Backyard Apiary

Laziness paid off for me today. After catching the first swarm, I left the ladder and other tools right where I caught the swarm. A few hours later, I went back to cleanup and noticed a second swarm. I moved the ladder over 5 feet and got everything ready to capture the new swarm.

The first swarm was high up in a tree with sparse branches, but the second was much lower in a denser tree. I had to clear away lots of little branches to get close enough to the swarm. The bees were huddled on a relatively thick branch that needed the 3″ limb cutter instead of the hand clipper. This really needed a third hand, so I had to get creative. I used one hand with the other limb cutter arm against the ladder. My other hand was holding the limb. The plan was to cut the limb and carry it down the ladder like last time. Things do not always go according to plan. The limb was jostled when it was cut about half way through. This caused bees to rain down on me. Bees in a reproductive swarm are very docile. Despite having hundreds of them land on me, I did not get stung and none of them were aggressively flying at my veil.

I shifted the plan a bit. I have a hive body with a screened bottom that I use for holding frames during hive inspections. The screen is there to prevent bees from having access to the ground and then finding their way under my shoe. It also makes it easy to pour any stragglers back in to their hive. I use this box to literally catch the swarm. Instead of holding the limb, I held the box under the bees and continued to cut the limb. This caught any bees that fell from the limb being jostled while cutting and caught the limb and bees when it fell.

Learning from mistakes I made during the first swarm, I had set up a hive for them right below where the swarm was resting in the tree. I was not expecting to have 5 hives so soon and was low on equipment. I had to use an empty box in place of cement blocks as the base. The hive had an inner cover, but no outer cover. I used a hive body on its side to block light entering the hole in the inner cover. I later replaced that with a piece of wood panel. This hive is named Melissa, which is greek for “honey bee”.

As the sun was setting, I scrambled to assemble a few frames with wax foundation. I prefer foundationless, but having some reference frames help the bees draw out straight foundationless comb. I put the new frames in to the hive and removed the tree limb that they were still huddling around. I shook the bees off the limb and leaned it against the entrance so the bees could climb up in to the hive. I noticed a small piece of drawn wax about the size of a quarter attached to the limb. It’s a good thing I didn’t wait until morning, otherwise I would have been dealing with more burr comb than I’d want. Now they can get back to building on the provided frames.