Swarm!

The fun never stops around here. At least I didn’t get stung today (yet).

I was a bit drowsy from antihistamines this morning, so didn’t feel up to an excursion with Karin & Kate. Perking up a little later, I figured I needed to work on wooden ware for the bees. It took a little while for the loud humming to attract my attention, but finally I looked out to see what the bees were up to. A cloud of swarming bees is impressive. I guess none of the neighbors noticed, because I heard no panicked shrieks.

After running in several directions at once, I pulled together my brain cells and developed a plan of action. I had heard that vanilla has chemicals that are the same as some that bees use in their homing pheromones, so I drenched some cotton pads with vanilla extract and waved them upwind. I have no idea if that got their attention, but they soon settled on a branch of our apple tree. I quickly made some sugar syrup and got my gear together.

Not knowing that the bees were likely to hang on the tree for a while, I was in haste, and didn't take any photos until after the action was over. Too bad. The big cloud of bees was impressive, and the hanging cluster was pretty nifty.

I climbed the ladder, sprayed the bees with syrup (it distracts them) and cut off the branches from which they were hanging. I shook them into a hive box (my last one!), sprayed them with more syrup, put a vanilla pad on the landing board, and watched them call their sisters to their new home. Almost immediately they had their butts in the air, fanning homing pheromones. They’re so cute. Bees remaining on the branches that I cut off marched into the hive, and the few still in the tree soon came down. Within a half hour they were pretty much settled.










Tonight after they tuck themselves into bed, I’ll move the hive to a more permanent spot. Right now they’re under the apple tree. I’ll probably take a box of honey from the hive they left, so they have more food. I don’t have any more hive boxes with which to house a feeder jar.








Next day: new location

This is probably “Elizabeth” and her courtiers who swarmed. I’m not sure yet if they swarmed because they decided to before I removed the other queen cells, or if I missed some. I’m waiting for an answer from my local beek group. I’ll probably be combining hives soon, because it’s doubtful that all three involved in this affair have viable queens. Gotta start coming up with some more queenly names. Maybe I’ll branch out into mother goddess names, too. Inanna, Durga & Isis have possibilities. But I hate to name my queens before they lay.