Capturing a Swarm

Yesterday, our bees swarmed!  Which means…uh…that they left the hive to find a new place to live because their hive was too crowded and they hatched a new queen and blah, blah, blah…they swarmed!!  I can’t tell you how relieved I was that the official beekeeper was home, because if he had been at work when the swarm started I would have called him and said, “Your bees…gone.  See ya at dinner.”

If you don’t keep an eye on your bees you can miss a swarm.  Clay just happened to be outside working when he heard a lot of buzzing and saw thousands of bees swirling around a pear tree.

He quickly ran into the house and consulted his bee manual to make sure he knew what to do.  A swarm doesn’t last very long so you need to move quickly if you want to capture it and get them moved into a hive.  Fortunately, we had the dead bee hive that was stored in the barn because all the bees had died over the winter.  Clay rushed to get it set up.

This is an empty frame that the bees will build wax comb on and the queen will lay eggs.

This is an old frame that is full of wax.  He put two of these in the hive so the bees would smell the comb and be drawn into the entrance to start doing their thing.  He also set a jar of sugar water near the hive body and sprayed sugar water around the entrance.

Then it was time to capture the swarm.  Dear God…..

please…

let…

me…

live.

Seth and I stood back to watch.

This is the cluster of bees that formed in the pear tree.

Clay took a cardboard box and a soft bristled paint brush to catch the bees.

And now I think you should see for yourself how the rest of it went.

Fast Tube by Casper

After three trips up in the tree Clay was able to get them into the hive.  He’ll open the hive in a couple days and make sure that the queen is actually in there.