SWARM # 2

[Jack Parr]

is in the box.

Hived swarm # 2 yesterday and it was a piece of honey cake :!: A virtual sweet smell of sucess.

The swarm had clustered on a pine tree stump about one feet above the ground. I just slid my nuc under and scraped a large portion of the cluster into the box and voila :!:  I did get the queen first swipe because after a while the remainder of the swarm began to go into the box.

I did spray liberal amounts of honey laced water in the box, on the box outsides and top.  Did the trick.  Waited til dark, screened the entrance and came home.

My first swarm, did last week has been combined with another hive but now I regret having done that as I would have been better off keeping it to combine with # 2. Oh well.  There will be more.

[beemaster]

You can't beat a swarm at a workable height - I've had a few that needed an engineer to get at - lol. The worse was about a 8 pound swarm, up 40+ feet in a locust tree in a dense wooded area across from my house. I rigged up a sheet of plastic in a cone shap with a hole in the middle and a bucket uner it to catch them.

Then had to lasso the branch with a clothes line, yank it and it took three trips to catch the majority of bees. Each time I would cover the bucket with the lid to keep as many as possible in or transfer them to a sealed hivebox in my yard, but half got away each time on me.

I figured out later, I needed a modified swarm catching bucket - a rubber bladder built into the lid, so the weight of the falling bees would trip open the bladder and allow the bees in, but pop-back-up to keep them in, and a corked hole on the bottom to allow them to walk into the inner cover when I was done.

Once the queen was caught (try three) I finally had control of the swarm, but until then I was taking two steps forward and one step back.

Most of my swarms though http://www.beemaster.com/honeybee/swarms.html have been low enough to rangle perdy easy. I was just realizing that 3 of the photos on this page made it to the Beekeeping for Dummies book.

Sounds like you are gonna be busy all Summer if you have that busy of a Spring - curious how HIGH you plan to build - I've only had one hive ever to make it 5 supers, or if you are gonna build out with more colonies?