To Catch A Swarm

About a year or so ago my cat had fleas. :( I treated the cat and called the council's Pest Control to spray the house - it's a waste of time trying to deal with them yourself, and not that pricey to just pay someone who knows what they're doing. Anyway we got talking about bees and they asked if I'd be interested in collecting swarms of honey bees if they had any reported. I said I would and gave them my number.

Yesterday I got a call about a honey bee swarm over in Bilton. It was in a hedge in an elderly chaps garden,  and would I like to collect them? Yes I would. would I charge for it? Nope, afterall assuming I didn't mess up I was going to come away with a little colony of bees. Saves them a job, saves the old chap some money, saves the bees lives, avoids a few millilitres of pesticides being used and gets me some bees. Everyone's a winner :) I got my stuff together, rang the chap, the bees had been there for 8 days so far.. Aided by Satnav I went to see the bees.

I've never actually collected a swarm before but I've read a lot about it and watched a lot of youtube videos on the subject so had a pretty good idea how to go about it. Basically you put a box above the cluster of bees and smoke them up into then put them in your hive, or you put the box or a sheet below and cut whatever branch they're on and pop them into your hive.
 

Looks simple enough

They were clustered on a fence about a foot above the ground so I decided to put the box above the bees and smoke them up into it. Unfortunately these bees didn't know as much about swarm catching as I thought I did and instead of going up into the box they ran down to the bottom of the fence.

Lying down and using my phone's built in torch (what will they think of next?) I had a look under the fence. I was slightly puzzled because there suddenly seemed to be a lot less bees. Looking at the small cluster I found they'ed been making comb. There was about three inches of pure white comb with stored nectar. I cut this out then resumed my examination of the shrinking bee colony. There was a few inches gap between the fence and the back of the neighbour's shed. They were in that gap. I realised that the bees I'd seen first, in the photo above, were only part of the cluster so the good news was more bees. Not being able to reach them was a little inconvenient though. Eventually I came up with a plan. I'd like to say a cunning plan but it was probably an obvious one really.

Putting the nucleus with five drawn frames vertically against the fence, propped up with stones from the garden wall and topped with the roof I aimed a few puffs of smoke behind the fence.

Blowing smoke behind the fence

I got quite a roar from the swarm clustered back there. Yup more bees than I'd thought. I gave them a lot more smoke. I wanted to drive them forward through the gaps in the fence and into the nuc. They were starting to come through the gaps. Puffing smoke through the fence all around the nuc there was nowhere else for them to go -plus there was the pull of the drawn comb, some honey in it and the lemongrass oil.

"We're in this box! Come on!"

Eventually I was able to see workers  at the edge of the nuc nosanoving. Nosawhating now? Oh sorry. Bees have a scent gland called a Nosanov Gland at the tip of the abdomen. It makes a scent they use to let other bees know where the colony is. You can see there's an upside down bee in the picture above with her abdomen at a funny angle and her wings a blurr as she wafts scent. When I couldn't see any more bees looking down the gaps in the fence I lifted the nuc roof and found a mass of bees in it at the end that'd been towards the fence. Setting that down I pulled back the nuc and stood it upright. There were more bees in there and on the frames tops nearest the roof cluster.

Removing the middle two frames I took the roof and turned it over, with the cluster above the gap left by the removed  frames, and gently dealt it a sound wallop with the base of my fist then another. Glad I made the thing so strong now. That knocked all the bees but two into the nuc. I brushed out the pair of stragglers and carefully replaced the two frames. After a little smoke and application of the bee brush I put the crownboard and roof on and tied the whole thing up with a pretty blue bow.

In the box.

Well okay so it was a ratchet strap not a bow. I stood the nuc with it's entrance open close to the site the bees had been gathered and left it till about half past ten in the evening. That meant adding another trip to Bilton and back to my day but it gave any foraging bees or others who were still flying time to come and rejoin the colony in the nuc before I took it away. I let the chap know I was gong to come back when it was cooler and darker to take them away and he pressed me to accept a tenner for my fuel which I did. I returned after dark, blocked the entrance and slowly drove the colony home.

I'd seen and heard some big noisy drones whilst hiving the colony but hadn't see the queen at all during the exercise and there were no eggs in the comb they'ed built. There's always a chance they didn't have one, and if they did there's the chance I somehow squished her or that the bees got annoyed during the operation and killed her themselves. However when I got my stethoscope to the hive today I heard a high pitched noise which I think was a virgin queen piping so I suspect I managed to get her and just have to wait and see if she manages to mate now. That means leaving them alone for a fortnight. I may give them a feeder depending on the weather but there was already some food in the frames I gave them and I was able to see foragers coming and going today. When I open the hive in a fortnight I'll have to check for disease and varroa mite levels. It was a little trial and error and could have gone more smoothly but I think it went quite well, didn't even damage a plant.