First Swarm Hived, No Absconding . . .No Absconding!!!

[ccwonka]

Got home from a long day yesterday, wanted nothing more than to plop down and have a drink on the couch and turn my brain off with the TV.  Took my pre-dinner walk through the backyard and the beeyard, and low and behold, my bait hive was a-buzzing with bees going in and out!  As I thought about coming out that night and sealing it up and moving them to a hive, I noticed the swarm in the tree about 4 branches away.

My new method for catching a swarm; 
1.  deep hive body, two frames out.
2.  two sawhorses to hold the body, an inner cover and an outer cover on either side to catch errant falling bees.
3.  a good ratcheting limb cutter.
4.  precise aim with the falling branch.
5.  And here's the new bit - An old car carrier lid under the hive body to increase the "fallout area" to 4'x5'.

Basically I placed the car carrier lid on the sawhorses upsidedown, put the hive body in the middle of it in my predicted branch fall area, then cut them loose.  about 50% went into the hive, but all the "fallout" (minus maybe all of 25-50 bees) landed in the car carrier.  By nightfall (1.5 hrs) they had virtually all made their way into the hive body  :-D.

Got out and moved the hive early this morning before any flying to the beeyard.  Now lets hope they stay.

PS - I think the bees going in and out of the bait hive were from the swarm, I'll check later today.  I'm betting, based on the activity there, that they would have made it their home even if I hadn't snagged them!

[Scadsobees]

I'm thinking that a swarm took up residence in your bait hive, and a different one was in the tree :)!  That would be twice as cool!

[AllenF]

I have had bees from swarms fly in and out of my bait hives in the past, but there was never more than a couple dozen in there at one time.   That is about the time I hive the swarm in a new hive, not wanting to loose the swarm if they found something better.   How many bees did you have in your bait box before you dumped the swarm in there?

[Scadsobees]

Maybe I read it wrong, but I was assuming that the deep hive body, two frames out was a different box from the bait hive....

[ccwonka]

Yeah, the box I put them in was definitely not the bait hive.

Now they seem to be hanging on the outside of the hive I put them in in the beeyard though, so I wonder if the queen is not "in" the hive but hanging on the outside . . . I'm getting ready to go open up what is there and see what's going on inside . . . it would seem silly to shake them off the outside of a box into another box, but I guess we'll see what I find when I get there!!!  LOL.