As I was taking a morning stroll around the gardens to monitor the "weed factor" I walked over to the bee yard. The yard is now ten hives strong. Only one hive is a little week coming out of the winter. I looked up and down the trees bordering the yard. Way up high, about 30 feet or so, I noticed the typical "clump" of brown dangling bees from a box elder tree high up on some branches. There was no way the tractor could reach these bees. So time for "Plan B".
I read on the Beesource Forum that sometimes one can lure bees from their temporary branch by either resting a nuc box (a wooden box with 5 frames in my case), or just a frame of drawn out comb, close to their current swarm location. The goal is that the bees will be persuaded to leave their little branch and cluster on the provided frame. The frame would be slowly brought to the ground and then placed in a box. Great idea. So I grabbed my surveyors lime green line and some kind of blue metal bracket and attempted to throw the line above the branch where the bees were located. Unfortunately, I am no swinging mama and the weight went over an adjacent branch quite far from the one which was aimed. Oops. Worse, was the fact that the "weight" got caught up in the tree. Boy, I hope that blue bracket isn't important. It will be sometime before we will be able to get it down.
So then, I cut the line, found a roundish shaped rock (in hopes that "round" wouldn't get caught in branches... just in case my aim wasn't any better). After a couple of pathetic attempts I finally did get the line over the branch that the swarm was resting on. The little rock was removed and then I smothered some old honey on a frame of drawn out comb and hoisted it up the tree. That's what you see in the picture: A swarm to the right and my frame in the left.
I've never attempted a swarm collection in this fashion. I'll have to report again on whether it was successful. In the meantime I set up a nuc with lemongrass oil, drawn out frames, and a little honey near the garage. Maybe the bee scouts (no, not boy scouts) will find it and fly the group to it.
Today's Journey Joy: attempting new swarm collections
