Here's the story of that trap. There's a fellow in slidell, Louisiana, that called me out last season to remove three hives at his house, and he's had bees before last season in the same general areas. I mentioned that we should hang at least one swarm trap out, but he wasn't interested at first. He called me on a Sunday, about 3 weeks after the removals about a swarm that had landed on one of the dormer windows, 25' up. I told him I'd be over the next morning.
The next morning I pulled up, got outta my truck, went over and looked up at the dormer and just at that very moment, the bunch of bees that had been clustered on the dormer decided to go airborne, way up in fact. Shortly after that I could hear this constant buzzing that I believed was coming from a hive that I had on my trailer, but it wasn't! Where was the buzzing bees I was hearing, it just had to be from that swarm off the dormer I concluded. I kept looking around and up, and finally, out of the sky, I could see the swarm circling, now things were getting really interesting and boy, was I excited. The swarm came down slowly, circling, and I could see that they were slowly but surely zeroing in on this one small oak tree. Well, they landed on the tree, in a rather large cluster, but didn't stay long enough for me to catch them, they left again. I was disappointed, but proceded to place the swarm trap in the tree about 16' up.
A few days later the guy called me and said a large swarm had settled into the trap, but that his wish was to house the hive and keep them on his property. As luck would have it I just couldn't get out to do the transfer right away, so I went back about a week later. The trap already weighed about 20lbs or so, with large numbers of bees, working hard.
The guy changed his mind when I explained to him that he would have to buy some protection and work the bees now and again, etc... He didn't realize the undertaking. For some reason I wound up leaving the trap there for a few more days or so. When I went back to retrieve it, it weighed a ton, like 45lbs. What you see is that trap after I had cut into it at the beeyard to perform the transfer.
What was interesting was that I caught the queen and placed her in the hive box you see twice. She would fly off, then come back. The second time she flew off I knew she wouldn't go far so I just proceded with the transfer. When I was done, I noticed a swarm cluster (that I have pictured) and figured she had landed 10' behind the hive box in that tree. Well, just as I was about to cut the branch and shake the bees, I noticed a little comb on the branch and realized that this swarm had no connection to the queen I was now looking for.
Long story short, I did a combine of that swarm and a queeless hive, and that queen must have found her hive again, because she was in there laying when I checked on them a little while later.
The deer is from our property in Ms.
....JP