Swarm!

During Holy Week, there are few days that are good for planting, so Phil worked on engineering projects all day.

Mid-afternoon, I headed out, hoping to start grafting. But first, I figured I would check the bees.

One glance down slope, and I started to sprint back up the driveway. A large swarm was on my plum tree!

Now I know that bees are supposed to be docile during swarming, but I am no longer comfortable around the bees without full protection. Phil found a banker box, and I set it at the base of the tree and, after taking a deep breath, gave the tree a sharp push downward.

Thousands of bees fell. I had oriented the box the wrong direction, so only about half ended up in the box; the other half on the ground. I flipped the box on its side, and instantly the bees on the ground were like lemmings, moving en masse into the shade. Apparently, the queen happened to land in the box.

I gave the bees a few minutes to orient, then gave the tree another sharp push. There were a lot of bees still in the tree!

The rest of the bees ended up on the ground, but they, too, crawled into the box. About this time, Abraham, who had stayed well away, got stung on the neck and ran, shrieking and sobbing up the driveway. After I helped him, I went back.

It had been my hope and plan to split the hive once the queen cells were capped. Clearly, since the queen swarmed, she left behind filled and capped queen cells. So I started the division process.

In retrospect, I probably should have left well enough alone. The bees were already traumatized from the swarm leaving, and because I was attempting something I'd never done, after dealing with the intensity of the swarm, and without smoke, I didn't do a very thorough job of splitting the hive into equal frames, ten and ten. Instead, I did six and fourteen.

When I went to check them later, I realized I had put the fourteen frames with the original hive, where forager bees would be likely to return. The poor six frame hive had almost no activity. So I moved the top box over, to weight the vitality a bit more to the new hive, as I should have done originally. As night fell, I realized that all the confirmed queen cells were all on the new hive. Argh!

But with dark coming, I am letting it sit for the night as is. Perhaps tomorrow I will do my best to just put the original hive back together as best I can, and then count the swarm as my second hive, and say that two are better than one (and three are not always better than two). At least, that's my plan, borne out of frustration, tonight.

Meanwhile, the bottom of the swarm box had started to collapse from the weight of the bees, threatening to crush a good many. I propped it up with a stick, and that worked well enough.

The surfaces were absolutely covered.

When there was no more activity around the box, I taped over the hand holes, and gently put the lid on, and loosely taped it down. Then I carefully carried it up to our "basement": in this case, the cattle trailer, where the swarm can spend a day in quiet, peace, and darkness.