Our First Swarm has arrived!

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!

Bee swarm removal

We have been wanting to get bees for a long time but have so much going on in our backyard already (most of which is completely new to us) that we have decided to wait a little while until we introduce bees to our little homestead. However, Bryan is extremely excited to get familiar with bee colonies and seeing as one of his friends started his first colony this year, Bryan jumping in to help out and learn! On craigslist there are quite a few ads for "free bees". Basically, a hive has "swarmed" and has taken up residence in a location that the property owner is not very happy with a colony of bees living like a tree or inside a wall.

• "Swarming is the natural means of reproduction of honey bee colonies. A new honey bee colony is formed when the queen bee leaves the colony with a large group of worker bees, a process called swarming. In the prime swarm, about 60% of the worker bees leave the original hive location with the old queen. This swarm can contain thousands to tens of thousands of bees. Swarming is mainly a spring phenomenon, usually within a two- or three-week period depending on the locale, but occasional swarms can happen throughout the producing season." - as stated by the trusty Wikipedia!

In this case, Bryan found a strong hive that was located inside the wall of someones barn. They didnt know how long the hive had been there, but once the wall was cut out it was obvious they had taken up residence there for at least a year if not more. Before digging in, Bryan and Nate took a look at the situation to get a better idea of where to start cutting out the outer wall.

Nate gives the "thumbs up" and they are ready to get suited up!

After taking off board after board they could see the hive was very well established and going strong!

Now that they outer wall is out of the way they can start removing the honeycomb. There are different methods of bee removal but Bryan and Nate chose to slowly remove the comb piece by piece bringing bees along with it. Once the comb was safe in the boxes they were able to go back and brush off any remaining bees and gently put them into the box with the comb as well.

The process took several hours but once the comb was all removed they bees were attracted to the box so they were able to close up the box and bring the bees to their new home.