Knock on wood, 14 swarms and counting so far this spring. I’m not much better at predicting a swarm’s behavior than I am at predicting Apple’s Stock price (I predict down :shock:). However my casual guess is if a swarm gets too hot in given location (too much sun), they seem to fly off and roost in a new location. Maybe it’s more of a factor with really big swarms, but I really don’t know.
One I caught today the homeowner said had been in the same spot for 3 days. She had called another beek out to remove them and they shook the swarm into a bucket but apparently didn’t make sure they got the queen! They also got stung on the ankles. And here I thought I was the amateur around here :-D
Anyways, the same mass of bees re-formed in the tree and I hived them today. And yes, I made SURE I had the queen. (Caught her in the queen catcher). What a bummer for my fellow beek to catch a bunch of bees with no queen :(
These homeowners didn’t have a clue who to call about bees. I believe they called 911 and then looked in the phone book and called a big commercial beek in my area. The commercial guys don’t have time to fool with swarms, so he passed the swarm message onto the fellow that tried before I arrived. I guess the moral of the story is, if you’ve got any commercial beeks in your area, you might give them your name and number for swarm removal when they get calls.