Its swarm time.
Will you be ready?
I get excited this time of year, actually March-June when the full moon approaches, is over head, and a few days afterwards.
There is no doubt a correlation between swarming and the full moon. You can bet your bottom dollar down here in southeast Louisiana our bees will be motivated to swarm come the full moon.
What about you guys and girls, have y'all noticed this?
Today I had three bee calls. Two were scouts checking out houses to go in. I left behind a deep with drawn comb and pheromone at each of these locations at the roof level.
Before I left my last one there were scouts entering the deep. I believe they will swarm in tomorrow, we shall see.
Third was a small swarm that moved in approx a week ago into a guy's plastic cushion box for his pool furniture. Unfortunately he sprayed one end with wasp spray and killed most of the bees.
The queen was still alive along with perhaps 150 bees or so and I boxed them up and brought them home. They looked like they were doing fine and I gave a queenless colony the queen and the bees, which they accepted just fine.
I told him he dodged a potential bullet this time as he had no idea how many bees were in the box.
A really big aggressive swarm may have lit him up and his neighbors after being ticked off, you never know. This put fear in him and he said he had no idea that was a possibility, in fact I think he thought the bees were wasps.
He actually was a pretty nice fellow, just ignorant to the ways of honeybees.
Even though I was very disappointed with the man and sad for the bees, I had to be nice and educate him some, hopefully, my positive attitude with him makes a difference.
So let me know about this moon thing, I swear by it, and the calls I get are the proof.
...JP