Wife and I got a call today on the bee hotline.
Last year I did a cutout from my Mother-In-Laws house but this is my first swarm capture. Africanized bees on the fence at least 60,000 of them according to the caller. Neighbor got driven into the house, bees pelting the car.
After a bit of a conversation with them we determined that the likelyhood of them being Africanized was low. And it was more likely that they just happened to walk up as the swarm was settling on the fence. Noone was actually stung. So we told them we'd come take a look and if we thought they were too dangerous they'd have to call an exterminator.
We arrived about an hour and a 1/2 later, by then the bees had worked their way to the ground. Suited up though there were not many bees flying and approached the cluster on the ground. In the excitement I forgot to take the camera with me. Spotted the queen parting the sea of bee's pretty quick. Also didn't have a cage/clip with me, again due to the excitement. I went back for a cage... no clip.. and my hive tool to try and get her to climb up on it.
Bees got a little excited when I started messing with them and many bees took flight buzzing around me. None of them actually went after my gloves or landed on me, just alot of noise and buzzing. Captured the queen and managed to convince her to go into the cage. (Odd that she didn't want to just run right into that little hole.)
Placed the cage into my Robo BeeVac clone (I had anticipated having to vacuum the bees in the end so I used the vacuum just in case. It didn't take long for a few bees to find the entrance and start fanning.
After about 30 minutes nearly 1/2 the bees had already entered the hive.
We left to get some dinner and give the bees a chance to get in the box. Returning about an hour or so later as the sun was setting all the bee's save a small ball that had gotten under the hive and a handful on the ground in front had gone inside. I closed up the whole tapped everything up even more and picked up the hive. We brushed the small cluster under the hive into a bucket, put the lid on and loaded up. By the time we left the sun had set.
Didn't look like 60,000 bees to me. Perhaps it was only part of a larger swarm. I'll get some pictures tomorrow of the queen and such after I figure out where to set the new hive.
I think this makes up for the swarm of bees I got to hear and watch leave my apiary to rest briefly 70ft up in a water oak last weekend.
Topic: Easy peasy swarm capture (Read 2263 times)