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Thank Goodness Night has arrived. Bees Swarms, Balling of Queens

1366 Views 2 Replies 2 Participants Last post by  CentralPAguy
Thank Goodness, night has arrived. What an adventure today has been. I don't think I could take much more.

1) Went to Beeyard to check for mated queens in nucs.
2) Got there, saw swarm in a small tree with two different dangling groups -- Got Nuc and smacked the swarm into Nuc - However only one dangling group
made it into the Nuc and other fell to ground. Put Nuc on ground with
hope that the fallen bees would walk into Nuc and enjoy their home.
3) While working on the swarm capture, I saw another Swarm develop above
my hives. And it swirled its way basically on top of me. You really could
see the boundaries of the bees as it moved thru the air. I placed an
open deep with foundation only and placed it on the ground about 1
foot away from nuc swarm. Girls landed on it, Alot went into the deep,
but alot massed on the outside.
4) Carried both nuc and hive back to the beeyard.
5) Opened up my first nuc and saw my mated queen being balled, stung,
bitten. Looked further and saw a small virgin queen also running in my
nuc. Not sure if mated queen will survive.
6) I wasn't sure why large amounts of bees remained clustered on outside of
deep, so I had nothing to lose and put the virgin queen from the nuc
directly into deep. She ran inside.
7) Bees evaporate from swarm nuc.
8) Opened up second nuc and found another mated queen being balled. My
thoughts are that when I brought the hive and nuc back into the yard
that alot of the stragglers landed on the landing board and went inside.
While trying to rescue the balled queen (not sure why her bees didn't
defend her as I just thought that they would), I suddenly couldn't find her
anymore on the frame.
9) Saw yet another swarm of bees develop underneath a SBB. As I didn't
want to break the hive apart at that time, I reached up and grabbed
large clusters of bees underneath the SBB and tossed them into the nuc.
And then I saw a queen walk right into the nuc. She went in and then
came out and then went back in. Quite a few Bees followed her in and I
was so excited. I had the nuc opened and then saw her on top of the
frame and then she was gone. Easy Come, Easy Go. She flew to who
knew where. I watched to see if bees would follow, but they got
swarmy, but they didn't really move away. Now my thoughts are
wondering if she might have been the missing queen from my second nuc.
10) Removed Hive from SBB and smacked swarm underneath SBB into nuc.
This time they stayed.
11) Checked Deep to see why large amounts of bees remained clustered on
outside. Bees were all over the foundation. I sort of pushed the bees
on the outside into the deep. Assume that they will stay.

Other than that, it was a fine day in the neighborhood.
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Dang I wish I had read this last night now I am so tard I wont bee able to work the bees today :lpf:
Dang I wish I had read this last night now I am so tard I wont bee able to work the bees today :lpf:
lol - I didn't realize how long the post got. Now you know why, I was glad night came. :)
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