Backyard Apiary

Around 9:30am, I noticed a lot of bees climbing up the front of Antheia’s boxes and flying around near the entrance in a tight circular pattern. At first I thought the bees were gathering for a swarm because I have never seen orientation or cleansing flights that early in the morning. It was about 65 F, so all of the hives had traffic at the entrances, but nothing like what Antheia was doing. By the time I put on shoes and got out to take a closer look they were gone. I wandered around the yard trying to spot a clumb of bees in the trees; a bird’s nest looks a lot like a swarm from 50-100′ away. I didn’t spot any and went back inside. About 30 minutes later I was out on the porch and saw the swarm high up in a tree.

I quickly gathered a ladder, clippers, a 3″ limb cutter and threw on my jacket. I scurried up the ladder only to realize that my shins were resting on the 3rd rung from the top and I was still not even close. I went and got the tall recycling bin from the kitchen in the hopes that I could tap the branch with it so the swarm would fall inside. The swarm was still out of reach. I didn’t have a taller ladder and I don’t have a big enough bin. Thankfully, I had rope a 100′ of thick nylon rope that I purchased almost 2 years ago. Now was definitely a worthwhile occasion to open it from its packaging. Anyone who does not have some rope in their house, needs to race out and buy some today. You never know when you’ll need it!

I used the rope to pull the branch within reach and tied it to the top of the ladder. A big warning goes along with this. You want all of the tension on the rope to be pulling the ladder up. Otherwise, you risk making the ladder unstable and you’ll probably fall and then get hit with a ladder. You also need to untie the rope before getting off the ladder. The weight of you and the ladder is holding down the branch, but if you get off the ladder might not weigh enough.

With the branch held within arms reach, I removed as much of the branch as possible to make it easy to carry one handed down a ladder. Success! I managed to clip the branch and get down the ladder and rest the branch over the boxes I had waiting. The bottom box has a screen and spacer wood attached to the bottom. I picked up the boxes and moved it on to my porch to figure out what to do next. I tapped the branch down and the bees fell in to the two, stacked medium boxes. This is a step that I will avoid in the future because this was not the final resting place for the bees. I’ll set up a place for the swarm before tapping the bees in to boxes.

I quickly set up another hive in the yard, about 50′ away from the other hives, and then moved everything over there for the final transfer. I managed to get all of the bees in to their new home by moving the frames in the swarm catch box, a bee brush for stragglers and flipping and shaking the boxes. I made a quart of 1:1 syrup for the bees as a house warming gift.

The new hive will be called, Demeter. This has been an exciting day in my beekeeping adventures and I’ve gained a lot of valuable experience. To those who are not in to beekeeping, a swarm is worth about $75. In essence, I prevented myself from losing that bee wealth, which makes up for the reduced honey harvest that I’ll get from Antheia this year.