SWARM!!

Sally's hive has been cranking along this spring and we knew that early swarming was a real possibility. We checked them out last weekend found the brood box riddled with queen cells. Were we already too late? As a last ditch swarm control measure, Kerstin and I scraped off about a 15 or 16 queen cells from the top brood box before we saw virgin queens out and running around on the comb and realized we hadn't seen Sally anywhere. Figuring she had already swarmed without our knowledge and rather demoralized, we abandoned our efforts in swarm management and left the remaining queen cells to carry out what we assumed would be a quick succession. However, yesterday morning we looked out the window and noticed a glittery movement around the hive. We all raced outside with camera in hand and witnessed tens of thousands of bees slowly circling the hive. I was determined to follow them and catch the swarm, but they punked us again. Instead of moving en masse to some nearby bush or branch, they swirled around a while, gathered in patches on a nearby bench, chair and the front porch of the hive and then slowly dissipated. I was completely devastated because this is not how bees are supposed to swarm, according to our books. Thinking they might have moved in a sneaky trickle to their swarm location to avoid detection, I walked the perimeter of our property looking for masses of bees, but couldn't find anything and eventually gave up. I was working in the garden a few hours later when I heard a loud buzzing behind me and lo, bees were once again spilling out of the hive and filled the air.  This time they gathered above the hive for a few minutes and then slowly made their way together towards the field (finally, doing something by the book!).

(The video quality is pretty poor after compression during the upload, but if you squint, you can make out the thousands of bees that fill the air here).

Our jubilation at watching the swarm move quickly subsided when the reality of their resting spot finally hit us.  They settled on a white pine branch at the edge of our field about 25 feet high. We left them alone for a few hours to plot our capture strategy. This being our first swarm capture attempt, we had to consult bee books for techniques and tips. Our go-to guide is The Backyard Beekeeper, mostly because there are lots of pictures and it's really easy to thumb through and find what you're looking for. At the top of the "Catching Swarms" chapter in the book was the following disclaimer: "Swarms that are very high in trees are seldom worth the risk of wobbly ladders and precarious positions. Safety is paramount here. A 6' stepladder is as high as you should go ... even then, you should only go halfway up." Pish, said we. Kerstin got out his 16' ladder and shored it up on bricks and cinderblocks. Then he placed a tarp under the swarm to catch any bees that may drop and we prepared an empty bee box with 3 frames placed at the edges and a screen bottom. I made some sugar syrup for misting the bees (this prevents them from flying and distracts them because they have to take some time away from being pissed off at you to clean themselves off.)

We made our move in the early evening as the sun was low in the sky and the bees were tightly clustered. Kerstin scaled the ladder and fashioned an old apple picker with a wire hook at the end to hook the branch and draw it down to low enough to grasp. He got through the branch with big loppers OK, but the weight of the branch caught Kerstin off guard and it snapped down, releasing about half the swarm in a shower down on the tarp we'd placed below. There were also plenty that didn't get hit with the mist of syrup that had taken flight instead. We feared all was lost, but there was still a good number of bees left in the cluster that remained on the branch, so Kerstin took it down and shook it smartly into the box. We put the lid on it and left the entrance open so that the bees could come and go. If the queen was in the box, so say the books, then the separated workers will sniff her out and join her in the box. If not, then the bees in the box would exit shortly and the swarm would regroup around the queen at another location. To our great relief, the bees did the former and were all tucked away in their new box by sundown. We moved them to their new location, gave them some food and they've taken to this hive beautifully. Best of all, lovely queen Sally didn't abandon us! We only had 1 hive a week ago, and now we have 4. I think we've really earned our beekeeping stripes with this experience.