swarm video

[tandemrx]

I took some video of a swarm I had yesterday.

I had just collected a large swarm from forum member gguidester a couple days ago (1 of 4 he has had in the last week!) and put it in a nuc box.  Had to wait for weather to clear to install it.

When I went to my hives to install it, just as I was walking around my busy yellow hive, they began to swarm (as I had been expecting they might lately although I had worked to try to keep them there, I think it was too late).

So, the hive settled down and the swarm was 40 feet or more in the air above the clump of trees my hives are near.  I decided to install the nuc swarm in a new hive while I waited to see if the current active swarm would collect somewhere.

As soon as I opened the nuc, all the bees blew out of the box and went immediately to the air and joined the other swarm (as near as I could tell).  Very few bees left on the frames I had in the nuc box and it probably started out as a good 5-6 pounder or so.

Eventually all bees landed on a tree near hives.  I took the new hive and put it near the tree and not sure exactly what to do just started scooping bees onto a cardboard platform I was able to wedge near the hive entrance.  Eventually all the bees went in, so I assume  :? the queen (queens?) got in there.

Who knows.  I am a beginning beekeeper and was pretty much on my own with not much of a clue as to what to do.  They had settled on the main trunk of the tree, so only way to get them off was to scooop them by hand.

I am sure the experience folks will tell me all I did wrong :)

we'll see if they stay in the hive - doubt it.  It was a great adventure anyway and fascinating to watch the swarm from beginning to end.

 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xa6HDRMR_6Q

[mxracer]

One thing you can do to make them stay in the new hive is take a frame of brood from another hive and give it to them. They won't leave the brood and will make that hive their new home.

[tandemrx]

thanks,

I actually did this as my mentor had mentioned to do this for the swarm that I was intending to originally go in the hive.  So I grabbed a nice frame with some brood and eggs in it and put it in the hive along with a couple of frames of partial honey.

My only mistake at that time was when I took that original swarm of forum member gguidester a couple days ago, I did not put a frame of brood into the nuc box we put them in temporarily.  (in part because his hive that the swarm probably came from had about no brood left (this being possibly the 4th afterswarm).

maybe if I had done this the nuc would have been more stable and wouldn't have blown out of the box as soon as I opened it. - but then again, then I wouldn't have had any equipment left over to try to hive the swarm at my place. :?

I had to put a super on the hive I threw the big swarm into because there was no way all those bees were going to fit in one hive body (all I had left).

I need to get busy putting some equipment together - have a new hive I wasn't expecting.

Of course my hive that swarmed was filled to the brim with drones and had no brood or eggs either, so I may have a spare hive soon fi they don't requeen (threw a coupel frames of eggs in there too, but I think they had queen cells to work from or maybe already have a virgin queen)

ahhhh, adventures in beekeeping. :-D

My wife is going out to the hives in a couple of hours and just look at the hived swarm to see if they might have hung around (or are maybe back in the tree).

[tandemrx]

my wife just dropped by the hives and the new swarm is still ensconced in the hive - cool day may have kept them from venturing out - so maybe they will decide to stay (or not  ;))

Hive they in part came from was quite active though . . . . getting ready to afterswarm?  I wouldn't mind if the boat load of drones swarmed on their own from that hive  :-D