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Author Topic: The Joys of Swarm Catching. Part 2  (Read 3979 times)

Offline rawfind

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The Joys of Swarm Catching. Part 2
« on: October 18, 2012, 07:23:33 pm »
Hi all,
        couple of days on and another one of my hives decided to swarm, as before 5 meters up in the tree, this  time i used the ladder
and chainsaw pole pruner and cut down the branch , this one was huge, looks like a whole hive left! still plenty  of bees in the hive i think
it came from.  This was a good move as they ended up settling in the neighbors property on the fence. I asked permission to get them and was eagerly granted access. I place a box next to the post and brushed a lot in, i stood back and observed and the others were all marching in so i must have got the queen.
Later on i went back to check and they had all come back out , this was however after i had filled up the box with new frames, i wanted to give the bees something to hang on to but this reduced the space the bees had. So i figured that since it was such a large swarm that it was too big for one box with all the frames in so i added a second box and went for the brush again! I  am happy to say this time it worked after a 9pm drive to another site all are safely in place, will check on tuesday and add the missing frames, Neil




Offline AllenF

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Re: The Joys of Swarm Catching. Part 2
« Reply #1 on: October 18, 2012, 07:25:06 pm »
Good looking swarm there.

Offline rawfind

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Re: The Joys of Swarm Catching. Part 2
« Reply #2 on: October 18, 2012, 07:28:10 pm »
Good looking swarm there.

Thanks , im thinking about having a few bait hives in my apiary to save me all this work!

Offline OzBuzz

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Re: The Joys of Swarm Catching. Part 2
« Reply #3 on: October 19, 2012, 12:18:17 am »
How regularly are you getting to inspect them? If you can inpsect them more regularly you will be able to prevent the swarming

Offline rawfind

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Re: The Joys of Swarm Catching. Part 2
« Reply #4 on: October 19, 2012, 01:46:21 am »
How regularly are you getting to inspect them? If you can inpsect them more regularly you will be able to prevent the swarming
the one they swarmed from was 3 boxes full of honey and brood pretty hard to inspect properly they get a bit bleep by the time you get to the bottom box i try to keep it short, should have just split it they did it for me

Offline OzBuzz

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Re: The Joys of Swarm Catching. Part 2
« Reply #5 on: October 21, 2012, 07:02:01 pm »
Yeah, it's hard to inspect when they get that high! I always try and keep it one honey super high because otherwise they get nasty by the time you get to the bottom! You wouldn't have needed to split - just get rid of that excess honey! even if you sat it on some other hives that you might have as singles until you can extract

Offline rawfind

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Re: The Joys of Swarm Catching. Part 2
« Reply #6 on: October 21, 2012, 09:07:54 pm »
Yeah, it's hard to inspect when they get that high! I always try and keep it one honey super high because otherwise they get nasty by the time you get to the bottom! You wouldn't have needed to split - just get rid of that excess honey! even if you sat it on some other hives that you might have as singles until you can extract

yeah but they hadnt capped it  so there  lies the problem, they like to make it hard for me!

Offline rawfind

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Re: The Joys of Swarm Catching. Part 2
« Reply #7 on: October 28, 2012, 08:13:09 am »
Yeah, it's hard to inspect when they get that high! I always try and keep it one honey super high because otherwise they get nasty by the time you get to the bottom! You wouldn't have needed to split - just get rid of that excess honey! even if you sat it on some other hives that you might have as singles until you can extract

yeah but they hadnt capped it  so there  lies the problem, they like to make it hard for me!

Had another look at that particular hive yesterday, i found about 10 capped queen cells on 3 frames of brood!  i didn't know what to do with it i had so many so i put all 3 frames into a nuc box and left it to sort it self out i figure they wont take all my girls if they are in a different box.