Our weather here is chaotic this spring, switching between heavy thunderstorms (check out the news for the crazy flooding we’ve had here in Texas) for a couple days and then sunny and up to 86F (30C) for a couple days. I believe this could be catching the bees as they’re looking for new homes. The 3 swarms I’ve kept have all taken a large amount from their feeder in the first day, suggesting to me that they are not particularly full of stores (since they have no comb to put it in, they must be holding/using it) After that, use drops dramatically up until the time that seems to correspond with them building comb, then use picks back up a bit (I can’t say with certainty because I’m trying not to disturb them overly much by looking too often.).
Having a virgin queen in the swarm was a “very rare” occurrence from everything I’ve seen/heard. Do you think it is more likely than that? If you get a virgin queen do you think delaying her flight by 4-7 days would cause problems? (other than brood production being delayed by that length?)
I only know the source of one of the swarms I’ve collected. It came from a wild hive that has been inside a hollow, rock & mortar landscape retaining wall at a neighboring city’s high school for many years (according to the landscapers it produces swarms every year). The other swarms consisted of one in a tree in a very urban part of town, one on a small bush in a suburban neighborhood, and one that had very recently moved into an in-ground water meter box on a new construction lot in a rural area. I did not locate any existing hives near to the other three swarms. I’ve also turned down several calls that were a bit further than I was willing to drive. I talked with another experienced local swarm collector, who also does a lot of cut-outs, a couple weeks ago and he said he’d already collected 9 swarms this season. So I don’t know if beekeepers are letting their hives swarm (no one at our meetings have mentioned their hives swarming), but I do know that this seem to be shaping up to be a particularly good season for the bees and everyone is reporting that their bees are doing quite well.
Hi Jason, thanks mate. Honestly I can’t comment on what difference it would make to a virgin queen if she is locked up for 4-7 days. I never do it myself. My swarm strategy is to grab a frame of brood, containing young larvae from the easiest possible source. Generally a single story hive. Most likely from a recently caught swarm. Grab my bottle of lemongrass oil. Fill the rest of the box with empty frames. Take it to the site & try to get the bees into the box without shaking the bees at all, if that’s possible. With a few drops of lemongrass oil smeared over the tops of the frames, you can simply place the box directly beneath the swarm, touching it. Almost instantly, the bees will start to march into the box from the top. Once most of the bees are in the box, put the lid on, place the box on the ground. Make doubly sure the bees on the outside are marching into the box. Then you can leave & come back just on dark to pick it up to take home. I’ve stopped shaking bees. I try not to shake any bees unless I really have to.
Having done that, the bees will be well anchored to that box. No need for any QX’s
That is the method I use. I always check in a few days to see how things are progressing. Some swarms are huge, however some swarms can be quite small. In those cases I’ll add a frame of brood from a previous swarm to help boost their numbers. I might have to add 2 or 3 frames over a period of time. This is where SHB comes into play. If you have a weak colony, you don’t want to add too much brood at once that the bees can’t protect, otherwise you’ll get a SHB slyme out.
Anyway, it’s something to think about, good luck with your bees, cheers for now.
I put the excluder panel on the bottom. They are building comb. I don’t think I will check again for eggs and larva for a while since they are still so new.
I cut a small pice of plastic excluder and pin it over the entrance. That way you don’t have to lift the brood box to remove it.
It shouldn’t be there for long even if you have a mated queen as stuck drones die a horrid death
Hi Jason, the following day after our chat, only 3 weeks before our winter starts, a call came in for a swarm of bees on a clothes line. We videoed my strategy which worked well. You might be interested in taking a look.
The frame of brood containing young larvae is always handy to have, just in case, as you can see in my video, you can’t always shake a swarm into a box. Sometimes a swarm could be wrapped around a post, a thin tree trunk or the fork of a tree making them impossible to shake. The frame of brood will always be handy in those cases.
Another advantage of doing it like that is: if you take your time & let it happen naturally, without any fuss, any onlookers will think your an expert. cheers. PS, excuse my for not having my teeth in at the end of the video.
In that situation, I would have used my (gloved) hand or a stiff piece of cardboard to gently move a good bit of the swarm into a catch box, which I would have placed with the entrance as close to the remaining swarm as possible. The box probably would have sat in the same place you put the initial empty frame I think, on top of the clothesline. Once the queen is in the box she’s unlikely to leave and the rest of the bees will move into the box without having to get a frame of brood involved. I usually leave them until a bit after sunset so that all the scout bees return to the swarm before I close them up and move them to an apiary.
Yeah, in this case there was only enough room for the frame. There’s a couple of floors in your strategy. #1. the bees could take flight & go to a higher position. #2. even with the bees & queen in the box, if you leave it there for the rest of the day, the scouts may have found a site they favor above your box, which means they will leave the box & go to the site they prefer. To be on the safe side, you’d have to take the box with the bees & queen basically just after you get the bulk of the bees into the box, leaving some behind.
One thing to bare in mind is: when we go to a swarm, we never know what stage the scouts are at. They may be in the final stages of eliminating & voting for the site they prefer. If we arrive there right at that point, there might be nothing we can do to hold them. If that happens, we turn around & blame our strategy when there was probably nothing wrong with it. We just happened to arrive just before the bees were about to take off to their new home.
Thanks for your advice. My instinct say not to feed. We ended up putting a cap full of honey in the first night but that’s it. They are on their own now. Our yard fortunately has had plenty off flowering plants at the moment
