Please Post your Swarm Dates?

Yesterday (11Oct56) I was standing in my apiary, putting pollen substitute patties on my hives, when a swarm coming from somewhere West of our property, flew over my apiary and landed ten feet East on one of my peach trees. It was a fairly small swarm, enough bees to cover four medium depth frames, once I shook them into an empty five-frame nuc box. I noticed they were accompanied by a dark virgin/recently mated queen. Of course I will need to replace her as soon as practical.

All plans, of course, will depend on the swarm actually remaining in my equipment, this rarely happens except they install themselves. Sometime later this morning I will check on them to see if they are still there.

I've been collecting swarms in Houston and around the IAH airport this summer. I've noticed that I get several calls after we have had 2-3 days of wet weather. So, I keep my vac in my car and make sure I have a couple of cages ready when it gets rainy. But, I've had 100% success in retaining the swarm as long as I've had the queen. One hive I captured in July didnt have teh queen and it swarmed again.

Caught one October 23, 24th and 26th.


...JP

JP - John Pluta?

Searching through the 100 and more pages here and dont see any link to where this info is gathered. I think the intent was to compile the bloom info to help predict blooms throughout the country side.

I am interested in viewing the compiled data, has it been accomplished yet?

Thanks

Talk to drobbins.

http://www.drobbins.net/bee%27s/blooms.html

There are LOTS of resources for bloom prediction.

Many of them focusing around Growing Degree Days.

For those of us in Ohio: http://www.oardc.ohio-state.edu/gdd/

We collected two swarms this year 2010, May 20 and 21. It was a sunny day and warm.

21 Feb. 2011

First swarm of 2011 for me. First cut out of the year, too.

Here we go.

Summer

I thought about it being almost time, here in Orange, Texas, but thought it would be another few weeks. How big was the swarm in Lavaca?

Found approximately 10 queen swarm cells in one hive today. Lately, many of the bees have been gathering outside the box so we knew something was up. Even found one queen cell opened/hatched. The box had so many bees, it did not look like a swarm happened.

We took several queen cells and make 3 nucs from them and left plenty of bees in the hive.

The hive has two large supers which were full of bees.

Will see what happens but I can say "it has begun".:)

2-26-2011 - date

Lower most Alabama - location 36535

If you include you're zip codes Dobbins can put the swarms in the data base.

Friday, March 4th, 2011. Swarm in Hacienda Heights, California 91745. I noticed the bees flying in circles about 11:00 and the ball is still forming a cluster at 11:45. It is a bright sunny day and around 75 degrees outside. The cluster is in an orange tree and is about 4 feet off the ground but buried in many small branches. I will try and hive the swarm.

Thursday 3/3/11, San Carlos, California 94070. Good sized swarm in a tree fern.

First swarm of the season 3/6/11

http://i611.photobucket.com/albums/t...5IMAG00551.jpg

zip 93314

My first this year:

03/09/11
Alamo, CA 94507
Good size, maybe 1.5 footballs one foot from ground in a small shrub. Easy get.

Saw a couple guys pulling a swarm from a conifer tree in san jose on march 10th, 2011. About 12 feet off the ground.

zip 95125

-tmk

3/14/11 I help catch a wild swarm at noon in town ,then got home and was working bees looked up in tree about 12 feet high there was a nice big swarm. Got them down and in a box with feed. my zip code is 30455 in Ga. near Statesboro,Ga

Date: 3/18/11.

Location: Most Southern Alabama...Foley

First swarm. Assuming it's from one of my hives since it was in the bee yard...approximately 15 feet from 3 hives. A couple of boxes have looked quite strong lately and it's no surprise.


:popcorn:

Been seeing cells since March 5 Lower Tallapoosa river valley. Saw a swarm yesterday and today-march 17,18. Too high up in the trees to retreive. TK