winevines
05-01-2008, 10:42 PM
May Day Swarm- they don't call it International Workers Day for nothing!
First swarm and I missed it. Luckily my husband with the help of my bee mentor got it! Same tree that holds my swarm trap with some drawn comb in it....... maybe that helped.
How many pounds do you think it was when combined on the branches?
You can click on photo to enlarge
http://www.pbase.com/winevines/may_day_honey_bee_swarm_2008
http://www.pbase.com/winevines/may_day_honey_bee_swarm_2008
Laurence Hope
05-02-2008, 10:40 PM
Nice. Maybe 4-5 lbs or more. Hard to say from the pic. I got the biggest swarm today I have captured. I guess 6 or 7 lbs. Would not fit in a ten frame deep. I have to add another box.
Keep catchin.
BjornBee
05-03-2008, 08:35 PM
There is a good chance when you see swarms like this that you have more than one queen. I have seen it a number of times, and its most likely after-swarms with queens that left about the same time and got cuaght up in the frenzy of landing close together.
If you took the queen away from the swarm, most likely the remaining bunch of bees would recognize the fact the queen was gone and would break cluster within 20 minutes. You see this when you knock the queen into the box and some of the cluster is still up in the tree. Most times, they break up and "swarm" back down to the box. And so using this concept, why do you think the bees are happy making small and separate clusters and not being in contact with the queen? It usually does not happen.
Clusters may have multiple queens, and a cluster may get divided due to the same couple queens landing on separate branches. Not that it may be worth it to keep multiple queens and their smaller clusters, as it may make more sense to just combine into one larger cluster anyways, but its something to think about.