Well, a "day late and a dollar short". :( Came home today at 2PM to meet a guy giving me an estimate on a privacy fence. I happen to be looking my my hives when all of a sudden... they came pouring out of one of my single deeps made from a split last year. And I was just about to put another deep on yesterday!!!! ARGH!!!!!
It looked lilke the box was on fire... all my precious little ladies pouring out and doing the tornado dance. Well they decided to congregate in my neighbors pine tree, about 50 feet off the ground. So unless the scouts decide on one of my bait hives, my babies are gone forever!
So today when I get home...I'm going to slap another box on my other single deep... hope I'm not too late!
...DOUG
KD4MOJ
Can you shrink the tree with a chain saw :-D
Sorry you lost them and having to watch had to be worse
with some luck they will find you Swarm box
maybe give the SBox a little lemon grass oil
If you have all ready maybe a little extra
Good luck
Tommyt
Sorry you lost that one. Let us know if it adopted one of your trap.
You know adding a box a day or even a week before a hive swarms won't cut the impulse. At that point it is too late in time. So don't AARGGH over that one 'should've'.
Thanks Tommy.
I figured being a single deep with 1 super on top... they were going to swarm. Today when I got home... I added a second deep on my other 1 deep setup... hopefully preventing that one from swarming.
I did an inspection after I added the 2nd box and the queen looked skinny. No brood, all nectar where there should have been brood (frames 4-6). I inspected it about a month ago and the pattern looked very good on the frames. So... this colony might have swarmed already and I didn't notice... queenie just looks too skinny and maybe a virgin. Wish I had my camera but I left it at work today! ARGH!!!
Oh well, pretty active day... on to the bee club meeting tonight.
...DOUG
KD4MOJ
Quote from: organicfarmer on March 16, 2011, 07:03:44 PM
Sorry you lost that one. Let us know if it adopted one of your trap.
You know adding a box a day or even a week before a hive swarms won't cut the impulse. At that point it is too late in time. So don't AARGGH over that one 'should've'.
I still have to "ARGH!" :-D Just pee'd (hhmm censor at work) me off is all. Of all places to land, that high up, and it's going to be 41° tonight. I did add another box (previous post) hoping to prevent that last single deep from obsconding, but on inspection, I think that one already swarmed as well... too few bees and her majesty looked like Kirstie Alley on meth. :-D darn Skinny!
Oh well... 3 baits in the yard... we'll see what happens next. I'll keep you guys & gals posted.
...DOUG
KD4MOJ
I hate losing a swaem but it is a cool sight watching them all come out!
Hope they take up residence in a bait hive.
The coolest sight is to see them swarm off your neighbor's hive of course. Not that anyone would wish that on another beekeeper, would you? :evil:
Even more awsome, the neighbor's swarm lands into your trap.
Seen few swarms in action (one took off in front of me just as i was setting up to do a removal) and many of them tend to land in unreachable places though.
So we can keep on dreaming...
Couple of things maybe i could learn from you
was the one box Full?
How long if it was?
I have 5 hives all new (swarms/splits)
4 are in Deep box's one in a Med not one is fully Drawn out
However they have been working hard to Draw.
Do you think I should get down there and add a Box of foundation
Is this what happened to you ??
Thanks
Tommyt
BTW
anyway to get a ladder + pole, Box/Bucket and hit the swarm see if they fall in ??
Tommy, it sounds like your hives may be pollen bound. Open them and move the pollen frames outward on both sides. See if they don't start drawing almost immediately.
Thanks Iddee
I'll do it tomorrow
Tommyt
Quote from: phil c on March 16, 2011, 07:13:58 PM
I hate losing a swaem but it is a cool sight watching them all come out!
Hope they take up residence in a bait hive.
Indeed it was a sight... but the sound was even better... by the way it sounded, you would have thought there were 500,000 bees in the air!
I'll check the traps tomorrow and see if they "took the bait".
...DOUG
KD4MOJ
Truly a bitter/sweet experience. I am cultivating an outyard which is a 160 acre tree farm, as we where driving out this morning it dawned on me that I would have to get extremely blessed to find a swarm in there. :-P
Any Luck ??
Tommyt
TommyT:
Not yet. Went by the house at lunch and are still up in the tree, pretty much the same spot. Looked through the binocs and it's a pretty good size. I have one swarm trap (which caught a swarm last year) and two bait nucs out. Hopefully the bees will be enticed by them!
...DOUG
KD4MOJ
Well... bad news. Sometime between 12:30 today and 4:30 when I got home they took of to never... never land. All three baits were empty. Sometimes you win.... and some times you loose! :'(
...DOUG
KD4MOJ
P.S. Just as well... that box was kinda cranky anyway.