Swarm Collecting

This year I've had surprisingly few calls about swarms. None in fact. However in early July an ex posted on Facebook about a swarm in a tree at her parents' so I offered to pick it up. I get free bees, they get no bees, the bees get homed, everyone wins :) I rolled up in the early evening walked to the door knocked and was told I'd just walked straight past the swarm. I looked round and there they were. In a low tree at about shoulder height in a very round cluster - the kind of thing you'd expect to see in a text book.

Well bee-haved, ready to be-hived.
Beekeeping is 90% punnery.

They were on a single small branch so I thought it's be easiest if I just cut the branch then deposit it complete with the bees in the 5 frame Nuc I'd brought with me. Simple plan. It actually turned out to be a flawed plan. Taking a firm hold of the branch on one side of the swarm I cut the branch on the other side of the swarm as planned. Instead of carefully carrying the cluster to the Nuc and dropping them in I watched the cut branch in my hand bent double dropping half the bees on the floor below. Excellent stuff. I'd gone from having the swarm in a tight easy to move cluster to a couple of thousand bees in a pile on the ground, a thousand or so on a floppy twig and a few hundred on the wing looking to form a new cluster in the tree.

I assumed the bees on the twig were probably the oiriginal centre of the cluster which should include the Queen so I deposited these in the 5 frame Nuc I'd brought along with a frame at either side. I then used another frame of drawn comb to remove the bees from the ground and shake them into the box. They're attracted to the comb so when I held it to the bees on the ground they climbed onto it for me to move them to the Nuc. When I'd got the majority off the ground I turned my attention to the fliers who kept returning to the tree. Giving it a shake here and there to dislodge the landed bees and a few puffs of smoke to mask any pheromone they eventually gave up on it in favour of the workers Nosanoving at the Nuc entrance. I left the Nuc on the ground and returned a few hours later.

Almost there

When I got back the bees had gone to the Nuc as hoped. There were a lot hanging about outside the entrance though -unsurprising as it was a particularly warm July evening. I used some gaff tape to secure the crown board and used some more tape and a cardboard box to make a cover for the front which would leave room for the bees outside the entrance, after all I didn't want them flying about in the car with me.

Most of this happened in transit.

It was a slow drive to the out apiary but I got there with relatively few bees getting loose in the car. I carried the Nuc complete with gaff tape and cardboard to the hive stands and  removed the packaging. During the drive bees had been coming out of the entrance filling the gap between the Nuc and the cardboard, luckily the gaff tape held for the journey.

Home sweet home

I put the Nuc roof in place and left the bees to it. When I did my next inspection I was relieved to find the bees had chosen to remain in the Nuc. I'd used a small National Travel Nuc I had sat in the shed for this lot. It took me a while to locate the Queen. I'm pretty sure she was still a virgin when I caught the swarm as it took me so long to find her and it was a long time before eggs started appearing too. When I did find her I noticed she had a very yellow abdomen compared to most of my other Queens. I considered raising the swarm as a new colony but later decided to use her to replace a swarmy queen in an existing full size colony and united the workers to an existing hive that needed a boost.