I put a Swarm in Detention

[xC0000005]

Caught a swarm tonight (Chef Isaac offered the call to me, I drove over to Seattle to pick it up), about 2 lbs of bees with a small queen. All I can figure is that she’s a teen queen, because they seem set on running away from home. Drove them home screened in and right after I let them out they began doing the normal orientation flights. Normal, that is, until they all poured out the entrance and set up shop on a nearby post.

I put them back in the box.
Perhaps I misunderstood: they didn’t like the box.
They left again, again hanging from the post.
I put a few drawn frames in the box and added them back in.
They left.
I sprayed them with syrup and put them in a different box with drawn frames.
They cleaned themselves and left.

This time I decided that what they really needed was quality time to reflect on their actions, and maybe write a 100 cell essay entitled “Why it is rude to leave a perfectly good box for a bare fencepost.” I put them back in the original box with the original frames and stapled windows screen over the entrance once they all went in. They spent a bunch of time exploring the confining nature of window screen and attempting to squeeze through it. Eventually they gave up and had the normal football huddle going on the middle frames. An hour ago they were drawing comb and festooning like good little bees. Tomorrow I’ll take the screen off and we’ll try this again. They’ve already drawn an inch of comb so I’m hoping they’ve given up their wandering ways.

We shall see.

[JoeMcc]

LOL....

Thank you for the laugh!!!

Don't forget... a frame of open brood will usually do the trick.

JoeMcc

[okb]

If like teenagers and you ground them to their hive/room. Around here wife would just let em out soon as I turned my back. :D

[Chef Isaac]

That was funny! By the way, the drive must have sucked. I am starting to hate swarms in the south/ souther western part of seattle.

Did you find out if the swarm I caught yesterday was from your bees?

It will be nice today and tomorrow. Swarms calls I hope!

[dickm]

Possibly a virgin queen trying to mate? ...And the whole family tried to come along to watch. Possibly Apis Mellifera Voyer bees.

dickm

[BEES4U]

Prime swarms with mated queens are easy to hive!

After swarms are difficult to hive even with a frame of brood.

Bring a queen cage with you when you respond to a swarm call, cage the queen if possible, place the caged queen in the hive, transfer the swarm into the hive, transport, place the hive in it's new location, wait for 24 hours and release the queen.
Good Luck
Regards,
Ernie Lucas

[Aram]

LOL! Good luck with the 100 cell essay!

[odfrank]

I had a late one leave after three days last week. They were on beautiful blond drawn extracting combs.

[Rosies]

Please let us know how the detention works.

[deknow]

you can make tiny dunce-caps out of foil gum wrappers. that way, they know they are being punished _and_ you protect them from ccd :)

deknow

[beyondthesidewalks]

Did they stay or did they go?

[xC0000005]

They stayed. I checked yesterday and this is a truly pitiful afterswarm. Two frames of bees is a generous estimate. My water hose has more bees on it than this box has in it. Since we are in the middle of the blackberry flow I'm leaving them be for the moment but afterwards I'll need to make some decisions about the future of this swarm.

Screening them in appears to have worked.

Rebels that they are, they ignored the frames of starter strips I gave them and drew comb in the only two "odd" frames I had in the box - a couple of honey super frames that I just stuck in there to fill up the space.

I would swear that one of them was giving me the evil compound eye when I checked in on them.

[notaclue]

Is there any brood? My pitiful after swarm (I think it was, small and probably badly mated queen and all drone brood after what workers there were emerged) I got this year refused to join with a newspaper combine. I believe they all died in their original box since all the dead bees above the inner cover were the golden bees from this swarm. No stings or damage noted and I did kill the runt queen first. I saw very very few golden bees in the lower box and only saw three come and go at the entrance in an hours time of watching with a glass of iced tea and a video camera.

I think I would have had better results with a frame or two of brood a couple days after hiving them. May have given them a chance to supercede.

[beyondthesidewalks]

I did a cut out in someone's water meter last night. This morning the hive was empty. They left their brood and everthing. I walked around and checked the trees, finding them swarmed about head level. I put the moving closure back on the hive, cut the limb and dropped them in the hive. I put an inner cover with a jar of sugar water on it to feed them. (I cut holes in my inner covers for jar feeding.) I'm waiting until I see that sugar water going down before I open them up.