Second swarm of the season

Last evening, after I put my bee suit on and proceeded to jump on the JD 700 to mow around the beehives, I looked up and...well, you guessed it. Another swarm. From the ground it looked massive. Bigger than any swarm I had ever seen. It apparently came from one of my swarm- happy hives. The hive in question swarmed over four times last year. (Which means I need to get in there and make a split!).

After zipping back to the house I asked my wonderful husband to come and help. The swarm was big and the tractor would be needed. (I wonder why they don't land on lower branches.) He went out to the Morton building to get the tractor, another deep and frames and his medium gloves. I got his suit, veil, loppers, and branches.

When I got to the location where we were going to put this new swarm I found out that the deep that we had staged earlier was missing a frame and so I hiked back to the house and found a frame. We got everything ready and then drove the tractor to the swarm.

The swarm was about 15-20 feet high in a tree a little down the hill from the likely hive. I lifted my husband up in the loader. The picture looks like he is standing on the ground. In fact, he is in the bucket of the loader raised about 12 feet high. The plan was to cut the branch and bring the branch and swarm intact to the new hive via the slow moving tractor. It turned out that I climbed the into the loader with my swarm catching honey. He held the branch while I attempted to cut it. Unfortunately, the loppers were pretty dull and when I finally cut through the branch the cut jerked the branch and a bunch of bees fell into the loader bucket.

I carefully climbed down the loader (with bees flying erverywhere and landing on me) trying not to dislodge any more bees. But the branch that was cut had many little branches and I'm afraid that my body hit the swarm a couple of times. That didn't help matters.

Eventually we got to the new hive box and gave them a quick little tap into the deep. They fell into the hive nicely but then decided that the walls of the deep were where they wanted to hang out. Usually the bees move quickly into the frames. Where was the queen? I never did find her. Hopefully she is in there.

We, after awhile, gently filled the top deep with frames (some drawn out and some not). Put the telescoping cover on, the lid, and some heavy rocks. As usual, we put some branches in front of the hive to help them reorient to the new location. In this case the new location was only about 25 feet west and uphill from the old.

I briefly checked on them today. Just to see if there was some activity. And there was. That's a good sign. Looks like we have a new hive. That's ten now. I can hardly wait to taste the honey.

Today's Journey Joy: Catching swarms