Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum

BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. => Topic started by: beemaster on March 07, 2004, 01:34:48 am

Title: Have you ever been asked to remove a swarm?
Post by: beemaster on March 07, 2004, 01:34:48 am

I get calls every Summer from our local police who have my number on their wall under the name of BEEMASTER is big 2 inch letters - lol. So when it comes to swarms, I'm the only game in town.

Have you been asked to remove swarms, or found swarms (other than your own) and hived them successfully???

Bee

Title: Have you ever been asked to remove a swarm?
Post by: beeware184 on April 13, 2004, 04:09:47 pm

I have captured four swarms.  Two were successfully housed, one moved on, and one died.  In the one that died, I think the queen was killed.  When a friend was sawing the brance off of the tree, a pile of lawn waste she was standing on collapsed and the branch broke.  I got about 20 stings, cuz I was only wearing a sweatshirt and shorts.  

The two big swarms I caught were successfully housed and went on to produce honey.  The one that flew away?  Who knows.  I never got another call about it.

Title: Have you ever been asked to remove a swarm?
Post by: olii2d on June 27, 2004, 10:19:53 am

I've only captured 2 swarms but it's a lot of fun.One thing I learned,if have a long drive to get your swarm make sure you have enough gas for the round trip.Stopping at a gas station with a box of bee's in your pickup draws a lot of attention and theres always some loose bee's flying around.

Title: Have you ever been asked to remove a swarm?
Post by: Anonymous on August 25, 2004, 10:42:31 am

I received a call from a local amusement park to remove a swarm of bees who had taken up residence in the structure at the top of their waterslide. When I arrived I discovered that the swarm had actually become a colony as they had found their way into the wall of the structure and had already drawn 3 sections of comb and the queen was laying eggs in them.

After removing the inner wall panels (it was impossible to get at the outside panels where the bees were flying in and out since this was 40 feet above the ground) my son and I scraped the sections of comb off of the bottom of a 2 x 6 on to a frame of drawn comb and then dumped them into a hive body.

After we had done the same with a couple of clumps of bees the majority of the bees found their way into the hive body and we only had to eliminate a few stragglers that refused to be herded into the hive.

Since this was at an amusement park they wouldn't let us do anything until after they closed down the pool area at 7:00 PM so that none of their guests would be in the area when we agitated the bees.

It was an interesting evening.