Well, that was interesting.
Brett was leading an expedition through the “Jungle” area of the yard, with Mom and Lucy in tow, when he spotted a very strange looking pinecone on one of the evergreen trees.
That’s no pine cone…
It turned out to be a rather large swarm of bees, about the size of a basketball, hanging right at eye level. As used to bees as I’m getting, it’s pretty astonishing to see that many bees out of the hive and hanging around together.
Kristi and I decided to try to capture the swarm. We weren’t sure whether it was from Hive West, a new swarm from Hive East, the original swarm from Hive East, or someone else’s swarm. One way or another, we needed to get it someplace that we could store it so we could figure out the next move.
We suited up and headed over with a large cardboard box (with some air holes poked in it) for temporary storage, a spray bottle of sugar water (to keep everyone happy), and a pair of clippers (to remove the branch).
Honestly, who wouldn’t love to get doused with sugar water?
We figured out which branch was holding the bees, and Kristi cut it while I held it.
Steady… Steady….
As I was warned, it was quite a bit heavier than it looked. There had to be 5lb of bees there, perhaps 10. I dumped the branch into the box, and we left the box there for a few moments to let any scout bees find their way to the queen. There was still a cloud of 200 bees or so flying around our heads, but they were more confused than angry.
There were a lot of bees in the box.
A *lot*. of Bees.
We doused the bees inside the box with lots of sugar water; let’s hope that tides them over for a bit.
After a short break, we moved the box, taped it up, and it’s now being stored in the shop overnight.
With the swarm safely stowed, we decided to do a quick check to see whether one of the hives had swarmed. We checked for queen cells in the top box of both hives; Hive West looked full of bees and we didn’t find any evidence of swarm cells, although there is strangely little brood in the hive; we didn’t see any eggs at all in the 2 or 3 frames we checked. This will require further investigation when we have time to do a full inspection. As an aside, several frames of honey are in the first honey super! The frames are only 1/3 to 1/2 capped, but that honey is ours! Awesome work, Hive West!
Sweetness and light.
The bees in Hive East were pretty aggressive today, they did not appreciate our intrusion at all. We didn’t see any swarm cells, but we got chased off pretty quickly. Again, a deeper inspection will be required. Hive East appears to be starting to fix its honey-bound problem; there is a lot of work going into drawing comb in the honey super, and some of the cells in the super are full of honey even though they’re only half built out. We put on a second super, just in case Hive East is still feeling cramped (although with no brood, I have no idea how they’d swarm again).
From our brief inspection, the current theory is that the swarm we captured is the original swarm from Hive East from a week (or 2?) ago, although this seems like an unlikely scenario. We just didn’t find any evidence that either of our hives swarmed, and it seems even more unlikely that this is a swarm from another beekeeper, because why would it hang out so close to two working hives?
In any case, we’ve got the swarm (and are feeling very studly about it), and we’ll figure out where to house it tomorrow.