Another day, ANOTHER caught swarm of Honeybees on Fleming Family Farm
2 days in a row I have witnessed one of my hives swarming. 2 days in a row I have caught my bees.
The bees took flight earlier today than the first hive did yesterday, about 11:00am today to 1:00pm yesterday. They flew roughly the same path that the first did and ended up landing in the same tree and about 3 branches below yesterday's.
VERY CONVENIENT!
I got the ladder, the lopping shears, and the hive. I am using 2 mediums because it's about all I have left. Nicely though there are some drawn frames in the 2 so the bees should have an easier time than the ones in the nuc.
I find it captivating to stand in the middle of the swirling mass of bees. They bump into you occasionally, will land on you and groom then take off again, and will mostly do well to avoid. The backing of the cloud gives a really good idea of the shear numbers of bees that are swarming around the yard.
This is the swarm on the branch after most all the bees had settled. At first I had grabbed my extendable pole saw at full length and reached into the upper branches of the tree to shake the bees loose to encourage them all to mass with the queen and the other bees lower. I have to say that it worked perfectly. They mostly all ended up in this mass on the lowest of the branches.
Here is the whole process of cutting the branch and dumping the bees into the hive. This went far better than yesterday and the bees went right inside the hive and covered the frames quickly. You can also see how close they have landed to the house so with the windows open in the house you can hear them quite clearly when they are swarming in the yard.
They most all ended up in the hive! I'm extremely happy to have done a better job with this one. I let the hive sit for a little while and they all moved inside.
I wrapped a bungee cord around the hive before moving it next to the nuc from yesterday's swarm. I didn't want to have the frames slip off and ruin my good work. You can see where the 3 hives are in the background above the 2 new ones. I will be doing some creative rearranging to get a free box for the nuc to go into in a couple weeks.
So far this year's adventure in beekeeping is proving to be much better than my first try!
Check out my blog @flemingfarm
Fleming Family Farm
FLEMING FAMILY FARM, LLC
Sustainable & Organic Methods | Heirloom Produce
All images are original works of Fleming Family Farm unless otherwise notated and credited.
If you find this post useful or entertaining, your support is greatly appreciated by upvoting, resteeming, following, or setting us to autovote on SteemAuto!
Am I the only one who's swarms settle 40' up in a tree? 🙄 Glad to see you got them....
Beginner's luck? At least I hope not, I don't want to jinx it...
What do you do when that happens? I have tall trees all around the property so it is one of my concerns.
If I can get a string around the branch they are on with either a throwing weight of sling shot, I hoist a drawn frame of comb up so that it touches the swarm and they will move onto the comb and then I just lower it. The trick is that the comb must touch the cluster so they can walk to it. They will not fly to it, even if it is just a few inches away.
😲
Wow! Mind Blown!
Super ingenious and kinda simple sounding.
wow you are so lucky give me one to me i want to taste this.. @flemingfarm
That swarm looks like one enormous animate pine cone. So beautiful.
Congratulations @flemingfarm! You have completed some achievement on Steemit and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :
Click on the badge to view your Board of Honor.
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOPTo support your work, I also upvoted your post!