Backyard Apiary

My new neighbor stopped by to let me know there was a giant pine cone or swarm of bees up in a pine tree in his front yard. The cluster was about 30′ off the ground on the very end of a tiny branch. I don’t know why they chose that particular spot, but the hive would have come crashing down very soon because the branch was already sagging. He first noticed the bees almost a week ago, which means that despite the extreme winds, heavy rain and peanut m&m sized hail we had this past weekend, they decided to pick a completely exposed location to build.

I set up an A-frame ladder and fully extended the bucket on a telescoping pole. From the second rung from the top, I was close enough to reach the cluster. I positioned it right below with my neighbor spotting from a safe distance and then gave a quick thrust to scoop the bees in to the bucket. Some bees rained down and I was immediately stung on the wrist. Swarms are generally very calm and not defensive. As I lowered the bucket, I could see some fresh, white comb built in to the pine needles. I was no longer catching a swarm, but removing a hive. The cluster remaining in the tree was about half the size and the rest were poured in to a waiting medium box. I switched to the telescoping tree pruner and I propped the telescoped bucket in the ladder directly below (about 15′ below) the hive. At this point many of the bees were already in the box and fanning. Many slices later, it was a flimsy little twig of a branch,  the hive came down and missed the bucket. I didn’t think it would land in the bucket, but the chances were better than if I had not set up the bucket. It was already fairly dark and using a flashlight, I didn’t see the queen on the ground where the comb landed. I’m hopeful that I got her with the first scoop.

I caught my first swarm of the year this evening. They were waiting for me to get home from work on the dogwood tree about 15′ from the hives. I’m not sure which hive send out the swarm. My guess is that it was Hegemone because I haven’t been in the hive in over a week and I split the other hive, which didn’t have any capped queen cells on Friday,  in to three hives. Last year, Hegemone sent her second swarm to the same dogwood tree right next to the hives. I put last year’s in to the same top bar hive, but they absconded a few days later.

There are a few basic methods used for actively capturing a swarm.

1. You can cut the branch and drop the bees in to a box.
2. You can use a bee vacuum to suck the bees in to a container.
3. You can shake the bees in to a bucket or container and then pour them in to a hive.

I like the dogwood tree and the swarm was on one of the main branches. Cutting it was not an option and I don’t own a bee vacuum.  I held a restaurant busboy tray under the swarm and then tapped the branch down quickly against the tray and most of the bees fell in to it. I proceeded to pour the bees as quickly as possible in to the top bar hive before they all took to the air. The main goal was to get the queen in to the hive so the rest of the bees would migrate in to there instead of back on to the branch.

I’m hopeful that they’ll remain in the top bar hive this time around. Instead of being a new hive, it had a lot of bee traffic in it and there is even some small pieces of comb on some of the top bars. I also (probably a going to be a mistake) put a bunch of scrap wax in to the hive to give it that old hive smell.

About 2 weeks ago, I contacted the state bee inspector and scheduled for him to check out my hives today. I wanted to make sure that they are good an healthy before distributing them to other locations. It’s a lot easier to keep tabs on a hive when it’s 100′ from my back door. He went through all of the hives, even the one on top of the shed. He noticed a drone with deformed wings, which could be sign of varroa. I need to keep an eye on that hive to make sure they don’t become a problem. Aside from that, all of the hives are doing well. The split and 3 swarms all have lots of eggs and are building out comb nicely.

I moved a few empty supers with frames near Hegemone and Antheia, so that I could add more if it looked like they needed the space. They were still drawing out the frames I initially checkerboarded in my feeble attempt to prevent swarming. As I was placing the boxes, Hegemone started to send out a swarm. It’s a good sign of strength for the hive, but our potential honey harvest has dropped to an even lower amount. We’ll definitely get a few frames, but we won’t get the obscene amount my wife wanted.

I have the equipment to make a single complete hive and that is slated for Chloris. While catching the 4th swarm of the year, I was introduced to Marc, a fellow beekeeper in the development, who lost both of his package bees over winter. I called Marc and got him to bring one of his empty hives and help catch the swarm. His reward for helping was I let him have the bees. This was the easiest swarm for me to catch, despite it being about 20′ off the ground. I bought a 14′ telescoping tree pruner, a painter’s pole, a 5 gallon bucket and the least expensive hand roller that could attach to the pole. I drilled a hole in the center of the bucket, threaded the pole through and then used the hand roller as a nut to hold it all together.

Marc held the bucket under the swarm and I used the tree pruner to remove extra limbs and then finally the branch holding the swarm. Most of the swarm fell nicely in to the bucket and stayed there until I the bees in to Marc’s hive. The entire process took less than 10.

I left work early after Alissa called to let me know that “Hegemone is doing something wierd.” The hive was sending out a second swarm. If you ever have doubts about whether it is orientation flights or a swarm, look up. This swarm was nice to us and landed on a branch of the dogwood tree to the right of the main 3 hives and about 6′ off the ground. Alissa went to work with duct tape to modify a cardboard box so it could hold the 15″ top bars. Catching the swarm went well, but I did brush a bee stinger first in to my hand.

I drove the swarm over to the top bar hive I set up this past weekend at the Garner Grows Community Garden. I wasn’t sure when I would get bees in to that hive after having to effectively cancel my order of 2 packages from Busy Bee. They were delayed a week and didn’t inform me until I called this past Friday. This swarm spared me from having to cut and tie a hive in to the KTBH. I still need to make another ~10 top bars for the hive.

Luck is on my side this year with the bees. Instead of going in to work today, I took my son to the doctor and then planned on telecommuting the rest of the day. I was checking on the bees when I noticed a lot of bees flying in front of Hegemone. The bees started to expand their flights further in front and above the hive as more bees started to pour out of the hive. It got to the point where there were bees zig zagging in every direction I looked and they were flying throughout 1/4 of my yard.

Eventually they decided upon landing on a tree next to my shed. They chose a limb that turned out to be in the most difficult location. It was about 30′ above the ground and the tree didn’t have a trunk that I could lean a ladder against. A beekeeping neighbor, whose hive in his front yard is what gave me the idea of keeping bees, was home and available to help. I’m not sure if I would have caught this swarm if it were not for the telescoping tree pruner my neighbor borrowed from another neighbor. While standing on the shed (with a rotting roof), I tossed a rope tied to a brick over the limb. It took many tries before it made it all the way over so that the neighbor could grab the other end. I used the pruner to cut limbs blocking the ropes path, but couldn’t quite reach the swarm’s limb.

My beekeeping neighbor had another friend in the area who let him borrow a longer tree pruner that also had a saw blade on it, instead of just clippers. I repeatedly had to cut down a limb with the cluster on it. Each limb would fall a few feed, dislodge the bees and then they would reform the cluster on another branch. While cutting and shaking the swarm out of the tree, I noticed that there were a few dozen bees fanning at the entrance of the hive on top of the shed. I thought they were just a bit confused by the swarm lure I poured in that trap box because I didn’t see the queen or a mass of bees inside the box.

There were several small clusters of bees and when I was done cutting, one even formed on the saw blade at the end of the pole. The cluster was eventually low enough for me to hand down branches full of bees and brush those on the main trunk in to a bucket. I’ve read in many places about “pouring bees” from a bucket and it finally makes sense. You literally just dump them out of the bucket as if they were water and they flow out and splash a little bit (as some of them fly). There were a lot of bees in the box on the ground with more flying in, but there was a beard of bees on the front of the shed right below the entrance to the hive.

Since the bees were all going in to one of the two hives, I left them alone to figure out what they would do with the plan of combining the boxes closer to dusk. About an hour and a half later, I went outside to take some pictures and there were no bees at the entrance to the box on the ground. I opened it and it was completely empty. I looked up above the shed and there were a dozen bees flying around the entrance of that hive. It looks like they made the decision to move up to the penthouse. While the swarm was sending out scouts, I noticed many bees flying around the entrance to that hive. I wonder if they had already decided to move in to that box before my actions that encouraged them to get out of the tree. I guess I’ll never know, but I do know that opening and pouring swarm lure in a box is a lot more attractive to bees than the lure properly installed in another box.

I was given some alternative methods for getting difficult to reach swarms to the ground. This is actual advice, but I have never tried or seen how well these methods work.

Use a Hose. The stream of water should knock the cluster off the tree and the water would keep them from flying.

If outside city limits. That qualifier let me know that this would be an interesting method. Shoot the cluster with a shotgun. The lead shot shouldn’t kill too many of the bees, but the shockwave should knock the bees out of the tree. You’ll want to spread a tarp below the cluster before shooting. I don’t ever plan on trying this method, but it makes me want to purchase an Airzooka to see if that would successfully remove the bees from a tree. If it could do so at 30-40′, then it would be a lot better and faster than pruning a tree with a poleaxe.

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.

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.