Our First Swarm has arrived!

Busy Busy Bees

Memorial Day is just another day in the busy busy buzzin life of a honey bee. 

Today was brew day! The guys brewed 40 gallons of beer and during all the pictures of beer brewing I took time out to photograph our busy busy bees takin care of some pollination! If you don't enjoy bee pictures, now might be the time to stop looking cause I took a ton of pictures and here is but a few of those pictures..........

Bees are SO impressive!!!

Hive Entrance of a Swarm colony transfer Top Bar Hive

This is a very strong colony of bees that was brought in from one of our swarm traps. They were transferred into the Top Bar Hive a few minutes before this video was taken. They are adjusting very nicely to their new home and quickly learn the "ins and outs" to their new location.

Bee Swarm Caught using a bait hive Video of the Transfer

Transferring a colony of bees from a swarm trap into a Kenyan Top Bar Hive. Inside the bait hive, we put a small super frame with old black brood comb and the bees absolutely loved it! As you can see in the opening picture, the black comb was a huge hit with the swarm! We also used lemon grass oil to bait them.

Bryan Caught a Swarm with his Top Bar Hive Bee Swarm Trap!!

Bryan has been so excited to try and catch a swarm this year to add to our back yard. Basically a swarm trap is built to lure in bees who are trying to find a new home for their colony. 

 And here it is! These sneeky little bees decided not to go inside the trap but to congragate on the outside of the trap and start building their new home there. 

This is all the closer I decided to go...eventhough "they say" that bees will not sting when they are swarming. Ummm, ill just take my chances from a safe distance with a good zoom!

Under normal circumstances the bees would go inside the box and then Bryan could have just sealed up the entrance, unscrewed the box from the tree, and brought the whole thing home. But in this situation the bees were all on the bottom so he had to get another box to drop the bees into so he could bring them home that way. 

Get ready... Give the box a good thump or two...they all fell into the lower box...

Make sure they are there...Close the lid and we are off!

By the time we got home it was getting quite dark so I only got one good picture. All he really did at this point was to open the box and dump them into the top bar hive! And by morning they were off and foraging!