OK, fine. I have another hive.
It came down to letting the little freaks do their thing again on their own schedule (i.e., probably when there was an anaphylaxis convention next door…) or I had to try to head them off at the pass.
What the hell, I can always sell it to someone.
So, I went back to the bee store, bought another $200 worth of crappily made woodware and stuff, and busted out the pneumatic stapler for a very fast assembly of four deep hive boxes and 30 frames.
Two of the boxes and 20 frames are for the new hive… one box and 10 frames are for the old one if it keeps growing like nuts (just to be safe)… the last box is for feeding or just to swap out when I get around to painting it.
So, the nice lady (she really has been very nice) at the store says ‘go find the queen, move her and a couple of frames of open brood…’ At that point, I start to read something on the desk… she says some more… I start looking around at weird bee equipment… she’s still saying something… blah blah blah, I pay, and I go home.
You can imagine how the rest goes. By the time I get the boxes made up, the first hive appears to be working up to their swarm again. There’s a growing, agitated cloud of bees making an icky buzzing noise around the front of the hive. Huh. Neat.
Too late now, though. I smoke everyone. Smoke, smoke, smoke. That makes them buzz louder. This is going really well. I open the hive and start pulling out frames… no brood… empty… capped something, don’t know what… so many bees… cloud getting thicker… can’t see… must pull more frames… louder and louder… they’re landing on my face screen… oh no… what do I do?!… WHAT WAS SHE SAYING TO DO?! SHUT IT DOWN!!! ABORT MISSION!!! GET OUT OF THERE, MAN!!!
The preceding was a dramatic re-enactment of actual events.
In the end, I saw something that looked like it might have been the queen… or a drone… or some kind of bee. Close enough. I grab that frame and a couple others with… stuff on them. I note a couple of swarm cells– the weird ones with new queens growing in them. Did she say kill those? Make sure you DON’T kill those? Definitely should have taken my pills today.
I cram the “bee stuff covered” frames into the new hives with about half new foundation frames. Bam! Slap the tops on both of them! Done!
So… what happened? Well, truth is… I don’t really know. The bees in the new hive seemed to have decided to stay. The bees in the old hive seem to have decided to stay. As far as I know there’s any number of queens– from zero to a dozen– in both of them.
And you know what? I don’t really care anymore. The new hive definitely has some new queen cells. The old hive… well… probably some in there, too. One of them has the old queen. I gave it a shot. There’s a possibility that I DID actually score the queen and move her and her entourage into the new digs. That’d likely mean we’re done. They’ve “swarmed” in their minds. The old hive will manage the production and mating of a “virgin queen” to replace the old one. They’ll be happy.
So will they swarm again? My money’s on yes. The whole thing just didn’t feel… decisive enough.
Will I capture them again? Hmm… if they land in the neighbors yard again, well, I suppose I’ll have to. What the hell I’ll do at that point, I have no idea. One yard farther, though, and the last thing they’ll see of their former apiary is me waving bye-bye. Some lucky person will inherit a free swarm of bees. You’re welcome.
OMG! I still say that you are waaay braver than I am!
Who could not help but root for the old queen?
Seriously though, that was good bee drama..
..they’re landing on my face screen..
heh, downright Hitchcockian!
[...] Honey Bee Swarm, Part 2 [...]
I’d say that if you hadn’t split the hive, they most definitely would have swarmed again. They still might but you probably averted it and in a controlled manner.
You mention using smoke and that stirring up the bees…you might consider going smokeless. I haven’t used any smoke whatsoever in several years and I have been much happier for it. I don’t get stung much, I don’t stink up me or the neighborhood and my bees remain fairly calm and easy going. Just a thought. You mention in another post about honey excluders being a religious topic…smoke is also part of that old dogma that people buy into also…
Hi Warren! I was hoping I’d lure you over with all this bee talk.
I tell you what, this swarm business has really inspired me to do some homework. It made it painfully obvious that one needs to know at least a little about what they’re doing if you actually want to productively keep a hive. I’ll never forget watching/hearing that cloud form outside the hive. Oops.
I’ve had mixed results with the smoke… half the time if seems to really help get them out of the way. The other half of the time, I’m not sure it does anything except stink up the joint. I really only use it when I’m doing a “major operation” like a full hive inspection or need to get them off the top bars for some reason.
Thanks for the comments.
Sure thing…bee talk always makes my ears itch! It’s funny…plenty of people used to keep bees and still offer advice on how they used to do it. Of course, a lot of people lost a lot of bees too…and especially nowadays with mites and CCD and who knows what is next. Anyhow, what I am trying to say is that you def do need to learn a lot to really keep bees successfully. Of course, even as much as you learn, they sometimes just go on ahead and do whatever the heck the want. Anyhow, keep after it and it will all get easier in time.
Oh yeah, regarding smoke…it def does make the bees move…but I am not always sure that is a good thing. If I have a few that are really in my way, I just evenly and gently blow on them…they’ll move that way too…
Ok, enough rambling…have fun with your bees!