House Guests

Wouldn't you love it if unexpected, uninvited guests arrived at your house and planned on moving in to live with you?  Well, if you don't care for a couple showing up unannounced, then how about when 30,000 show up?  :)

Hey - look on the bright side - they bring their own sweetener for breakfast and tea time!!!!

Meet your new roommates - 

"The Swarm"

 Swarming is the natural process by which beehives reproduce themselves.  When they start to feel crowded in their current home, they start thinking about and making plans for swarming.  They will first try to raise a new queen by starting many queen cells.  Once the bees have a new queen (the first to emerge from the queen cells kills the other competitors), the old queen will leave the hive with a large portion of the bees.  Before she can fly away, the old queen's attendants put her on a diet, to thin her down.

Once outside the hive, they will land at a temporary spot and send out scout bees to look for a permanent home.  I think this swarm thought they found their permanent home.  See the hole above the window?  Good thing I arrived before the queen moved in there! Then the homeowner would have needed an EXTERMINATOR rather than a beekeeper!

For this swarm, I used my bee brush to knock the bulk of the bees into a hive body I had already prepared in advance.  Hunter and I hoped the queen was in the center of the large cluster that had just been brushed into the box.  I passed the box down the ladder to Hunter on the ground and put a lid on it for a few minutes, while waiting on the bees flying around to attempt to recluster themselves.

Next, Hunter used a cardboard box to gather more bees from the wall and I dumped them into the hive on the ground.  If I had already been positive I had captured the queen the first time, then this step would not have been necessary.  If the queen was indeed the hive, the bees would begin to 'fan' her scent at the entrance, which would draw the remaining bees to the hive.

When we felt sure the queen was not on the wall, we left the hive on the ground until the next night to allow the bees time to move into the hive.  We arrived after dark 24 hours later to remove the hive to its new location. 

Since then, the hive is doing well and the queen is busy building up the bee numbers.  This hive will not produce any surplus honey this year, since it was caught so late in the season.   What I can expect from it is that they will draw a box of new comb.  When a swarm arrives at its new home, the bees can draw new comb at an amazing speed, because they have spent quite awhile gorging themselves on honey for the move! 

The picture below is the result of a swarm not finding a proper location to build their new home (for Ohio's climate anyway) and no one noticing until they had put a lot of work into their comb.  We were called to remove it by the property owner before the hard winter set in, which would have finished them off  This was our first year of beekeeping and sadly for the bees this new beekeeper did not know what he was doing.  I think I crushed the queen between the combs, and the hive did not make it. :(  This picture does not do justice to the exquisite work they had performed on that natural hive.

My son, eat thou honey, because it is good:  and the honeycomb, which is sweet to thy taste:

So shall the knowledge of wisdom be unto thy soul:  when thou hast found it, then there shall be a reward, and thy expectation shall not be cut off. Proverbs 24: 13,14