First swarm of year

[power napper]

Just an hour ago -noon-my four frame observation hive swarmed. I was not here but my wife said "I never saw or heard anything like it, it was chaos and loud distinct buzzing as bees ran excitedly through the other bees". The swarm is in a walnut tree aboiut fifty feet from their original site around twenty feet high. Wish us luck on capturing it.

[Michael Bush]

Good luck. smile.gif A five gallon bucket on a 16' stick is handy. smile.gif

[power napper]

This is hard to believe but the swarm came back into the observation hive two and a half hours after leaving it, the queen came back also and the o h is full again. It was a sight to see all the bees on the window tring to get back into the entrance pipe in the window sash. I hope to see the action again this week, now i have a super ready to put the swarm in with small cell foundation.

[AstroBee]

A similar thing happened to me several years ago. My hive swarmed and I was lucky enough to watch the event. I then captured it and placed it in its own box. I used a queen excluder on the bottom to keep the queen in the new hive. A few hours later all the bees went back to the original hive leaving the queen behind. I'm still a little puzzled on what exactly happened. My guess is that the queen was a virgin on a mating flight and got the bees all excited.

[carbide]

I had one swarm onto the ground a couple of feet in front of one of my hives a couple of weeks ago. Within an hour they were all back in the hive. They swarmed again the next day into one of my peach trees about 20 feet from the hive.

They are now in a hive.