Picked up a few hives

[thegolfpsycho]

I've been helping a fellow with his bees, and I will say, he has gained a lot of experience in a short time.  His colony started out with a drone layer.  By the time he contacted me, his colony was seriously dwindling, the queen was scrawny, and not a single capped cell of worker bees.  I brought him a couple frames of capped brood, and he picked up a new queen.  It was already July. the colony was very small, so I also gave him some drawn comb and he threw on the feed bag.  We talked a couple more times, and I told him to just pour on the sugar, which he did.  Well... they got another deep drawn out, filled it with syrup, and sailed through winter in fine shape. 

This spring, he faced something completely new to him.  No longer did he have the calm little 4 frames of bees.  He had a 2 deep colony, bursting at the seams, and a bit defensive.  He was a little intimidated, which is understandable, so never got too deep into them before they drove him away.  Anyway, he called the other day when they swarmed, so I showed him how to catch a swarm, and moved them into his back yard with his original colony.  Unfortunately, the original colony cast another swarm yesterday.  This one was much larger than the first.  He captured them without incident. He asked if I wanted the second swarm because he felt 2 was his limit.  (his neighbors weren't happy having 25,000 bees swirling around)  I have a weak colony that could use the help, so I said sure.  Anyway, this morning, he asked if I would mind just taking all three colonys, because of their baby that would begin walking soon, and the miffed neighbors.  I tried to talk him out of it, told him we could recombine all three back to one, or two, whatever he wanted.  His mind was made up to get rid of them.  So I'll be moving them to the outyard next week.  I feel badly.  I know he was reading some books about bees, and I brought him to the outyard, lit the smoker and told him to go crazy digging through my big production hives last summer.  We've talked numerous times about inspections, about conditions in the hive indicating that action should be taken.  It's a done deal now, but I hate to see someone give up their bees

[Mici]

second swarm was larger than first..now that doesn't happen very often does it?

[thegolfpsycho]

It's the first time I've ever seen it happen that way.  I've seen a couple swarms combine into monsters up in almond country, but afterswarms are, at least in my experience, usually softball size. This one is a full deep of bees.

[Brian D. Bray]

He must have had a lot of brood hatch between the 1st and 2nd swarms.  Sometimes the staggered laying of the brood and queen cells will result in a larger second swarm--it happens but  not often.