But one hive was acting a little weird earlier this week. On Sunday when my husband and I were walking back to the Morton building we noticed that at 10:00 in the morning there was an awful lot of activity around the buckfast hive (I only have one buckfast; all the others are Italians All stars). It looked like they were doing orientation flights. But that is usually done in mid to late afternoon. "But," I thought, "Maybe buckfasts do things differently." Alas, it is not so. They were "practicing". Practicing for the great move. You see, when bees feel that they do not have enough room to expand they swarm. The old queen takes a bunch of the bees and flies away to find a new home. That's how bee colonies reproduce. A very natural and effective way of expanding. Great for the bees. Not so great for the beekeeper. Less bees = less honey.
Yesterday (Wednesday) I went to the building again and noticed some bearding on the hive. I thought, "Odd... but maybe 84 degrees is hot for the hive. I will have to check their screen bottom board and make sure it is open." But I didn't get a chance. By the time I got to the building and got the tractor running (less than 5 minutes!) a great cloud of bees were dancing and flying and.... well, you guessed it..... swarming! It was amazing to watch. Bees everywhere. They reminded me of the flock of blackbirds migrating in the fall. They all flew together. Up and down; here and there. Flying to this tree and then to that tree. All I could do was watch and pray, "Please bees, land in a low branch." Fifteen minutes went by and then I saw it. They were congregating on a relatively (12 foot high) low branch of a walnut tree about 15 feet away from the hive they had recently departed. "Yeah!" I said. And quickly went to get my bee equipment: hive, frames, bee suit and limb cutter.
I parked the tractor right under the swarm. Lifted the bucket up and realized that although they were assessable, I would need another helper. I could climb the loader and snip the branch, but how then would I get back down? The branch and all the bees would probably weigh 25 pounds. I'm strong, but not that strong... especially when the 25 pounds could fly away. I would have to wait until my husband came home (One and a half hours later). ("Oh please, don't fly away!")
When he got home he quickly came to my aid. He re-leveled my spot for the prospective new hive and dressed up in his bee gear. I lifted him up to the branch in the loader and then climbed into the loader myself. He held the branch while I cut it. Then I gingerly climbed back into the tractor, gently lowered the bucket while rotating it so that I wouldn't dump my precious cargo(my husband!) and slowly drove the tractor to the new hive location (about 100 feet west and up the hill). We had previously put a deep full of half drawn out comb and an empty deep with frames ready to go in at the location. My husband simply bonked the branch on the side of the deep and the majority of the bees "fell" into the hive. Some flew around...not too happy we disturbed them. But none were aggressive. They had just eaten. They had nothing to protect yet. No babies, no food stores. Just them. So they were very gentle. I've even heard that many people capture swarms without protective gear. I could believe that. I'm just not quite ready for that experience. The suit helps me. Keeps me calm.
We closed up the hive, put a couple of white cedar branches in front of the hive entrance so they would reorient to the new location and walked away. A successful capture.
I haven't checked on the new hive yet. I sure hope they are happy and have stayed put. I will need to go through the old hive and see if I need to break up the brood so that the hive will not swarm again. I'm happy we got this one. But prevention of swarms is a much better practice.... unless you like climbing trees.
Today's Journey Joy: capturing bee swarms
