Help my first swarm!

2265 Views 9 Replies 6 Participants Last post by schmism, Jun 17, 2010

schmism

Discussion Starter · Jun 16, 2010 (Edited)

So im out letting chickens out and i hear this BUZZ! like a thousand bees in the air.... guess what... it was thousands of bees in the air.

I assume its a swarm before it lands.

I run inside and grab the camera and start shooting and get some video of it landing in a branch about 8' off the ground!

ok i said, i can do this. I change into some long sleves and grab the latter and my empty hive that died off over winter.

long story short, i now have this sitting on the ground by my pool. what now?

how long do i let it sit there?

the other bees that were flying (i dropped half the bunch as i cut the branch loose and tried to hold on to it) seemed to have moved over to the hive.

how long till i button it up?

when can i move it?

If im fairly certian (although did not personally see the queen) i have her, how far can i move the hive and still have the stranglers find her?

the current location of the hive is about 50' from my permant hive location, so thats well outside the 3' or 3 mile rule so now what?

update: that pic is about 10 min old now.... i went outside to check on them and 95% were in the hive, very few still flying around. so i slid the inner cover around and put the outer cover on.

need some guidance about moveing them.... I do have a second bee yard i was wanting to start, should i just move this swarm there now?

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NasalSponge

· #2 · Jun 16, 2010

You can button them up and move them now if you want. There may be a few left behind but that happens espically if you do a swarm grab on the other side of town. The 3 3 rule doesn't yet apply but it will tomorrow so I would move them soon.

Nice catch!!

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schmism

Discussion Starter · #3 · Jun 16, 2010

thanks for the quick response.

by tonight ill have the youtube vid posted as well as the other stills.

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dtompsett

· #4 · Jun 16, 2010

I just caught my first swarm on Sunday afternoon. Went out Monday evening after work to move them. Moved the hive 50ft to the bee yard, did some other work, and a quick check of the old location showed several hundred bees crawling all over the logs I previously had the nuc box sitting on. So I moved it back, left it for 30 minutes (at this point it's starting to get dark), and when most were inside, I covered the entrances, moved the box again... then left the entrances mostly covered so the bees would have to work to get out and reorient themselves.

One day later, I swapped the hive from a nuc box to a regular 10-frame deep. Put an escape on the front of the nuc so they couldn't get back in... and by the time I left them, 95% of the stragglers were into the new hive.

Gotta love the sight of fresh comb. Pulled one of the frames out that was just a bare frame with a piece of foundation starter strip... 2 days after catching them, that frame is 75% drawn out, and they've already filled a bunch of it with honey!

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peacekeeperapiaries

· #5 · Jun 16, 2010

dtompsett said:
2 days after catching them, that frame is 75% drawn out, and they've already filled a bunch of it with honey!

The question is has the queen started filling it with brood. A swarm will draw a lot of comb quickly thats what they are "trained" to do, but if you did not get the queen or she was injured in the process, you will get some drawn frames full of honey and a few weeks from now you will have no bees. If you have drawn comb she should have started layin very quickly, confirm you have eggs, larvae, and a queen.

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schmism

Discussion Starter · #6 · Jun 16, 2010

peacekeeperapiaries said:
If you have drawn comb she should have started layin very quickly, confirm you have eggs, larvae, and a queen.

my setup that they moved into was a one deep and one med both with 10 drawn out frames of comb.

I assumed the laying queen from (im guessing its my hive) would have moved out with the swarm so she should start laying again within 24hrs because she has space?

how soon should i check the new hive (now in its new location in a new bee yard) Should i give it a day or 2 and check? a week?

I suppose this is why people talk about the benefits of a marked queen...

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schmism

Discussion Starter · #7 · Jun 16, 2010

couple more pics, will have to dig out my vid editing softwere before i upload to youtube.... need to stitch the 3 short vids together first.

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dcross

· #8 · Jun 17, 2010

I always try to give a swarm at least five deep frames to draw, to good an oppurtunity to pass up!

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david logue

· #9 · Jun 17, 2010

I have a question? How did you post your pictures without using photobucket or flicker? My pictures are the correct size 640x480.

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schmism

Discussion Starter · #10 · Jun 17, 2010

2 ways to "post" pictures.

1) attach them to the post in which the physical .jpg files are hosted by Beesource on there server.
2) attach a link to the .jpg file that is otherwise hosted on the internet someplace else . (in your case you listed to major "free" immage hosting sites)

In my case i own my own personal website from which i can "host" my own pictures without having to rely on the 3rd party hosting sites.

So in short, my pics are hosted on my personal website.

I simply provide 2 different sized versions, a "thumbnail immage" and a "full size" immage. With a bit of understanding on how HTML works and the forum softwere works, you can combine both the "link" and "img" tags together to form a "link" to a full size immage which itself is a smaller immage (instead of text name)

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