I received a swarm call yesterday and found myself in the heart of an electric power generation plant. My buddy and I captured the swarm. After watching all the JP videos and Schawee's videos I found myself with much more confidence. The swarm, while very close to the ground wasn't an easy access (like the "Easy Peasy" video). I reached in with my hand and gently pulled the girls little by little. I chickened out and donned a blue nitrile glove and didn't use my bare hand. I spotted the queen in the box, captured her with the queen catcher and rubber banded her into a frame in the nuc box.
At that point, I had to do nothing but wait for the rest of the bees to settle into the box. So my buddy and I asked for a tour of the power plant. Being more of a nerd than I care to admit, I did find the power plant very interesting. Mike, the onsite manager, was happy to show us around. It was a smaller, 90-120 megawatt power plant that had two jet engine turbines that are fired with natural gas. Those turbines produce about 40 megawatts, but they also capture the heat from the exhaust and generate steam. The steam can generate another 50-80 megawatts. After the 30 minute tour was over, almost all of the bees were in the box. We sealed them off and went home.
It wasn't the easiest swarm I've captured, but it was easy and, buy far, the most fun. The actual process went well, I got a nice set of feral bees, got to know some really nice folks and a bonus tour of a very cool power generation facility.
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