, but there's even more that i don't know about catching swarms. however, i do know that they can be a bit unpredictable. it might be that you gather equipment and support troops, then make the trek to the area where they were spotted -only to find that their scouts have already done their job well and the whole colony has taken off to live happily ever after in the wild blue yonder. add to that, these bees had just weathered a pretty severe storm the night before i arrived, so i thought that perhaps the bad weather might make them more likely to jump at the chance to leave...
lucky for me, this was not the case. catching this swarm took place over a couple of days. unfortunately, cliff and laney - the dynamic duo - couldn't join me, so i was afraid i was going to have to fly solo. turns out i was anxious over nothing. ( i can hear the "i told you so('s)" now) rhonda is such a bee enthusiast, she was right there with me through the whole thing and it was fun! and of course i didn't go into this without an extensive email exchange with laney asking for advice and how-to's.
i had no idea what the temperament of the bees would be, so we chose to err on the side of caution. the bees were only about 4 feet off the ground, bearding on an oak branch. we VERY CAREFULLY cut the branch off, then VERY SLOWLY trimmed it down and VERY GENTLY placed it in the brood box with 5 wet frames and put the lid on. (wet frames = frames that still had a little honey on them after extraction)
here's where i made a mistake...i didn't screen off the entrance. i left it open thinking that the bees that were out foraging would find their way into the hive by evening and i would come back after dark to bring them all home.
well, by the time i had my gear packed up and had chatted a few minutes with rhonda, we looked out at the trees and saw a suspiciously large, agitated cloud of bees flying around under the tree again.
that ungrateful queen had left her new luxury condo to rough - it in the tree again! (this time 8 feet up) this abandonment did let me get a good look at the branch we had cut off... found that they had already started building comb on it, so apparently they were pretty content to stay put.
day 2, bring in the reinforcements, namely - andy and a ladder.
this time we misted them with water so they would be less likely to fly away. it all went smoothly. same thing as day 1, just screened the entrance, loaded them into the back of the truck and took them home.
kept them locked in the brood box with their wet frames and in the shade all day. at times throughout the day i walked out on the deck to check the activity. my bees seemed to go through cycles of agitation and peace. one moment there would be hundreds of bees zipping through the air and trying to crawl through the entrance screen. the next moment they would all be gone!
the next day, i opened up the swarm box. (rhonda came over for this part, too!) this was the sad part. i had to find the queen and kill her. andy took care of it for me and did it in a humane way. he euthanized her in a mason jar with a rag soaked in gasoline. so now the boys have a beautiful queen bee on the nature table to look at anytime!
so after we found the queen i opened agnes' hive and spritzed her girls down with sugar water. i then spritzed the swarm and simply shook as many bees into their new home as i could. what few remained in the swarm box were also spritzed, and i set the box over in the sun with the other wet supers that the bees were cleaning up.
no scuffles at all. everybody seems to be getting along just fine, so... mission accomplished.
