CafeMistblick

By CafeMistblick

Swarm Rescue

At long last the sun came out and it got warm. The bees somewhat miffed at having their honey stolen took the opportunity to go on holiday.

Within an hour two swarms set off in various directions. Luckily I had gone outside as I needed to talk to someone on the mobile phone (reception poor to non existant in house) and saw the events.

Had to spring in to action in an attempt to capture them back. Lots of strange antics on my behalf and spent hours on it.

One swarm went in to the forest but luckily right next to the property and only at about 2 meters height. With the help of a bit of laddering/scaffolding was quickly able to get them in to a "nuc" box, a small 5 frame box used to start off a colony but not ideal for capturing swarms. However it worked.

The second swarm stayed in the garden, ending up in a spruce at about three meters. Again managed to adapt car trailer to get some height and used one of the big secondhand boxes I got a few weeks ago. Cut off the branch and most of the swarm landed in the box but then suddenly the whole box fell of the trailer on to the ground. managed to entice them in and thought all was Ok until an hour later Angie pointed out they had swarmed again, probably because they couldn't find the queen.

Looked in the now deserted box and indeed saw the queen had fallen in to an empty section of the box, closed off from the rest. Luckily the new swarm settled on a tree at about 150cm so was able to repeat the process and got them settled down.

Lot of hectic on my behalf, very uncoordinated. However at the end of the day all was well. It all happened so fast and it is at first a frightening event with tens of thousands of bees flying around. But because of the hectic I didn't have time to don any protective gear and had only one single sting on my hand when I accidentally touched a bee in the box. Read later that swarming bees are almost always very peaceful and very seldom a threat.

With the swarm last week, I now have 8 boxes in operation and if all goes well 8 colonies! Have to see if the queenless boxes manage to produce new queens.

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