Well, Its been a long time since I last posted about my bee adventure, I've been thousands of miles away from my hive-in Iraq. But, last week I came home on leave, and I soon discovered it was a bee-utiful time to come home. My bees swarmed! I had never dealt with a swarm before, only pored over books and articles regarding the incredible act bees perform when its time to divide the colony. There were actually three swarm masses, all within inches of each other in the Silver Maple right above my existing hive. What is a beekeeper to do? Well, according to my husband the bees had been congregating there for over a day...so I had to act fast before they took off in search of a new home elsewhere. Little did they know their home was sitting a few feet from them! I called my farmer-and-former-beekeeper friend for support, and we set up swarm camp.
First, to get the smoker started to calm the bees. Due to their location on the tips of branches, I would have to get pretty close and snip them down. I have yet to be stung by my bees, but better to err on the side of caution then to startle my bees. We prepared a super with foundation below the swarm, leaving a few frames out of the center to place the bees.
I climbed the ladder, carefully sniping each branch containing a swarm, and walking it down the ladder to their new home.
We decided to put all three masses in the same box, who knows which contained the queen...the only reason the bees would stay together as a colony. We then left the bees to their buzz-iness. This new colony was given to a dear friend of mine who will begin beekeeping this summer.Now to go over my errors on this swarm:
1. I did not remove the branch from the super right away, and had to disturb the bees to get it out. They are in a fragile state as it is, breaking from their main colony and hanging from a tree for over a day, so the least disturbance, the better.
2. I did not replace the center frames right away either, so when I came back the next day to do so, the industrious bees had already begun building honeycomb in the void hanging from the roof of the hive. Unfortunately I had to dislodge this comb, but I left it in the hive so the bees could salvage from it.
3. Third and gravest mistake, to which we will have to see how the bees will react. I did not feed the bees right away. Since I was putting them in a new hive with no food, and they had been hanging from a tree for over 24 hours, I should have supplied them with a supplement of honey or at the least sugar syrup.
Another issue that sets the bees back is that they were transported over an hour away to their new home in this condition...stay strong bees!
Hopefully these resilient creatures can overcome all the obstacles I placed in their path to create a good strong colony. After all, they do it in the wild with only the guiding hand of nature!
Another interesting point to note... I was curious what set the bees to swarm. I knew that the usual reason was the colony being too big for the hive, however, when I opened my exisiting hive, the top super was mostly unoccupied. What I did find interesting, however, was the goings-on under the hive roof. We had installed a candy board for the bees this winter to feed, but had not taken it off when pollen season began. I noticed that the bees had congregated up there, and there were what looked to bee egg sacks attached to the roof. Could it be that the queen had come to the roof and laid another set of eggs, one of which became the queen to swarm with part of the hive? I will have to continue my beekeeping studies to see if this could have been...
