A Thorny Third Atlanta Swarm

And so for my third act, I went into Buckhead to get a swarm out of a holly bush. It was about the size of a basketball and on the side of a very slanted backyard. It was a little hard to get to, but the homeowner said it was fine to clip back the holly. I took him at his word and cut off the branches that were anxious to prick my hands as I worked with the swarm.

You can see the challenge the holly imposes in its thorns. Before dealing with this swarm, I clipped all the branches between myself and the bees (or why it's a good idea to carry pruning snips in your bee bag).

I spread out a sheet on the hillside, sprayed the swarm with sugar syrup and tried to cut the branches to get the swarm into the banker's box (my standard for carrying a swarm home). I couldn't get photos and keep my balance, but it went rather smoothly.

In this photo above you can see the bees with their rear ends raised to send the nasonov signal that the queen is here!

I left an opening in between the ventilated cover and the box to allow the bees to join their queen. Hundreds of them did. I then, as in the last swarm, covered the whole box up with the sheet, draping it over the bees who had not entered the box, and carried them to the Morningside community garden.

I had a waiting eight frame hive there. I used a third box as a funnel to help me pour the bees into the hive. It works well this way with no frames in it.

Then I added the eight frames back into the box.

I closed up the box and left the bees to adjust to their new life as community garden bees. Pickings should be bountiful!

I stopped by yesterday to check on how they are doing and they are flying well. 

Second Atlanta swarm on I-Beam in Forest Park

My second swarm call of the year came just a couple of days after the first one. I was told the bees were on rebar at a construction company. When I arrived I found the bees tucked into the squared corners of an I-Beam!

So I did the swarm catching prep while I decided how to get these bees that I couldn't shake and didn't want to make angry.

I set up a sheet under the swarm, got my ladder, my plastic banker's box, a spray bottle of sugar water, and my bee brush. I climbed up the ladder.

I held the box and brushed the majority of bees into it, but huge numbers flew back to the I-Beam. The bees in the box were not tail-up and were not sending out nasonov. The queen must still be on the I-Beam.....

I felt discouraged after several brushing attempts and angry bees in response. So I took a round Ziploc 16 oz container and scraped the bees into it by running it along the interior of the I-Beam. Then I dumped them into the box and repeated, dumped, repeated, etc.

I decided to leave them for lunch and see if the queen was in the box after lunch. Forest Park is 30 minutes from my house so I drove back the 30 minutes, had lunch with Julia, and returned to the scene.

The bees were in the box and had left the I-Beam. I must have gotten the queen in one of my Ziploc container sweeps.

Because there were lots of bees outside the box on top of the ventilated cover, I decided to bring them home just like that. I secured the cover with the bungee cord and then gently wrapped the box, exterior bees and all, in the sheet. I carried it to the car and set them in the back. Now I'm driving with hundreds of bees outside the travel container!

I installed this swarm at Stonehurst Place Inn on Piedmont. Their bees died over the winter and they were glad to see me. I hope they will do well in the hive at the bed and breakfast.

Atlanta Bee Swarm - My First of the Season

I got a call to go to a house near Chastain Park to collect a swarm. The man who owned the house is a beekeeper and these were his bees. He understood that if we came to help him, he would be giving the bees away. I assured him that I would install them in the community garden near my house.

Bee swarms are always their own unique challenge. He had reported that these bees were 20 feet up in a tree but that he was fine going up a tall ladder. So I arrived to find the bees high up in the tree, as he had said:

I spread my sheet twenty feet below, under the swarm. There was a deep, deep hole directly under the swarm and I kept forgetting about it and stepping into it as I walked on the sheet.

First Peter climbed his yellow ladder and jabbed the swarm with my swarm catcher on a pole. Many  bees fell into it.

We dumped the bees into the box and covered them with the ventilated cover. It was clear that we hadn't gotten the queen because a huge ball of bees flew back to the branch and the bees in the box were not sending the nasonov signal.

So now Peter gets his largest ladder and climbs even higher in the tree, preparing to cut the limb on which the bees are gathered. I am not thinking this through well. Peter cuts the limb and it falls onto the sheet - bad plan - I should have been on the other ladder with the swarm catcher. Still no queen or at least the bees are not indicating that she is in the box.

So we tried one more time (and there's not a photo because this time I held the swarm catcher right under the branch as he cut it.)

This time we got the queen and the bees are signalling. All seems well with the world of this swarm.

There were still many bees on the sheet (from the falling branch), so I wrapped the box which also had a lot of bees on the outside in the sheet; put the whole contraption in my car and took the swarm off to their new home.

Good job, Peter. I'm hoping he becomes more involved with the local beekeepers. 

I put all of the photos on Google + (they are doing away with Picasa where all my photo albums and slideshows are).