Caught my first swarm of the season today - March 2!

 I got the call at about 3 PM from my local club swarm list. Dave, who manages the list, knew I didn't want to climb ladders this year and said this one was one inch from the ground. And it was only 15 minutes away near downtown Decatur.

The bees belonged to beekeepers, but not beekeepers who are members of my local club. They got bees last year, had not treated them with anything, and the bees lived through the winter. Today they swarmed and it was a HUGE swarm. As swarms go, this was the size of about four cats and when I carried it away, my estimation was that it was about seven pounds of bees. 

Here's the photo the homeowner sent:

This enormous swarm was hanging from a hydrangea bush and was also pooled on the ground. It was quite a challenge to collect. Lisa, the homeowner, said the bees began gathering at the base of the hydrangea. My assumption then was that the queen was down at the bottom of this swarm. 

The beehive from which the swarm issued was housed in a deep and a medium box - imagine how crowded these bees were since this only represents one half of the hive. I encouraged Lisa to get her husband (the actual beekeeper) to add a box when he got home to give the remaining bees space to grow.

Because of the swarm location I was unable to do a good video of the process. I could barely get to the bees and couldn't place the camera in a way that would work. I'll show you a short bit of what I tried to record. The whole process took an hour because even though I shook a ton of bees into the box, the queen didn't get there until I managed to brush her (I assume - I didn't see her) into a paint container that I had. Then the bees put their bottoms up into the air and began to send out pheromone signals to attract the bees not in the collection box.

Gradually most of the bees were either in the box or on the sheet. A few remained on the tree, but I had hope that they would return to their old hive about twenty feet away by morning. 

I took the bees to my empty top bar hive - a great place to put a swarm that large. I am sorry I didn't take any photos of the bees when we dumped them in - they absolutely covered the entire interior of the top bar hive because there were so many of them. There was a basketball size cluster of bees clinging to the ventilated top on the collection box. Even when I dumped those into the hive, there were still at least two cats worth of bees inside the collection box to add.

Here are a few stragglers entering the front door to their new home. The bees on the sheet below are still probably gathered around the pheromone of the queen, left by her after I swept her into the paint container and put her in the collection box.

P.S. My friend David L. and I get our hair cut at the same salon. His stylist is Jon, and David told me that Jon keeps bees. Rachel, another stylist there, cuts my hair. Ever since I learned about his beekeeping,  I have always had a short bee conversation with Jon about how his bees are doing every time I visit Rachel for a haircut. 

The morning after I caught this swarm, I got a text from Jon that said, "Good morning, Linda. This is Jon from C___ Hair Studio. I heard you had quite the adventure yesterday with my wife and son! Small world. Thank you so much....." 

Amazing that in this giant metropolis of the Atlanta area that I would know the person from whom I got the swarm (quite by the coincidence of being on the swarm list for MABA.)

Does your local bee club or extension agent keep a swarm list? It's a great way to get a swarm - put your name on it and you will be called when a swarm is available and it's your turn. I get at least one call a year from MABA and as a retired person who is very available to leave at the drop of a hat, I sometimes get more than one/year.

Crossword Buzzle about Swarm Season

In the south, when March arrives, you know if you are a beekeeper, that swarming sweeps in with the March winds. Being prepared for swarm catching for me means keeping my swarm catching kit in my car at the ready. Here is a crossword "buzzle" that I developed about catching swarms. 

If you feel like you need to learn about swarm catching first, visit this post. To see a YouTube video I made of a swarm I caught last year, click here. 

 

If you want the answer key, email me.

This is how it looks in the GBA newsletter, thanks to Peter Helfrich, our layout and graphics editor. He is amazing:

Swift Swarm Catching

At the community garden, our bees in one hive didn't make it. They actually dwindled and died before winter. I neglected them with my injured shoulder and they were a swarm that I installed last summer.

They probably came from a yard where the bees were treated and I don't treat my bees, so these bees may have not been able to survive without treatment. In addition, you never know about swarms. Since they didn't come from my bee yard, I can't rely on their genetics. Often swarms don't make it.

But that meant that I was one hive short at the community garden where like in all of my bee yards, I want to have two hives so one can serve as a resource if the other needs it.

So I was DELIGHTED when I got a swarm call from my bee club's swarm list. The swarm was in the yard of a beekeeper who did not have the equipment to keep them. They were described as being six feet off the ground and easy to get.

Now, the call came in at 2:15. The bees were 25 minutes from my house. I had to drive there, get the swarm, drive back to the community garden (25 minutes), install the bees, and get myself to a 4:15 doctor's appointment that is also 25 minutes away (more with the current state of Atlanta traffic due to the I-85 collapse). I had at least 1 1/2 hours of driving with little time to spare to collect the swarm or to install the swarm.

Everything had to run smoothly.

I arrived to find that the swarm was indeed just about six feet up or so.

I had brought my swarm catcher. Here's a photo of it from an earlier swarm catch in 2016.

For this swarm, described as six feet up, I didn't bring the painter's pole in the photo above, but rather brought a mop stick to screw into the swarm catcher. I didn't even use it - instead, I used the swarm catcher on its own. 

I spread the sheet I had brought under the swarm as quickly as possible. I took the swarm catcher and while the man whose bees these were bent the tree branch down, I jerked up on the swarm catcher and the bees fell into it. One more jab at the tree and I had the bees in the box I had brought.

Here you can see the bees in the box under the ventilated hive cover, the swarm catcher to the right, the bottle of sugar syrup which I had used to spray the swarm, my bee brush, and the yellow bungee cord set to secure the ventilated cover to the plastic box. The bees on the upper edge of the box are sending out Nasonov, letting me know that I have the queen.

The whole thing took ten minutes. There were many bees on the outside of the box, but I didn't have time to wait for them to find Mama. I wrapped the box, bees on the outside and all, in the sheet and raced for my car.

I drove the 25 minutes to the community garden. By the time I got there, at least 100 bees were gathered on my back window. I jumped out of the car, put on my veil and jacket, grabbed the bees and my bee brush and carried all of it up the hill to the hive. When I arrived, I could not pry the top off of the box!

I went in my veil to the car where there was no hive tool. What had I done? Cleaned out the car and moved the resident hive tool? ARGHHH. Leaving the bees, I jumped into the car and drove in my veil to my house about two blocks away. I ran into the house in my veil and down the stairs to the basement. As I headed for my bee kit to get the hive tool, I tripped over a box in my way that I couldn't see for the veil and landed smack on my hands and knees on the concrete floor. 

Note to self: Next time, take off the veil before going inside.

Hive tool in hand, I raced back to the garden, opened the hive and dumped in the bees. I grabbed the hive top, put it on solidly, and ran to the car. I got to the 4:15 appointment at 4:13 (with many bees still in the car). 

I didn't have a long doctor's appointment, but right after it I had to go babysit grandkids, so I hadn't been back in my neighborhood since I installed the swarm about 3:30. I was leaving town the next morning, so I stopped by the hive that evening just after dark around 9 PM. I could see bees on the entrance and felt good about it.

I came back to town on Monday and stopped by the other day to check on the hive. While there are bees flying in and out, the numbers don't compare to the overwintered hive which is booming (I know, I know, the robber screen is off and needs restapling. I'll do it when I'm over there on Sunday).

This was done in such haste and today I stopped back by to see how they had survived today's rain and horrors! I noticed that the hive is barely supported on one side. That's something to fix this weekend as well!

Don't know how it is barely on the corner of the cinder block, but that obviously will not do and both hives need entrance reducers.

The Hive Drape as a Swarm Kit Asset

One of Jeff's friends had found a swarm in her compost bin and told Jeff he could have the bees if he'd like to get them. He texted me yesterday but I was too busy. "No problem," he told me. "They are already building comb and have moved in. We can go tomorrow."

I had just heard Bobby Chaisson talk about doing cut-outs at my local bee meeting. So I packed the car this morning to cut the bees out of the compost bin - big, big rubber bands, two nuc boxes with totally empty frames, a spray bottle of syrup, in addition to my hive kit which has everything. I asked Jeff to bring a sharp knife and a flashlight.

Here's what we found when we arrived at a beautiful Garden Hills home in Atlanta:

You can see the comb that has been drawn through the clutching bees.

The bees were using the air holes in the compost bin as entrance into the compost bin. The holes just fit a bee.

I truly didn't know how we would get them. My first inclination was to spread a hive drape under the bees to help us see the ones that fell. Turns out that was the best thing we did. I started by spreading two hive drapes.

If you don't know/remember, I regularly use flour sacking towels as hive drapes when I inspect bee hives. I cover the exposed top of a box and only uncover the frame I am taking out of the box. The bees stay calmer. So here are Jeff's hands and the hive drapes inside the composter.

My guess is that this is a secondary swarm who left their hive with a virgin queen. Then we had cold weather and the queen couldn't fly nor could the scouts. They decided to remain in the composter and started drawing comb. It's not much different than top bars in Africa inside split barrels. I expect they've only been in the composter for a couple of weeks.

We cut the tiny teardrops of honeycomb one layer at a time and rubber-banded the pieces into empty frames. This piece has pollen in it and we saw bees flying into the composter with pollen on their legs:

Even after we had cut and rubber-banded all of the comb, there were still tons of bees left in to composter. The bees were indicating that the queen was still in the composter.

We tried using the bee brush and brushing the bees into a plant saucer, then dumping them into the cardboard nuc we had brought, but that only yielded a few bees each time. Then we figured out how to use the hive drapes. We added a few drapes so that we had about four stacked up. Then we brushed the bees off of the inside of the composter and onto the hive drapes.

Instead of picking up the drape, I folded the edges into the center, picked up the drape which was full of bees and put the cloth, bees and all, into the cardboard nuc. We did this until we ran out of both bees and hive drapes!

Finally the bees let us know the queen was in the hive box. We must have gotten her in one of the drape carries. 

 

We waited about 20 minutes until most of the bees were in the hive and then put the nuc in the back of my car.

After lunch, I installed them into a hive in my backyard. First I dumped the drape covered bees into the open space in the hive and then moved in the rubberbanded frames. 

This afternoon the bees were all in the hive and doing orientation flying.

Swarm Follow-up

I've gotten four swarms this year. The first was up high in a tree in Buckhead. The second was in an I-Beam down south of Atlanta past the airport in Forest Park. The third was in a holly bush in Buckhead. I also got a fourth swarm which just found and moved into an empty hive at Tom's house.

So to follow up:

When I captured the third swarm, I immediately housed it in an eight frame box at the community garden in my neighborhood.

The first swarm was given to me by the caller even though they were his own bees from his own beeyard. I housed them at my house in a nucleus hive for a little while to get them good and started, but I had promised that they would go to the community garden. So about two weeks after I got them, I moved them, still in the nucleus hive to the garden. The greenery on the front is to help the bees know that they need to orient to the new location.

Since they were in a nuc, I kept the moving strap around them. We've had vandals at the community garden who are fond of opening the top of the hive and leaving it like that - terrible for the bees. It's fun to keep bees in a nuc - like a tree. We also keep stones on the tops of those hives - not like we have wind, we don't, but rather to let the vandals know that removing the top is not suggested.

I checked on that hive yesterday as well as the holly bush hive. The nuc hive was boiling over with bees. The holly bush hive also was almost ready for a new box, so since I was there and had the box, I went ahead and added it.

Here's what the nuc hive looked like when I got there:

At this time of year, unless I have reason to worry about a hive, I mostly am opening the box to see if they have used up their storage space and need more room. The nuc hive was bursting at the seams. The minute I put the new box on, the beard disappeared and the bees were happy. 

The difference in the entry is remarkable.

So the last two stories are not happy fairy tales. After all the work to get the I-Beam swarm - two trips to Forest Park, a whole day's worth of time removing them and installing them at the Inn, I went to the inn to check on them and they had vanished. They did not like their quarters and had left. Discouraging. I will need to make a split to give the inn because currently they have no bees.

And the swarm that accepted my invitation and moved into Tom's empty hive appears queenless. When we first inspected that hive after Tom informed us about the swarm, there was a laying queen but the hive had also made queen cells. Sometimes swarms do that - move with the old queen and then fairly quickly get rid of her and make a new queen. Or she may have mated badly. So the next time I inspected there was no pollen coming into the hive and no sure signs of a laying queen. 

Tomorrow I'm taking them a frame of brood and eggs from one of my five backyard hives. I'll do that for a week until I know they have a good queen in the hive, or until they succeed in making one. I'm hoping I get over there tomorrow and find that they, in fact, have an obvious laying queen.

Atlanta is a big city. My hives in my backyard in Virginia Highlands are doing quite well - making lots of honey and thriving. Julia's backyard hives in the northern part of town are not making much honey - at least not as much as last year. It may simply be the difference in location. Also she has lots of construction and forest DEstruction going on behind her house. 

But Tom's hives are also located in her part of town and neither hive needed a new box at my last visit.