Wind Blown Swarm

[paintingpreacher]

Called this afternoon to a swarm in a big oak tree about 20 ft. off the ground. When I arrived the wind was blowing so hard the swarm was broken up into 4 small groups 20 ft up and 3 small groups on the ground. Placed a box next to the largest group on the ground and immediately the bees started into the hive. I was suprised as I looked and there was the queen. The problem it seems the fall may have been too much for her. She moves but appears to be hurt. It is so cool the bees did not fly much at all, so I hope maybe the queen is just cold. She did go into the box with a little help from the workers.. Was able to reach those up high with an extension saw. All are now inside, time will tell if the queen is ok. I think this is first time I have seen a swarm so broken up by wind.

[BeeAware]

Good going!! We had wind gusts of about 40 MPH here this PM also. I have a swarm in my backyard that have been clustered on a limb about 40 feet up since last Tuesday. I looked just before dark tonight and they are still there. Wonder why they won't enter my swarm boxes nearby?

[peggjam]

The cluster proably cushioned the fall for the queen....she should be fine:) .

[Robert Hawkins]

Preacher, if you had four clusters of bees, you probably had four different swarms(read queens). That's not abnormal for swarms. Just gotta watch where you step, and pick up each cluster. Usually I put 'em in different nucs. And feed, feed, feed.

Hawk

[paintingpreacher]

After catching the wind blown swarm I received another call the next night saying there was another swarm in the tree. Collected it around 8:00am and believe it or not received another call about 4:00 pm for another swarm in the same tree. I collected 3 swarms in 24 hrs and the folks did not know where the bees were coming from. I looked good and spotted the hive going into a hole in the top of the tree about 40 ft up. The home owner told me there was a swarm about 2 wks earlier but they did not know who to call. These have all been good size swarms. What suprised me today, I checked in on the new swarms and was amazed how different the queens were in appearence. Two are yellow and one is black. The black queen is with the swarm I was concerned about in my original message. But the queen that appeared hurt was not black. So I suppose there was more than one queen in that first swarm I caught.