Swarm again today.

I’m assuming it was the other (larger) existing hive, as it was a big one. Once again, they landed in a tree in the backyard, just a branch over from where last week’s swarm went. Sent me scrambling for equipment – there was no way they were gonna fit in a nuc. The first big shake out of the tree filled the nuc easily three inches deep in bees, and it wasn’t more than maybe 2/3 of the swarm. I got a 10-frame deep set up (my last one on hand) and dumped them in there.

I’m happy to note I have finally seen one of my queens. I ended up clipping a couple of feet of branch down to get the end of the swarm, because bees kept flying back out of my box into the tree – the queen was deep in there among some leaves and I couldn’t get her to shake out. Once I cut the branch and gave it a good shake while securely in the ground, I got the last of the cluster into a box and I was able to find the queen scurrying around. I’m 100% certain I got her into the hive.

They’re definitely keeping me busy. I’m working on arranging my first outyard – a friend on the other side of the subdivision wants to have a hive in his yard. I will probably move last week’s swarm there in the next week or two. They seem to be doing well. Today’s swarm should be able to get a good solid start, and if everything goes well I hope to have enough honey this fall that I get sick of processing it. That seems like it would be a nice problem to have. I had an audience of three for this swarm capture, so I’ll have pictures soon. I’ll update this post when I can add proof I finally actually spotted a queen.