My wife asked me if I was going to move the hive of bees that is next to my barn door.
I went out and checked on a stack of empty Supers that I had added a super of frames, a top entrance and a lid to make a possible swarm trap out of.
The bees were really checking it out. I worked out side waiting to see if they were ready to move in. I could tell they really love liked it due to the way they were acting.
It took about a half our for them to swarm over the top of the trees and another 10 minutes to figure out where the new hive was. Then it took another 15 to 20 minutes for them to all land and another 20 to 30 minutes to file into the new hive.
It was a lot of fun watching them.
Notice I put a bottle of lemon grass oil on top of the hive. I did that to coax them into this hive instead of another trap that also had a lot of activity. Turns out the other trap already had a swarm move into it today also.
Enjoy.
Jim
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcW0geAUi0Y
Free Bees! :happy:
Great looking swarm.
Great video Jim :-)
Makes me wish the FL Keys swarms were bigger LOL....3 catches this year.... one was small queen-less and got combined with another weaker hive....one was a small queen right one that was given a frame of brood and eggs and is doing well but still small....and then one decent sized one (barely fit in a 5 frame NUC) that has boomed and is filling a 10 frame now and will need a second box next week ;-)
Thanks.
I will let them settle in for a few days to get comb built and larvae and then I will move them into the apiary.
I also have to move the other swarm trap into the apiary, probably tonight. I do not have to take them apart.
I also need to get traps reset.
Jim
Good grief... That's probably the equivalent of about a 10 pound package. It will be a while before bees are swarming here. We just got 6 inches of snow yesterday.
Thank goodness those were empty mediums. You would have had a fight on your hands. :oops: : :tongue:
John
John/Eric,
They turned down 3 other nuc size swarm traps when they selected this one. Good thing I set this one up to see if it would work.
Jim
Very nice. I love large prime swarms.
Hey Jim.
I was. At my shop yesterday and looked at my sack of stored nucs to get ready for splitting and low and behold I had at three stack with a mounted bottom board on it. A swarm must have moved in during the week. Will no. 2 down now only 28 more to be back were I was at the start of winter.
Yah how
John
Good for you. How big was the swarm.
I too have more than doubled my apiary this month. I just hope it keeps up.
Jim
Just an update on the large swarm.
I opened up the box and they had built 8 empty frames, I had added a wood guide strip and coated the edges with wax, they built wanly comb on an old plastics frame and left the other plastic elk frame on touched. After pulling the 2 plasticicell frames I could see they had a lot of comb below. I picked up the whole box and turned it sideways. This allowed me to cut all of the comb and place it into medium frames. My wife helped me through the whole ordeal. Up until now she has never put her hands in a hive. She was holding frames full of bees then she was holding comb with bees and then she was cutting the wax from the bottom of the frames. All this in one afternoon. A real trooper. We built the hive on top of a wagon so that we can move it to the new site. We filled the bottom box with the already filled frames and the second box is filled with all of the cut out comb. I added a box of drawn comb above that so now it is a 3 medium box. The box with frames had 6 frames of brood and 2 frames of honey. The rest of the comb was all wet and capped brood. Pretty good for a 2 week old hive.
Jim
Here are some pictures:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwVXhqKtgUEdcmhpRmx6U2ZRS2s
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwVXhqKtgUEdZTFmc0JEM210YXc
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwVXhqKtgUEdN1pwWUVoTE8xWGc
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwVXhqKtgUEdeTFCTzhfTTF3Q2M
Nice. I missed two swarms today. Only saw them as they were flying away. Could not stop them. Still 28 short of what I went into fall with last year. But it is still early here.
John
Nice pics and it sounds like you had good help(gonna have to give her a raise :wink:) It always amazes me how fast a good swarm will draw comb and be up and running.
p.s. Swarm season has officially began in southern IN. My aunt called tonight and said there was a swarm on the back of her Adirondack chair. It was about the size of a football and now has a new home. :grin:
Thanks CAO.
I just built my wife a new house at the farm. I think that will do for a while. :wink:
Congrats on the swarm.
Jim