The Lure of Lemongrass Oil

Today I got home from the mountains to find it sunny and warm in Atlanta - perfect weather to open the hives. I opened Bermuda to find it bubbling over with bees. The brood has been mostly in the bottom box, but today they are also raising brood in the second box. They had eaten all the sugar syrup I left them last weekend. I wanted to check on the brood situation and to open up the brood space while in Bermuda. I removed several frames from the brood box and spread out the brood with an empty frame between frames 2 and 3 and another between frames 7 and 9.

I then did a powdered sugar shake - the bees grumbled in a bee-way by buzzing and flying around. You can see how much they have to clean off by looking at the bees in the above picture.
In Mellona there wasn't quite as much activity and there are fewer bees. They too had eaten all of the sugar syrup I had provided. I made some at 3 PM before going out to the hives at 4 PM. It was still warm but I put some in a Ziploc bag, laid it on the top box and slit the bag. I don't think the fact that it is still warm will be an issue. After all the bees like to be in the 90s themselves.

I noticed some drone cells being made in each of the two hives. With spring coming soon, the girls are ready for some males in the picture to mate with queens, should a hive need to make their own queen.
While working on the bee hives, I thought I might try to lure a swarm. I have an empty deep on the deck. Today I lifted out each frame and shook off a few dead roaches who had wintered there. The hive has a few frames with starter strips and mostly drawn out brood comb. There are a few plastic based foundations and some with none. I used lemongrass oil (this is an effective lure for swarms, according to Michael Bush and others on Beesource and Beemaster) and dropped about 10 drops on the center 5 frames. For good measure I put a few drops at the entrance as well.

Swarm season will be on us in March so I want my bee hive to be an appealing place, should a swarm come along. I love it that on the bottle of lemongrass oil, there is the word: INSPIRING. Let's hope the oil draws a swarm and INSPIRES it to live on my deck!