One of the top ten things you don’t want to hear as a thunderstorm is rolling in: “You’ve got a lot of bees in your tree”. I thought, “you’ve got to be kidding me”. But when I went out into the backyard, this is what I saw.

The storm was rolling in, so I had to leap to action. I threw on the bee suit, grabbed the neighbors ladder and a hive box and shimmied up the ladder. There’s nothing like balancing on a ladder, holding a hive box in one hand and a bee brush in the other and fighting a stiff breeze.

I knocked most of them into the box and managed to make it down the ladder. I set the box on the ground, next to a couple of clumps of bees that missed the box. It was amazing how the bees in the box immediately started fanning at the hive entrance and the bees on the ground made a “bee line” to the hive. I cut it pretty close. If you listen, during the last few seconds of the video, you can hear the rain starting to hit the metal top of the hive.

I’m really hoping that this hive is done swarming. I will open the original hive and check the brood chamber and maybe insert some empty frames. In the meantime, I have three weak hives instead of one strong hive. Oh well. Just like the Chiefs, I’m in a rebuilding year. Except I hope I don’t have to string as many together as they have.

I spent last night keeping my fingers crossed that the queen is in the new hive. There’s not really much I can do if she’s not, except attempt to re-queen, but I’m not sure if I’m really up to that. I got up this morning and checked to see if the hive was still there. It was. Then, after it started getting light, significant activity was noticed in front of the hive. Obvious orientation flights were taking place, which is a good sign. It doesn’t mean the queen is present, but at least they are getting on with business.

A little later in the morning, I opened the hive to put in the frames I left out last night. I had purchased some “all in one” plastic frames that contained foundation of a smaller, more natural, cell size. But the topic of smaller cell size is for another post.

Anyway, I opened the hive and pulled one of the empty frames (I neglected to glue a starter strip to the top of my frames). The bees were hard at it making wax. This process is called “festooning”. The bees join legs and hang from the top of the frame and place wax into the frame. Another good sign. Not necessarily of the presence of the queen, but the girls were keeping busy.

So I put the missing frames in and buttoned the hive up. Now, I’ll just wait and see.

I guess you either keep bees, or they keep you. I knew that I should have checked on my backyard hive more often than I have. I just didn’t want to disrupt them. I got them last July and I really wanted them to do well, so that I could harvest some honey this year.

As a result of my “hands off attitude”, they swarmed on me. I knew that I should have taken measures to prevent the swarming activity. They swarm when the brood nest becomes crowded. I had read that if you enter the brood chamber and place empty frames between the frames filled with brood, you can make room for expansion and prevent a swarm. But I kept putting it off. That is, until my son called me and told me to hurry home because there were “bees everywhere on the deck”.

When I arrived home, this is what I saw. The hive had moved into the roof of my deck. I had left an empty hive with some drawn frames on the deck, just in case this kind of thing were to happen. But I had really intended to place it closer to the hive, not leave it on the deck. Oh well! Good intentions.

So Dylan and I hurried to try to capture them before they headed off to greener pastures. This took some courage on his part. He is not that fond of bees, since his first encounter with them when we cut a wild hive out of an old trailer the summer before and he got stung just a few minutes into the operation. Click here for the story.

I’m sure it’s not the first mistake I made. But the first mistake I noticed was that I used a screened bottom board on the swarm box. As you can see from the picture, the bees were confused about how to enter the hive. They could smell through the screen, unlike a solid bottom board. Hence, they balled up underneath the hive, instead of in it.

After they settled down a bit, Dylan and I took a solid bottom board and placed it under the box, then brushed the bees from the bottom of the screened board, into the box. Clumsy, awkward, amateurish, but hey, that’s how we roll!

Here, Dylan displays the proper stance for looking for the queen. He advised that it does help if you make buzzing sounds as you search. We’ll let them settle down for a while, and hopefully, the queen found her way into the hive, and we have an additional hive.

I decided to clean the observation hive yesterday. This is the hive that I drastically mismanaged last fall and caused it to abscond (Observation Hive – Lessons Learned?) I got out the hair dryer and warmed up the propolis, in the hopes that I could slide the glass up without breaking it. To my surprise, after about 2 – 3 minutes of heating, the glass slid up and off.

I cleaned up the burr comb and placed the frames into an empty nuc I just purchased. I’ll use this as a bait hive, or I may use it later for a split. The empty observation hive, I’ll use to house the Lindsborg bees I got a few weeks ago. I’ll crack the log open and place the comb in frames and put them in the observation hive. Hopefully, I’ll get the queen and they’ll flourish.