Most unusual. This subject came up this morning in Sunday school. An older lady, whose brother has kept bees since he was a kid was describing how her brother would start yelling to bring pots when he would see one of his hives swarming. She said it usually worked for him.
Ok, rast.... Red rover red rover, send rast on over..... :-D
The pot thing seem to me is three distinct areas.
1) Getting a swarming hive to land the swarm.
2) Getting a swarm to move lower from one branch, to a lower branch, if not all the way to the ground and into a hive
3) Stopping a swarm that is coming from somewhere and headed to somewhere else.
Lets tackle these one at a time. I'll go slow, since we still have some southern gentlemen lurking about (Ok, iddee....that was for you... :-D )
#1....someone sees a hive swarming. The beekeeper yells to "bring the pots". The swarm land on a branch within eyesight of the hive after the beekeeper goes bangin away.
Why would I think, or better yet, please convince me, that it was for the banging of the pots. Studies out of Cornell clearly has shown that a hive swarming, will almost always land within eyesight of the hive the swarm was issued.
Now, I understand that you did not suggest what happened AFTER the beekeeper called for the pots. It was a very short story void of many details other than an old beekeeper that would call for pots when seeing a hive in the act of swarming.
So what was he banging the pots for....
1) To get them to cluster
2) To get them to land at a lower height.
3) To go directly into a hive.
#1, has been clearly shown to happen for almost all swarms when first issued. In fact, a good beekeeper many times can find the original colony by knowing that most swarms intially land within 100 meters. And that was without any pots being banged.
I'll stop now in the interest of boring some or being called a know it all. Maybe we can explore this first option of the first set of numbered items.
We know that swarms will form a cluster outside the original hives almost always. Anyone have anything to add or suggest on this point?
I hope that once this topic point is finished, we can move onto claims that banging pots will cause a swarm to fly into a hive under the tree.
Comments?