We did everything we could to stop those bees from swarming. We split the colony, we put two swarm lures in the yard, and we did a lot of hoping that they wouldn't swarm. And then I started to believe that they wouldn't swarm. Of course, I had read that colonies could swarm even if they didn't have a mated queen--they would just take a whole bunch of virgin queens with them and then sort out the situation when they had settled into a new home. Now, if our hive, with 15 virgin queens, wasn't a prime candidate for just such a scenario, I'm not sure such a hive exists. Yet I, purely out of wishful thinking, convinced myself that they wouldn't--just because I didn't want them to. In fact, before this past week, I had convinced myself that it was easy to keep a colony from swarming and that we would never have to take bees out of our neighbor's trees. We would just split the hives long before swarming was even a possibility.
Lesson One: Hoping does not make something so, and things rarely turn out the way you think they will.
Around 11:30 this morning Tim called me at work and calmly told me that the bees were swarming. His voice was so calm that I didn't believe him. But soon I could tell he was serious. Jamie (wonderful Jamie) agreed to do my one urgent work item for the day, and I was out the door like lightning.
Once home, I found Tim in the backyard watching a loosely defined cloud of bees move toward a post in the neighbor's backyard, where they were regrouping. At the entrance to the parent hive, small clusters of bees hung above the entrance and under the flight deck. About ten bees were fanning at the entrance. We wondered if they were trying to help lost bees find their way home by wafting the hive scent.
Having never met our neighbor, and assuming he was unaware of our bee habit, we were pretty nervous about telling him that our little friends were trying to make his backyard their new home. Our fear vanished as soon as we met Chad. He was just about as kind, welcoming and not-freaked-out as we can imagine anyone being.
At this point I have to tell you that not every swarm you come across is going to be hanging like low fruit on a branch just waiting to drop into an open box with a quick shake. Our bees, for instance, had chosen to congregate on the front left post of an arbor, which was covered in vines. It made the situation a little tricky. We were fortunate that it was only about five feet off the ground.
We set to work immediately trying to tempt the bees away from the post with some drawn out comb that Alan lent us. They didn't take the bait. Next we tried shaking them into the nuc box with some success. Finally we tried brushing them. In the end, it was a combination of brushing and shaking that gave us the best results.
Once we got a good number of bees in the nuc, we set it on the ground, thinking that the remaining bees would follow their sisters in, which they slowly did. The bees that had entered the nuc box were fanning like crazy. At this point, we began wondering where the queen was--in or out of the box. And then we spotted her right next to the entrance. We tried catching her, but she flew off. I was worried that she had gone forever, but then I saw another queen and then another!! One of them went into the box. The other one we caught in a jam jar. We put the nuc box up higher, closer to where the remaining bees were, and over the course of about twenty minutes, they all went in.
Later in the afternoon, Tim brought the nuc box home and shook the bees into our waiting top bar. He added the queen from the jam jar too. May the best woman win.
The bees were incredibly gentle through the whole process. We were each stung twice, but that was due to our being under-dressed.
Lesson Two: Persevere.
You must persevere when catching a swarm. About half-way through the procedure, I lost heart. I couldn't tell if the bees were moving into the box or not, I thought we'd lost the queen and I'd been stung. I knew we had to get the bees out of Chad's yard, but I was afraid I wouldn't be able to do it. This is where it becomes incredibly important to have a partner--Tim never gave up and he kept me trying. It was so worth it!
We are now the proud parents of three hives, and we are keeping an open mind about what may come next.
A side note: At complete odds with the previously cited anecdotal evidence that bees are swarming early this year, Alan hasn't seen any swarm potential in his Brentwood or Tracy apiaries. And last month, we heard sad stories from fellow beekeepers about hives dying over the winter. From these reports, it seems that our colony is an anomaly. Alan suggested that we might have a warm little microclimate in our backyard, created by the gravel (no plants) absorbing solar and radiating it back into the air.
It's now time for some movies!
Here is Jessica starting to collect the swarm:
We tried shaking them out:
The bees finally start to head into the nuc box:
Raider tidies up the stragglers:
Jessica chats about the swarm catching:
No comments:
Post a Comment