Saturday, May 5, 2012

The Swarm

Hello everyone, this is Steve, Sue's husband and this will be my first ever blog.  This evening after working my normally scheduled midnight shift, and working the Granby Road Race I slept for a mere 4 hours.  At about 5:00 P.M., my mother-in-law called me at the house.  It's a swarm!!!   Although somewhat excited, I was mainly exhausted and not feeling up to the task.  But Sue came home, loaded me up, got me a Dunkin Donuts coffee and I was ready to go.

I'll give just a brief background about my newly found hobby.  In August, 2010, my father-in-law, Sue's dad, Richard died after a hard fought battle with brain cancer.  When Rich died, he left behind many loved ones, animals, and about 11 bee hives.  I took it upon myself to face my fear of anything that could sting me, and take over the duties of co-beekeeper along with my brother-in-law Dave.

Last year we extracted about 73 pounds of finished raw honey.  Being novices in the trade, we lost many hives over the winter and are now down to 3 hives.  Bees are fascinating insects and are essential to agriculture for their role in pollination.  When bees feel confined, and are growing their colony in the spring, they swarm to find better locale.  The queen leaves the colony, with about 60% of the worker bees.  So, what does a bee swarm look like?  Take a look, and by the way these photos were taken by Sue who was standing behind us, and foolishly not wearing a bee suit.


There are several thousand bees in this swarm.  This swarm posed a dilemma for Dave and me.  They swarmed in between the rafters of one of the barns next to where their original hive is located.  The rafters were located at the higher end of the barn, about ten feet high.  Dave and I used the reliable John Deere tractor, and placed a new hive box on a grapple bucket lifting it just under the swarm.  We then leaned two ladders against the bucket so that Dave and I could sweep the swarm into their new home.  Here is a look of our setup


With everything in place, it was time to get down and dirty.  We literally had to put our hands, gloved of course, in the eye of the storm.  At first our plan was to come up under the swarm, and place them into the hive box.  Given the number of bees we would probably still be there scooping bees in the hive box.  Dave said, and I would agree, that the feeling of the bees was almost like a beating heart, you could feel the fluttering of the swarm.  Our plan changed to just putting our hands toward the top of the rafters, and pushing down on the swarm.



Unfortunately, we were not able to do this without some casualties.  When a honey bee stings or dies, it releases a pheromone to let the rest of the colony know there is danger.  Soon, all you can hear is the distinct hum of bees flying near your ears.  After the initial sweeping of the swarm, Dave and I backed down the ladders and looked at our progress.  We also looked at Dave's gloves, if he didn't have them on I think he would be in a little pain.  Take a look, all of the little white sacks you see are the venom sacks from the honey bee.  Once a honey bee stings she (because workers are females, and male or drones don't sting) loses her life.


After the first sweep, we were able to get most of the swarm and hopefully more importantly the queen in the hive box.  The majority of the swarm were in the hive box, the bees you see on the corners are fanning it down hopefully getting ready to make it their home.


Dave and I decided to let the swarm calm down before doing our second sweep.  This time, we used a long putty knife, which was Sue's idea, to push the bees into the hive box.  This proved to be very effective.  That's me scooping, and Dave next to me.



Dave finished the scooping, and even though we didn't get every single bee, which you won't, we were confident the queen was in the hive box.  If we are right, the rest of the bees still on the rafters will move to the hive box with their queen.  When everything was done, here is what we had in the hive box.  The queen hopefully made her way down to the lower box to start making brood, and before you know it we will now have a fourth hive!


Two of our three hives have honey supers which are ready to harvest, so stay tuned and stop by to buy some when it's ready just in time for allergy season!


3 comments:

  1. Great job! I was hoping we'd see something about the big swarm. Very interesting. I couldn't do what you did, even with the protective equipment :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. From Sue: Great job on the blog Steve. Well except for the part where you call me foolish :) Not wearing a suit means not having to do any of the work. Also, I stayed far enough away that I didn't have any bees near me so I didn't need one (that's what zoom is for). Anyway, it was fun watching you guys work. I hope all of your bees settle in soon. Oh and I like your little sales plug at the end :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Cool.

    How come you couldn't use smoke to calm them down?

    ReplyDelete