Wow that is awesome. Wish I could find a tree like that.
Another Swarm Capture
Finally wised up and have been carrying a 12 bar TBH nuc with me so that I can collect them right into the hive they'll be staying in instead of into a box and then dumping them into a hive in the dark. Pretty much a textbook capture. I brushed as many of them as I could into the hive and closed it up, putting it right against the post they'd be clustered on. 95% marched right in during the 20-30 minutes I was there observing. Helps that there was a light rain. All I did was mist them with some really light sugar water before I knocked them in. Probably about 2#.
On a side note, does anyone have a good way of knowing roughly where the queen may be in a cluster? I've seen videos of guys hand scooping bees out of the cluster and into a box looking for the queen, but that seems daunting and overly disruptive. What other behaviors are there for bees around a queen? After I was putting the top bars into the nuc as I got to the last couple bars I noticed a "parade" of bees that were crawling at a good clip with purpose. They kept climbing over the ones in front of them. Most of the others were pretty calm, but these 50-100 bees were pretty excitedly running.
This is my third of the year. The first was "left overs" from a huge swarm and ended up with only a handful of bees that night. My last one started building queen cells on the open brood I gave them and have not built any additional comb when we looked. This one is about the same size. I'll put some comb with eggs/brood in tonight when I get them home. Hoping they have at least a virgin with them!
On arrival:
![Tree Bee Plant Insect Trunk]()
Just after closing it up:
![Tree Insect Grass Bee Honeybee]()
After a few minutes:
![Wood Bee Honeybee Tree Membrane-winged insect]()
The tree they swarmed from, you can see the entrance:
![Tree Trunk Woody plant Plant Environmental art]()
The homeowner wants me to do a trap out because he said in a couple of months he's going to have to kill them. His wife is scared of them. Says they have been there at least three years (who knows if constantly or not). Says there are "millions" of them sometimes.
On a side note, does anyone have a good way of knowing roughly where the queen may be in a cluster? I've seen videos of guys hand scooping bees out of the cluster and into a box looking for the queen, but that seems daunting and overly disruptive. What other behaviors are there for bees around a queen? After I was putting the top bars into the nuc as I got to the last couple bars I noticed a "parade" of bees that were crawling at a good clip with purpose. They kept climbing over the ones in front of them. Most of the others were pretty calm, but these 50-100 bees were pretty excitedly running.
This is my third of the year. The first was "left overs" from a huge swarm and ended up with only a handful of bees that night. My last one started building queen cells on the open brood I gave them and have not built any additional comb when we looked. This one is about the same size. I'll put some comb with eggs/brood in tonight when I get them home. Hoping they have at least a virgin with them!
On arrival:
Just after closing it up:
After a few minutes:
The tree they swarmed from, you can see the entrance:
The homeowner wants me to do a trap out because he said in a couple of months he's going to have to kill them. His wife is scared of them. Says they have been there at least three years (who knows if constantly or not). Says there are "millions" of them sometimes.
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I wish he didn't want to get rid of them.
I'd be more than happy to put up a few swarm traps and trap the swarms coming out of it for a few years just to get the genes. I need to do some reading on trap-outs though. It's about a 45 minute drive from home so I don't want to make the trip a hundred times if I don't have to.
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