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.