Swarm season

Masses of bees!

Fuzzy but a queen cup just visible (centre) with larva in royal jelly - a developing queen.

The spring weather here in the Pacific Northwest has been pleasant for a few days now and like all animals, the bees are ready to reproduce. We noticed some swarm cells in our beehive just over a week ago so we tried to pre-empt a swarm by removing the queen, some brood and stores to a new hive – trying to trick them into thinking they had swarmed.

Trying to trick the bees: The 'swarm' hive is on the left with the 'parent' hive to the right.

This morning I thought I would check the new hive and saw another swarm cell – meaning that they had decided to swarm again. By the time I had walked to the barn to get the kit to make another artificial swarm they had done it for real! The bees were pouring out of the hive and forming a bee tornado all around me, but because they are fueled up with honey for the trip they don't sting.

Bees all around.

They settled in a fir tree a few yards away and so I climbed a set of stepladders and shook the cluster into a large cardboard box – they were surprisingly heavy, probably 4 Kg in all.

The swarm settled into irregular bunches.

Charles with catching box.

Then we simply poured the bees into yet another new hive, we must have caught the queen as they stayed put.

The catching box placed tempoarily on top of the new hive.

The few bees remaining flew into the new hive eventually.

So now we have three hives when a couple of weeks ago we had one! Whew!         Charles