my bee yard has 11 hives and there have already been 3 swarms that I know of. Doesn't this seem like an awful lot for hives started this spring with 5 frame nucs? I'm a complete novice but my mentor who owns 9 of the hives has worked for 3 commercial apiaries over the years and he doesn't understand it either.
The details:I live in northern Minnesota, 9 8 frame hives and 2 10 frame hives. No drawn comb except what was in the nuc packages. nucs installed May 1st. This is bear country so all 11 hives are in a 16x16 area surrounded with cattle panels and electric fence. The first swarm left the capture hive and went native. The 2nd and 3rd have stayed but we added a couple frames of brood to the capture hives. The swarms don't appear to be abandoning the original hives but splitting. The swarms have been spaced about a week apart with the latest swarm happening on June 28th. That one was my first solo swarm capture as my mentor is out of town. It was a wet drizzly day, no extra hive bodies so I had to construct a brood chamber body from plywood to house the 10 spare frames I had before I could even start. No protective gear except the smoker. I was expecting to take a few hits especially with the weather. waited for a lull in the rain and did the capture... managed to avoid getting stung to boot installed a top feeder with 1:1 last night to give them a boost building comb and they seem to be settling in to stay.
It's cool that I just doubled the number of hives I own because I had the funds to buy new hives, but if this keeps up I'm going to have to let some future swarms go native for lack of hives to house them in.
Eye_Mac
The details:I live in northern Minnesota, 9 8 frame hives and 2 10 frame hives. No drawn comb except what was in the nuc packages. nucs installed May 1st. This is bear country so all 11 hives are in a 16x16 area surrounded with cattle panels and electric fence. The first swarm left the capture hive and went native. The 2nd and 3rd have stayed but we added a couple frames of brood to the capture hives. The swarms don't appear to be abandoning the original hives but splitting. The swarms have been spaced about a week apart with the latest swarm happening on June 28th. That one was my first solo swarm capture as my mentor is out of town. It was a wet drizzly day, no extra hive bodies so I had to construct a brood chamber body from plywood to house the 10 spare frames I had before I could even start. No protective gear except the smoker. I was expecting to take a few hits especially with the weather. waited for a lull in the rain and did the capture... managed to avoid getting stung to boot installed a top feeder with 1:1 last night to give them a boost building comb and they seem to be settling in to stay.
It's cool that I just doubled the number of hives I own because I had the funds to buy new hives, but if this keeps up I'm going to have to let some future swarms go native for lack of hives to house them in.
Eye_Mac