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.