BEE-autiful II...and III!!!

Two weeks ago we were afraid we wouldn't get any bees this year.  If you want to buy bees, you need to order them in February to insure delivery, and we here it was April when we were getting set up.  But now...we are on our third hive, all caught from swarming bees.

You might remember Jim, our beekeeping neighbor, from whom we acquired our first swarm.  His bees swarmed again, he invited us to take them, and on Monday, we captured a swarm even bigger than our first one.

Here you see a video neighbor Jim took of me shaking the swarm into our box.  The trick is to get the bees as close to the box as possible, so they fall a short distance, and as many of them land in or on the box as possible.  A lot of them landed near the box and later crawled in.  A number of them were still on the branch, and later flew in to join the rest of the swarm.  Once most of them were in the box, we eased the cover over the top.  Once again, we returned shortly after dark to close the entrance, strap all the pieces of the hive together, and take it back to our house.


Yesterday (Wednesday) I was planning to get some blueberry plants in the ground before the rain came.  I had the first row laid out when a call came from Ruth about a swarm.  It turns out that there was a large swarm right outside her daughter-in-law's classroom at Brehm school.  Now it turns out that we had bought extra hives the day we got our second swarm, so we had a place to put this new bunch.  But I had only put a coat of primer on the new hives, and hadn't yet put a coat of paint on them, and I hadn't yet assembled the frames that go inside the hive to support the comb.  Oh, well.

I rushed to the woodshop and quickly glued and nailed the ten frames required to fill the hive.  I inserted the foundation into each frame, plastic sheets with a honeycomb shape imprinted on them upon which the bees can build new comb.  I threw everything in the car and drove hell-for leather to Chrissy's school.

She had the area around the swarm roped off to keep the kids away.  She helped me bring in the hive and watched as I set it up.  The swarm was so close to the ground that I couldn't get right under it.  (Didi I mention this was my first time trying to catch a swarm by myself?)  I placed the box as best I could, Chrissy gathered such students as were interested in seeing this, and once I had an audience, I shook the branch to drop the bees. 

Maybe a third of the swarm fell, the rest still hanging tightly to the tree.  I thought they had started going in, but no, the ones in and on the hive soon climbed back up to join the swarm.  It eventually became clear that they were not going to go easily into a new, freshly painted hive.  Eventually I got more serious about getting them in, slowly edging the box under the swarm, shaking them again to drop them.  This was showing signs of progress, but there were still lot on the tree, and the main branch didn't have enough give to shake them loose.   I finally put on my beekeeper's gloves, reached in and and started scooping the bees onto the hive.  Apparently I reached critical mass, and the little buzzers finally accepted the hive as their new home.

Again, we left the hive till the evening, going in after supper to put a strap around it, close the entrance, and take it home.  By this time the rain had come, which got us wet, but also kept the bees from venturing out. 

Once home, we still had to prepare a spot for the hive, so there I was, running a shovel though the wet dirt, in the rain, to level a place to put the concrete blocks upon which to set the hive.  It will do for a temporary perch until we can get something a little more permanent.

So there you have it.  Two hives in three days.  We've got one more hive available, and I expect to fill that before very long.  We'll keep you posted.