Howdy!
I'm a new beek located in Temecula California. Wine country!
I became interested in beekeeping because the bees like my house! 3 years ago we had a swarm move into the chimney. Being stupid I built a fire in the fireplace and they didn't like the heat and smoke so they moved on. 2 years ago we had a swarm make a hive under the eaves of the house. Later that month a swarm rested in a tree about 15 feet from the hive. I left the bees under the eaves alone until some gardener with his noise maker (blower? weed whacker?) go stung ONCE and called the city. The city came out and gave me 2 weeks to remove the "nuisance".
I have been reading voraciously for over a year on beekeeping. I have done my research.
I have also bought a nuc, deep box, medium box and all my necessary tools. I made my own veil and sewn it to a white coverall I had. I sewed sleeves onto some work gloves too (word of advice if you do this, don't use cloth backed gloves. They aren't sting resistant). I have made an additional 6 medium boxes and bought enough frames to fill them.
I'm fairly well set. My nuc has grown quite well since I put it in the hive about 2 months ago (hey, it's So Cal!).
I have done ONE swarm capture and placed it in a 8 frame medium hive at my brothers house. I GUESS that it had about 1500 bees. It dwindled down to only a few hundred but they are building comb and have not died off completely yet. Oh, and I made the hive boxes for this one also.
I registered here because I am looking for a liability release form in case I do more removals. But I also read Kirk-o 's post that in California you need to be licensed to legally remove bees. I'll be in touch with him more. Hope he's still a member here. I have been to one of his mentoring sessions and found it to be VERY informative.
Well that's enough for now. As Kirk-o likes to say in his videos "backwards is the new forwards".