Recapturing The Swarm

Well after the posting about our new hive 'π' I have to give a little update - but without photos because things kinda went out of control not giving anytime for using the camera.  The main part of the day here at home was me, the old duffer, pottering around the house, taking the recyclables to the county dump, doing the blog and other internet stuff, then my laundry hung out to dry, and my small but major task of the day, cleaning out the clogged drain from the basement to the 'grey water' catchment basin at the rear of the house.  Carol comes home just after I finish up the drain and we together go out to check out the bees.  Opening the new hive to see if the new queen has finally left her shipping cage - Bam!! - the hive is basically empty of bees, maybe a half dozen or so out of the ten thousand more or less that we had installed the other day.  They had been there earlier in the day but now they had 'swarmed' - that is the queen had flown away to better pastures so to speak and the bulk of the bees had followed her pheromones on a 'swarming' flight looking for a new home.   Carol and I started looking for the swarm which according to the book usually do not go too far and will be found clustered on some object nearby.  We started looking in bushes and small shrubbery around the hive and then gradually farther afield with out much luck and fading hope.  For some reason I happened to look up into the spruce tree that I had planted years ago and which is now perhaps twenty five feet or so in height.  And there about ten to twelve feet off the ground was a buzzing cluster of honeybees settling in for the evening.

Carol called several experience bee keepers for advice but no one was at home so we just followed the directions in the book - but like all written directions that seem to assume the best there was no mention of climbing a tree to capture your swarm.  I got an old aluminum ladder about fourteen feet or so in length and propped it in against the tree near the swarm, and with pant-legs rubber banded around my socks, and my helmet mask I climbed up with lobbers in hand.  The big problem is the lobbers take two hands to cut the limb and I had no third hand to hold the branch once it was cut through,  But forge ahead and cut away with the branch suddenly falling and bees erupting in buzzing gyrations everywhere - down the ladder, grab the branch and pound it against the bucket with some bees falling into the bucket but seemingly more just flying madly away, lid the bucket quickly with a small piece of old plywood, dash about fifty feet to the hive body with the top already off and some working frames removed to create an opening into which I try to dump the bees from the bucket, then re-lid the hive to keep them in.   We go back to the spruce to see how many bees were left behind and it looks like they all were.  Carol suddenly spots a cluster a little higher in the spruce and above the old cluster, we must not have gotten the queen in our first foray so up I go again with the cutters, lobbers, what-ever, it takes two hands and I still need three.  This time I have a smaller limb to cut and even though it is not finesse it is a better job I'm doing so that when it is still just barely hanging on I grab the branch with one hand, the lobbers with the other, and use the top side rail of the ladder for the third hand and apply pressure. Even though some bees spill from the cluster when it breaks free, this time I descend with the cluster reasonably intact and immediately smack it into the old canner-cooker I should have used the first time and manage to get about half of this cluster into the pot and then into the hive.  We both think/hope that the second cluster had the queen and that she was redeposited into the hive for those bees which were in swarming clusters around the hive were steadily making their way into the hive.  In addition the still large milling group of bees at the spruce were attracted to the lobster pot which we had taken back in hopes that the queen smell - the pheromones - would attract the fairly sizable group of hovering bees at the spruce and it did attract several hundred of them.  Again the canner to the hive and wait while they too transferred into the hive, then repeat with the canner back to the spruce.  By now it is dark and we are hoping we successfully recaptured the queen AND that she will be content to remain in the hive.  Updates to come in the days ahead.  Norvellhimself!