Post date: Apr 09, 2013 1:28:47 PM
Post date: Apr 09, 2013 1:28:47 PM
A colony inhabiting a large mature tree threw an impressive swarm yesterday which ended up lighting on the corner eaves of a lovely couple's home. I got my ladder out and set up to ascend with a hive box to drop the bees into. I was only able to drop about half the colony into my box since only half of it was free hanging. The other half was up on the roof and inside the gutter. As it turns out this activity caused the swarm to take to the sky once again in a massive cloud of buzzing chaos. They re-grouped about 25' up out on a limb of a tree.
After moving my ladder I went up to the 3' long cluster of bees hanging from and weighing down the branch and carefully cut the branch. Down the ladder I came one careful step at a time. Once on the ground I laid the swarm into my hive box and covered it up. Within minutes the hive cover was covered with hundreds of fanners fanning out the scent of the colony inside and their new home. This colony is now in my apiary and the foraging honeybees are out en mass performing wide swinging orientation flights to lock in the geo-location of their new hive relative to the Sun. With today's Spring temps reaching 82 degrees this colony will get a great start today at building up their honey stores and ramping up new brood production!