keep missing swarms!

Started by gardeningfireman, May 11, 2012, 06:35:35 PM

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gardeningfireman

May 11, 2012, 06:35:35 PM
Out of the last five or six swarm calls, I only got one! All the rest left before I got there or as I was getting the box out of my van. It stinks; all this running around, chasing the willow-wisp! Is this a common problem, or am I just having bad luck?

CVBees

#1
May 11, 2012, 06:43:35 PM
At least your getting the calls.  I swear because I live in the middle of monoculture farm country there are no feral bees.  I know that can't be true but neither myself or a fellow beekeeper one town over has received any calls this year.  Keeping our fingers crossed 80)  and better luck of you!!
Bees are the key to life as we know it.

Kathyp

#2
May 11, 2012, 06:51:10 PM
not my experience, but one of the reasons i try not to go to far after them.

CV, most years i get tons of calls.  last year i got 0 that were actually honey bees.  this year..just a couple. 
The people the people are the rightful masters of both congresses and courts not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert it.

Abraham  Lincoln
Speech in Kansas, December 1859

wadehump

#3
May 11, 2012, 06:51:58 PM
just bad luck i have caught 5 and 1 of them was in cluster for 3 days before i got a call and drove 30 min. to get them just before dark

duck

#4
May 11, 2012, 09:33:35 PM
I had swarms sit for days through february, march and most of april.  then halfway through april and they are gone before I get there.. if its later in the day, Id be wary or at least have contact with the person who called you.  This happened to me for about a week and a half.  Then they started to sit for a while again.  Im back to them staying overnight right now.  There is something to this, because its not just one swarm a day, Im talkin 5-6 in a given area.  they were in a pattern and changed. now they changed to a different pattern.  im just thankful for this rainy weather and a couple days off! lol  bad thing is, I may have to restart a couple of trap outs because of weather.

BlueBee

#5
May 11, 2012, 10:29:26 PM
Knock on wood, 14 swarms and counting so far this spring.  I'm not much better at predicting a swarm's behavior than I am at predicting Apple's Stock price (I predict down :shock:).  However my casual guess is if a swarm gets too hot in given location (too much sun), they seem to fly off and roost in a new location.  Maybe it's more of a factor with really big swarms, but I really don't know.

One I caught today the homeowner said had been in the same spot for 3 days.  She had called another beek out to remove them and they shook the swarm into a bucket but apparently didn't make sure they got the queen!  They also got stung on the ankles.  And here I thought I was the amateur around here :-D

Anyways, the same mass of bees re-formed in the tree and I hived them today.  And yes, I made SURE I had the queen.  (Caught her in the queen catcher).  What a bummer for my fellow beek to catch a bunch of bees with no queen :(

These homeowners didn't have a clue who to call about bees.  I believe they called 911 and then looked in the phone book and called a big commercial beek in my area.  The commercial guys don't have time to fool with swarms, so he passed the swarm message onto the fellow that tried before I arrived.  I guess the moral of the story is, if you've got any commercial beeks in your area, you might give them your name and number for swarm removal when they get calls. 

hardwood

#6
May 11, 2012, 10:49:43 PM
Every swarm call I get stays put until I get there, always has a mated queen, builds to 4 deeps in the first season and makes me 300 lbs of honey. :-D

Scott
"In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag...We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language...And we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."

Theodore Roosevelt 1907

D Semple

#7
May 12, 2012, 12:46:51 AM
Your pressing and they can sense you coming for them, ya got to sneek up on them nonchalants to keep them off guards.

Do like schawee does, put on bermuda shorts and some of them thar plastic garden shoes, don't show up till noon, stop for chinese and a shake, and then sit down in the grass with your bees in an open cardboard box while you search for the queen with big old glasses on the end of your nose.

if all else fails change your socks

gardeningfireman

#8
May 15, 2012, 10:53:14 PM
Things are getting better. Got the last couple I went on, and got several in my swarm traps.

hankdog1

#9
May 16, 2012, 12:04:47 AM
Quote from: hardwood on May 11, 2012, 10:49:43 PM
Every swarm call I get stays put until I get there, always has a mated queen, builds to 4 deeps in the first season and makes me 300 lbs of honey. :-D

Scott


Scott that's nothing mine not only stays put till I get that but swarms straight into the box with my special bee whistle builds up to 5 deeps and 300 lbs of honey is a bad swarm.  Oooh and all of mine are unmated queens they are saving themselves for the super drones in my beeyard.  If you guys believe all of that I have some ocean fount property in West Virginia that's for sale too.   :jawdrop:
Take me to the land of milk and honey!!!
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