Can't wait for swarm season!

[Barbarian]

I live in a suburban area. There are several beeks and feral hives within flight distance.

I believe that a few days before a colony swarms some scouts go out looking for a suitable new home. It is possible that when the swarm emerges it can go straight to a new home.

I like checking the external activity at my home bait hive. When I see scouts around the bait hive, I am half expecting a swarm to arrive in the next few days. Half expecting ..... it doesn't always happen.

[iddee]

Agreed.  I have watched them leave the hive, follow them to the hollow tree 40 feet up. They never slowed down.

[CpnObvious]

While I've never, in my life, seen a swarm... I'm preparing for swarm season.  I'm planning on hanging a total of 6-10 bait hives in several locations.  I have built four full size deeps so far and I finished assembling my first 40 homemade frames tonight (using Scott's method as a guide: http://www.worldwidebeekeeping.com/forum/index.php/topic,97.msg50630.html#msg50630).

My question here is if I'm making a mistake using 10-frame hive bodies as bait hives?  Would I be better off building 5-frame nuc-size boxes?  There seems to be quite a mix of what people choose to use.  What are the pros and cons of using the bigger or smaller hive bodies?  An obvious con would be the amount of foundation being tied up in the 10 frame boxes.

Do swarm sizes vary in size, as a general rule, from Northern regions to Southern regions?  I am in Massachusetts (yes, there's still snow on the ground... But it is going away )

[Jen]

Cpn, here is three great pics of my first swarm last year. I Love Swarms    Enchanting

[CpnObvious]

That's just crazy, Jen!  I don't want mine to swarm... I want to catch other people's, or feral, swarms.  The bees will do what I want, right?

[Jen]

  You are cracking me up Cpn    I want you to know that if you walk out into your bee yard and there are 10,000 or more bees in the sky.. just sit back and enjoy the moment. What's done is done. Watch for where they land, when most of them are all together in a clump, Go Get Them! It's Fun!

Oh! and by the way. It takes a swarm less than a 1/2 hour to flow out of the hive, hit the sky, and land. So keep your eyes peeled on your property because you may not know that it ever happened. The bees are at their most docile at this time of swarming, you can stand right in the middle of the swarmin the sky, the bees don't care about you at this time, they are searching for a place to land the queen.

[iddee]

""There seems to be quite a mix of what people choose to use.""

Yes, but there's very little mix in what research shows. It shows a deep or just a bit more is the bee's preferred size. Those who use nucs do so for their own convenience, not the bees. They likely miss most of the larger swarms and only get the smaller ones.

[Perry]

I agree totally with Iddee on this one.
Swarm traps are best at the size of a deep or bigger. Dr. Thomas Seeley has written probably one of the most extensive books on the subject of swarming, "Honey Bee Democracy", and he points out the optimum size and shape, etc.
I had a swarm in my backyard last year, and when I shook it (actually, used a bucket and pole to get it out of a high tree) it would not entirely fit in a single deep, it probably would not have made the cut in regards to their choice as a suitable home.

[CpnObvious]

I agree totally with Iddee on this one.

Makes sense and that was kind of my opinion... But there's so many people doing such different things I figured I'd ask. So while I'm at it:

If you get a call that your bait have has life, do you rush over or leave it for a few days/weeks?

Do you trap hem in there for a couple days to "force" them to accept their new home?

Do you find the queen and cage her for a few days?

I REALLY hope all this prep work I'm doing pans out!

[Jen]

I got many tips last year when I had 10 swarms to deal with, that's why I love this forum so much is that you get several ideas to choose from. This is how I found what worked for me. After I caught my swarms and put them into the hive, I put a queen excluder between the bottom board and the deep for about 4 days. I had very swarmy bees last year, even the swarms were swarming. So locking down the queen like that made a huge difference in keeping the hive from absconding.

Just a few days ago I caught my first swarm this year. While the bees were settling onto the branch, I ran into the house and posted my first swarm. Both Perry and Ef said, "Don't leave the swarm out there, Go Get Them! they could abscond by the time you get back to them."

If you watch JPthebeeman vids, you will see him try and find the queen and when he does he puts her into a queen clip right away. Then he moves the swarm where he wants it and puts queen back into the nest of bees. I was ready with a queen clip in case I found her. I didn't find her until I peeked into the hive 4 days later. She was the green marked queen that I bought last year. I was so happy to have her back, she makes lovely sweet bees.

[efmesch]

I left home this morning about 9:30.  Before getting into the car and driving off, I took a peak at some empty hive equipment (stacked deeps with some built and some unbuilt frames in them) and saw bees snooping around,  I shifted the top super back a little bit to make a small entrance slit and left i hoping-----
I got back home around 5:30 and went straight there to seee what had transpired while I was away.   YEP!!! The swarm had moved in.  It was too late in the day to organize the new swarm and set up the hive so I left them as is.  The picture I took is from this morning after I had opened the slit to entice the bees.  If all goes well, tomorrow Ill add a few more pics of the swarm before and after organizing them.

[Perry]

Hey CpnO
If I had a swarm move into a bait hive I would move it the evening I discovered they were in there, whether it was that day or a week ago. Why wait, they may abscond, you never know. Better to bring them to your property and maybe add what they might need, like space, sugar syrup to hold them, etc.

Ef, couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. When we first moved to the valley I had the same thing happen. It really doesn't get any easier. 

[Slowmodem]

Hooray!   

[CpnObvious]

Thanks for he advice, Perry!

EF, I'm very happy for you!  It's great that it went that smoothly!

[efmesch]

Thanks Perry, Slowmodem and Capn.  As for that swarm that moved in on you Perry, I'll match you---it couldn't have happened to a nicer, more deserving guy.

I have very little fear that this swarm will move out.  It has more than any swarm could ask for---plenty of room, built and unbuilt frames, with remnants of pollen and honey in many of the built frames.  Since the stack is four supers high, I had no way of telling how large a swarm it is.  That discovery will have to wait till tomorrow when I open the hive and reorganize and compact the occupied frames to set them up in the minimun space they require ---why waste equipment that could seduce some more swarms?  The swarming season is not yet over.
  If I find that the swarm is too small to merit a full hive on its' own, I'll consider merging it with another family.

[iddee]

Hiving a swarm yourself, and having a swarm move in is two ENTIRELY different events. When you hive a swarm, a queen restrainer is a useful item, whether a cage or an excluder on the bottom board. When a swarm moves in, they are likely at home for good. No restrainer needed. After all, they chose the site, so have no reason to leave.
Congrats, EF, at our age, we need all the divine help we can get.     

[Slowmodem]

If I find that the swarm is too small to merit a full hive on its' own, I'll consider merging it with another family.

Could you make a nuc with it and possibly sell it?

[LazyBkpr]

Its that good Karma coming back around Ef!!

   I DO use smaller boxes, of the fifteen or so boxes I put out, I have 4 of them that are nuc sized..  I put those up last, because the bigger ones usually wear me out..
   I took a larger box out of a cottonwood one evening at dusk..  I ended up hitting the ground, with the box landing on me..  it wasnt pretty..  Hiking across the crick, down the tracks, then down to the driveway where the truck is parked, carrying the ladder, AND a box full of angry bees isnt much fun.. it takes a little of the excitement out of it..    I have tried to limit my box size a little since then..  I also try to limit where I put the boxes.. meaning if I can stand on my truck tailgate to screw the box to a tree, all the better!   There will always be tose perfect spots that require a bit of hiking though.

[efmesch]

I got to the swarm this morning: here are some pics:

I opened the roof and saw that the swarm didn't reach that high, so I filpped back the top super.


Here the main body of the swarm is exposed.



In the process of reorganizing the frames, I spotted the queen---looks like she's young and mated.
 
Initially I had some doubts about her having been mated but the way she carried herself, slowly and carefully, it was obvious that she wasn't a virgin.


If you look toward the bottom left of this sheet of foundation, you can see how much wax the swarm put on it (look for the lighter color of the new wax and the deeper cells relative to the imprinting on the foundation).

Bottom line---the swarm was a nice one, not small, but not a really big one either.  I decided to keep it as it was and to build it up ---- until I found that one of the two earlier swarms I got this spring was queenless and had laying workers.  Before this swarm gets settled down in its' present position, I intend to move it (tonight) to the site of the queenless swarm, place it on the stand and put the queenless on top.  Tomorrow I hope to shake the bees off all the frames of the upper, queenless hive and have them merge by coming "home" to the swarm.

All comments and criticism welcome.

[Jen]

No newspaper transition? just curious