# Sticky  My 2022 Swarm Adventures



## AR1

Have your fun. Not even a dandelion blooming here yet. Light snow falling.


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## Cobbler

April 17 - I got a call from the beekeeper in catch #1. Her bees swarmed again. I was right in the middle of Easter festivities, so I had to wait a few hours before I could duck out. I figured my chances were good that they would stay put, as it was already cooling off.

The cluster was about the size of an inflated Whoopi cushion, and it was conveniently located on an arbor maybe 8 feet off the ground.

I arrived at 7:00 and the bees were tightly clustered, settling in for a cold night. I decided to put the box right next to them on top of the arbor and see if they could just walk in. I sat and watched for about 15 minutes, also looking for the queen, but only a dozen or so bees made their way into the box. Finally, I decided that I better get moving before dark, so I scooped the bees into the box. The rest of the stragglers soon wandered in.

our weather has been strange. This is the first day since that first catch that the high temperature has reached 60°. Night time Lows have commonly been below freezing, and we had what counts as a pretty good snow storm in this area. Definitely not swarm weather. I thought there might be a chance today, but when the High barely even hit 60 and not a lot of sunshine and 30° last night, I wasn’t expecting much. We won’t have another 60° day for another week, so I’m not expecting much action. However, when it does warm up there are going to be a lot of swarms eagerly waiting for the chance to move.


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## BEE J

Wow! That's so cool! I've put up 3 swarm traps but the scout bees don't seem to be visiting them. I'm in southern VA so I would think bees in the area are starting to swarm. Maybe I should buy a package so I don't lose the whole year. Any thoughts?


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## GregB

Cobbler said:


> April 17 - I got a call from the beekeeper in catch #1. Her bees swarmed again.....



Speaking of swarming.
April 18 - 100% chance of snow.
Up here it is safely another month to worry about swarming.


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## BEE J

GregB said:


> Speaking of swarming.
> April 18 - 100% chance of snow.
> Up here it is safely another month to worry about swarming.
> 
> View attachment 68669


I think your right! I'm no expert but I have a feeling the bees won't be swarming yet. Down here though I think it's a different story.


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## Cobbler

April 24 - This one has a story to go with it, so it is a real adventure.

my brother from out of town stopped by for the first time in many years. He had never seen my bees before, so I was out showing him and then went back in the house for a few minutes. Maybe 15 minutes had passed before we were back outside saying goodbye, and he commented how loud the bees were. I mentioned that it’s fun to have bees buzzing around before looking up to see a Swarm moving in from across the neighborhood.

They came and landed in my back neighbors tree right next to my beeyard about 10 or 12 feet up. They were in a spot that was difficult to reach with my bucket and extension pole, but it was fairly easy work shaking them into a bucket while standing on a ladder.

If my brother hadn’t been there, I would have completely missed it. Luckily my brother did see it and I got a good sized swarm number four.












These are not my bees. I don’t have anything big enough to swarm, let alone to cast a Swarm this big.

That is really perplexing to me, because there are no other beekeepers close by, and I thought I had a real good knowledge of all of the nearby feral hives. None are within 100 yards of my house. So if it is true that bees cluster within 100 yards of the original hive, then I must be missing a nearby hive. Which makes me re-examine whether they could possibly be my own bees. I just don’t think so. We were out there looking at the hives a few minutes earlier. Nothing usual, and they were all the same traffic level when I checked them again while the swarm was airborne. The only hive that was anywhere near big enough to swarm was split a couple of weeks ago and had capped queen cells two days ago. Even with a virgin queen scenario, would a virgin queen be ready to fly two days after hatching out? And, that hive was just five frames of the youngest eggs and larvae and five empty frames after the split. There shouldn’t even be any new bees since the split. I think there are as many bees in the swarm as there were in that hive, and the traffic outside that hive still looks strong and the same as before.


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## Cobbler

Trivia Time

What is wrong with this photo of a swarm that is still in the process of being hived?


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## GregB

Cobbler said:


> Trivia Time
> 
> What is wrong with this photo of a swarm that is still in the process of being hived?


They Nasonov too much to my liking - as if something/someone important is missing still.
Should just walk in (especially if the Q is inside already).


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## BEE J

Cobbler said:


> Trivia Time
> 
> What is wrong with this photo of a swarm that is still in the process of being hived?
> 
> View attachment 68826


You got me.


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## ncbeez

Cobbler said:


> Trivia Time
> 
> What is wrong with this photo of a swarm that is still in the process of being hived?
> 
> View attachment 68826


A second queen is on the front of the box?


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## BEE J

ncbeez said:


> A second queen is on the front of the box?


Where? Did you see one?


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## ncbeez

BEE J said:


> Where? Did you see one?


Just a little to the right of the bee with pollen and up just a little. However it may just be an older bee. It seems to have very little hair if any on it's thorax but it is not big for a queen. I am searching for possibilities because whatever it is it is not obvious to me.


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## ncbeez

ncbeez said:


> Just a little to the right of the bee with pollen and up just a little. However it may just be an older bee. It seems to have very little hair if any on it's thorax but it is not big for a queen. I am searching for possibilities because whatever it is it is not obvious to me.


And then I enlarge the picture and see one to the far left that looks more like a queen than the other one. Especially her legs. How long will we be in suspense? I wonder.


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## GregB

ncbeez said:


> *And then I enlarge the picture* and see one to the far left that looks more like a queen than the other one. Especially her legs. How long will we be in suspense? I wonder.


OK, let me enlarge the picture too (otherwise the picture is not useful).

Sure enough.


> They Nasonov too much to my liking - as if something/someone important is missing still.
> Should just walk in (especially if the Q is inside already).


Here is your queen - NOT in the hive.
They are going to budge and fan until the Q is inside.
I suspect there is no queen inside - she may have ran outside again if entered at all yet.


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## BEE J

ncbeez said:


> Just a little to the right of the bee with pollen and up just a little. However it may just be an older bee. It seems to have very little hair if any on it's thorax but it is not big for a queen. I am searching for possibilities because whatever it is it is not obvious to me.


Me neither. He's stumping us .


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## BEE J

ncbeez said:


> And then I enlarge the picture and see one to the far left that looks more like a queen than the other one. Especially her legs. How long will we be in suspense? I wonder.


I can't see her. 🧐But I'm not that experienced with finding the different bees in a hive.


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## BEE J

GregB said:


> OK, let me enlarge the picture too (otherwise the picture is not useful).
> 
> Sure enough.
> 
> 
> Here is your queen - NOT in the hive.
> They are going to budge and fan until the Q is inside.
> I suspect there is no queen inside - she may have ran outside again if entered at all yet.
> 
> View attachment 68838


I think you got it Greg!


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## Cobbler

Trivia

Wow! That is pretty fascinating. My answer to the question was that bee loaded up with pollen. What’s a Swarm be doing with pollen?

However, I think Greg is also right. On the far left, with its head cut out of the frame, that looks like a queen thorax to me, and the red legs to go with it.

It’s funny what you miss in real time, and what you learn when you get others involved.


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## GregB

Cobbler said:


> What’s a Swarm be doing with pollen?


Pretty normal though.
Active swarms bring along few bees loaded with pollen - I did not even consider this as if something unusual. 
I observe this in real time when swarms land onto my porch.


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## GregB

Cobbler said:


> However, I think Greg is also right.


@ncbeez got this before me.
I just did not think of making the picture larger.
Once you blow the picture up a little - that queen stands out.


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## Cobbler

Trivia-

I checked my other photos and here she is again. Anyone still hesitant to call this a queen?










I am also intrigued by the idea that there was too much nasanov going on. I had always figured that the nasanov fanning was to call the bees toward the queen. I didn’t know you could have too much – that the bees might be calling the queen in.

Well, I waited a few more minutes after the photo before wrapping it up. By that time there were only a few bees still outside, so hopefully the queen is in the box. The bees are still in the box more than 24 hours after I put them there – only about 10 yards from the cluster site. I would think that if there’s not at least one queen in the box, then they would have left again to look for her. I’ll give them a few days to settle in then have a look inside.


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## Cobbler

GregB said:


> Pretty normal though.
> Active swarms bring along few bees loaded with pollen - I did not even consider this as if something unusual.
> I observe this in real time when swarms land onto my porch.


That’s a first for me. I’m going to look harder next time.


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## ncbeez

Cobbler said:


> Trivia
> 
> Wow! That is pretty fascinating. My answer to the question was that bee loaded up with pollen. What’s a Swarm be doing with pollen?
> 
> However, I think Greg is also right. On the far left, with its head cut out of the frame, that looks like a queen thorax to me, and the red legs to go with it.
> 
> It’s funny what you miss in real time, and what you learn when you get others involved.


Cobbler, your trivia challenge was fun! I wanted so much to be the first to answer with the correct answer that my first answer was probably wrong.


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## Cobbler

ncbeez said:


> Cobbler, your trivia was fun! I wanted so much to be the first to answer with the correct answer that my first answer was probably wrong.


I’m glad you enjoyed it. I had a lot more fun than I expected to. That really was some good work spotting the queen.

It is also nice to know that there are more than one or two people reading my swarm log.


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## GregB

Cobbler said:


> I checked my other photos and here she is again. Anyone still hesitant to call this a queen?


Right there.


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## plantman

Well Cobbler lots of people view your thread. Over 400 I think I saw last.Alot of people I'm sure come to this forum in general and do not post,because they may get cut off at the knees.Ive been here for years,,,never joined..Sometimes I wonder why I did..


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## BEE J

Cobbler said:


> It’s funny what you miss in real time, and what you learn when you get others involved.


 At least you had a guess. I didn't even have a clue😁! It really shows who's the pro and who's the rookie (me).


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## BEE J

GregB said:


> Right there.
> View attachment 68847


I have never remember seeing a queen before in my life, you might not want my opinion! It's not a drone, right?


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## BEE J

Cobbler said:


> That’s a first for me. I’m going to look harder next time.


I still can't see her. Can someone please circle where she is on the photo?


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## GregB

BEE J said:


> I still can't see her. Can someone please circle where she is on the photo?


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## BEE J

Oh yeah! Thanks! But why do you think the other bees are going into the box when she isn't in there? Do you think she'd about to enter?


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## GregB

BEE J said:


> Oh yeah! Thanks! But why do you think the other bees are going into the box when she isn't in there? Do you think she'd about to enter?


It is not the queen who leads the bees into the box.
It is the bees who lead the queen into the box.
Once she is in - they will have done their job.


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## BEE J

GregB said:


> It is not the queen who leads the bees into the box.
> It is the bees who lead the queen into the box.
> Once she is in - they will have done their job.


Ohhh. I get it! Man, this quiz really does show who knows their stuff. You got it all down, Greg! That's why we all bug you with are questions 😄 😄 !


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## Cobbler

April 27 - I got a call to relocate an established colony. It’s a long drive for me, and I have had limited luck in the past finding the queen when I do a cut out. Usually I have to leave the box and come back again. However, I learned that this colony was just in an overhang, but otherwise open to the elements. It wouldn’t require any demolition or reconstruction to the house, so I started getting excited about the opportunity. Fortunately I asked the homeowners to take some photos of the hive and the workspace. This was fortunate because when they went out to get the photos, they discovered that the bees had died. Sad for the bees, but it does save me a long trip. At any rate, I thought the photo of the hive was worth adding to my swarm adventures.










Update on The Swarm from a few days ago. I started convincing myself that these bees somehow came from my hive. It just seemed too strange that they clustered only about 10 yards from my beeyard and that queen was so slow in getting into the box. I started thinking that both of the queen cells in my split hive hatched out, and one of them decided to leave only a day or so after hatching. I finally got a chance to get out and look inside the split box, and it is bursting with bees. So much so that I added a second box. There is no way that any significant number of beers have left that colony. There really just is no possible way that the swarm was my bees


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## Cobbler

April 30 - Today is cold and rainy. The high temperature was forecast to be 55°. This is not a day for swarms. But, as we all know, bees don’t read the same manual we did.

last year I sold a nuc to a first time beekeeper. She soon found out that she is allergic to bee stings. She contacted me the spring to get some help selling her entire hive. However, she was slow to put it up for sale, and in the meantime she decided that she loves her bees too much to part with them, and that she would take extra precautions with her protective equipment and spend as little time opening the hive as possible.

i’m glad she enjoys the bees so much, but her approach is also a fairly good recipe for swarms.

and so, she called me today to ask whether I wanted to come over and collect a Swarm.









that is where the real adventure begins. I have never seen a Swarm cluster right on the original hive. I was worried that this might be bearding or maybe preparation for a Swarm, but maybe the queen had not exited yet.

I decided to collect the bees, then do an inspection on the hive to make sure everything was in order for natural requeening.

I got most of the bees into the box without much trouble.









But there was a good size clump of bees right under the old hive. I scooped these bees in smaller handfuls and placed them in front of my nuke box. As I did this, I happened to notice the queen run into the box. With that information, I now knew that I was dealing with a true Swarm, queen and all.

So I moved on to inspect the hive where I found a colony absolutely primed for swarming.









Check out all those Swarm cells. I left three or four of the cells on this frame and cut out at least a dozen more throughout the hive. The entire 20 frames were jam-packed with bees. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such heavy coverage on the frames. There were also quite a lot of bees hanging out in the super. In addition there was a ton of brood in all stages in nice, tight patterns. If this lady had wanted any more than one hive, she could have split this and had two very well populated hives.

my theory about what happened here is that this hive was primed to swarm, but we have had very poor Swarm weather all month. I guess it got to the point where they just had to Swarm regardless of whether. Also there were eggs in the hive. Maybe they were unsuccessful in preventing the queen from laying in order to shrink her up for Flight. For that reason, maybe she wasn’t able to fly, so the Swarm was cast and didn’t make it any further than the side and bottom of the original hive. I should mention that the cluster did appear to be a separate entity from the rest of the hive. It wasn’t like typical bearding where the bees are spilling out the door. The cluster was distinctly separate from the door and the hive bees coming and going.

This is a unique Swarm catch for me, because I know exactly how good the queen is before she even gets started for me. I was very impressed with the patterns and the quantity of bees in the hive. I also think it’s maybe a little poetic that I sold this queen last year, and now I have her and even more worker bees back. I don’t have to feel bad about letting such a great queen go.

This one is a keeper. She’s staying in my apiary this time around.


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## Cobbler

May 1 - Based on my experience yesterday, with bees eagerly awaiting any opportunity to move, I was expecting swarms again today even though the high temperature was forecast at only 62°.

The first call came while I was still at church. My wife likes to linger and chat a little, so nearly an hour passed by the time I arrived at the site.

A nice medium small Swarm on the side of a cluster mailbox. It really couldn’t be much easier.










I spent a couple of minutes looking for the queen, but didn’t see her. Can anybody find her in the photo? I went to my car, right there in the corner of the photo to put on my veil, and when I turned around they were starting to take flight. I tried to scoop what I could into the box, but they were off. I followed the cloud down the road and watched it disappear into some large trees.

of course, every swarm is a new adventure and there’s always something to learn. In this case I should’ve got there faster. Five minutes would have made the difference. At first I was beating myself up about spending so long looking for the queen. I am trying to be thoughtful and observant as I collect a Swarm. I feel like too often it’s a quick bump and dump and I’m out of there, missing the amazing occasion that each Swarm is.

however, as I thought about it more, I was probably right to be looking for the queen. They were so ready to go that If I had scooped them right into a box, They probably would have gone anyway as I waited for the stragglers to join the rest in the box. Finding and catching the queen was probably the only way to prevent the swarm from flying off at this late stage in the process.

Thinking back on the couple of minutes that I spent looking for the queen, I now realize that there was a lot of waggle dancing going on. I should have been aware of that and realized how close they were too consensus.

so, Swarm number six was a failure as I went home empty-handed, but still an adventure.

No sooner had I arrived back home when I received another phone call from almost the same neighborhood. I ran back over to find a nice medium size Swarm on an arborvitae hedge about 10 feet off the ground.










This was a nice thick cluster, so finding the queen would have been pretty lucky. I tried for a couple of minutes, then gave them a quick shake into my nuc box. That’s number six for the season.

Also, I can now confirm, as was pointed out to me above, that swarm bees do in fact carry pollen. This swarm had several of them walking around. It kind of makes me wonder were these foragers just returning to the hive when the swarm was cast, and they decided to join in.

It looks like tomorrow will be cold again, but the day after may be like today - high around 62°. Wednesday is going to be a big day with high temperatures reaching past 70°. I have been pretty casual about checking my traps so far, but after Wednesday I’ll probably do a thorough check.


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## GregB

Cobbler said:


> May 1


Cold as bone and windy - I was pruning the trees more - swinging on some tree tops and getting the sawdust in the eyes.
Needing to go around again checking the stores from any accidental starvations.
What swarms?


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## BEE J

GregB said:


> Cold as bone and windy - I was pruning the trees more - swinging on some tree tops and getting the sawdust in the eyes.
> Needing to go around again checking the stores from any accidental starvations.
> What swarms?


Wow, you must be pretty far north! The blackberries are blooming now, so maybe a month or so till summer really starts to show itself.


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## ncbeez

Cobbler said:


> May 1 - Based on my experience yesterday, with bees eagerly awaiting any opportunity to move, I was expecting swarms again today even though the high temperature was forecast at only 62°.
> 
> The first call came while I was still at church. My wife likes to linger and chat a little, so nearly an hour passed by the time I arrived at the site.
> 
> A nice medium small Swarm on the side of a cluster mailbox. It really couldn’t be much easier.
> 
> View attachment 68987
> 
> 
> I spent a couple of minutes looking for the queen, but didn’t see her. Can anybody find her in the photo? I went to my car, right there in the corner of the photo to put on my veil, and when I turned around they were starting to take flight. I tried to scoop what I could into the box, but they were off. I followed the cloud down the road and watched it disappear into some large trees.
> 
> of course, every swarm is a new adventure and there’s always something to learn. In this case I should’ve got there faster. Five minutes would have made the difference. At first I was beating myself up about spending so long looking for the queen. I am trying to be thoughtful and observant as I collect a Swarm. I feel like too often it’s a quick bump and dump and I’m out of there, missing the amazing occasion that each Swarm is.
> 
> however, as I thought about it more, I was probably right to be looking for the queen. They were so ready to go that If I had scooped them right into a box, They probably would have gone anyway as I waited for the stragglers to join the rest in the box. Finding and catching the queen was probably the only way to prevent the swarm from flying off at this late stage in the process.
> 
> Thinking back on the couple of minutes that I spent looking for the queen, I now realize that there was a lot of waggle dancing going on. I should have been aware of that and realized how close they were too consensus.
> 
> so, Swarm number six was a failure as I went home empty-handed, but still an adventure.
> 
> No sooner had I arrived back home when I received another phone call from almost the same neighborhood. I ran back over to find a nice medium size Swarm on an arborvitae hedge about 10 feet off the ground.
> 
> View attachment 68988
> 
> 
> This was a nice thick cluster, so finding the queen would have been pretty lucky. I tried for a couple of minutes, then gave them a quick shake into my nuc box. That’s number six for the season.
> 
> Also, I can now confirm, as was pointed out to me above, that swarm bees do in fact carry pollen. This swarm had several of them walking around. It kind of makes me wonder were these foragers just returning to the hive when the swarm was cast, and they decided to join in.
> 
> It looks like tomorrow will be cold again, but the day after may be like today - high around 62°. Wednesday is going to be a big day with high temperatures reaching past 70°. I have been pretty casual about checking my traps so far, but after Wednesday I’ll probably do a thorough check.


For a few years our Leyland cypress tree, which is similar to the Arbor vitae tree, was a "swarm magnet ". Not so much now that parts of it seem to be dying off.


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## BEE J

ncbeez said:


> For a few years our Leyland cypress tree, which is similar to the Arbor vitae tree, was a "swarm magnet ". Not so much now that parts of it seem to be dying off.


COOL! I put a trap in an eastern red cedar tree (i think) but no swarms caught yet. Still waiting. One of it's branches broke off too.


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## Tigger19687

Cobbler said:


> View attachment 68903


@jtgoral how's this pic for 'natural bee space' 

Super cool pic


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## GregB

Tigger19687 said:


> @jtgoral how's this pic for 'natural bee space'
> 
> Super cool pic


This is a good example where the "comb-to-wood" bee space has gone to infinity.
In natural (frame-less) setting there is only one type of the bee space - "comb-to-wood".
It is a variable thing (varying case by case) - where the minimal value is the bee size and the maximum value is infinity.


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## Tigger19687

GregB said:


> This is a good example where the "comb-to-wood" bee space has gone to infinity.
> In natural (frame-less) setting there is only one type of the bee space - "comb-to-wood".
> It is a variable thing (varying case by case) - where the minimal value is the bee size and the maximum value is infinity.


Exactly


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## BEE J

Tigger19687 said:


> Super cool pic


No kidding!


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## jtgoral

Tigger19687 said:


> @jtgoral how's this pic for 'natural bee space'
> 
> Super cool pic


Sorry I was looking at wrong picture, this one is cool


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## jtgoral

Tigger19687 said:


> @jtgoral how's this pic for 'natural bee space'
> 
> Super cool pic


On the picture divide the bottom of the stud into 4 equal pieces. This will be 3/8 of an inch. Draw this distance where there is the space between comb walls and you will find it.


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## Cobbler

May 2 - It rained almost all day today. I knew I wasn’t going to get any swarms today, but I was wrong - at least technically. The swarm arrived yesterday, but it moved out of the trees and into a slightly sheltered area between cushions on an outdoor couch today. The people live out in the country and didn’t mind the bees in the tree, but didn’t appreciate them as much when they took up residence on their couch.

I got out there after 8:00 PM to find a nice medium size Swarm all soaked and clustered up real tightly. 

.









I was able to gently pick up each of the cushions and scrape the bees into my nuc box. Only several bees even took flight. They were just too cold and tired.

Working slowly and gently, the whole process took maybe five minutes.

I figure it takes about an hour to go get a Swarm. This one was just about that with a half hour drive each direction. And they gave me $20 for gas. Nice. 

So, that’s a successful Swarm catch each day for three days in a row. I’m not sure I’ve ever done that before, and the next two days may give me a chance to continue the streak.


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## GregB

Cobbler said:


> So, that’s a successful* Swarm catch each day for three days in a row. *I’m not sure I’ve ever done that before, and the next two days may give me a chance to continue the streak.


Cobbler, you are killing it (again)!

I could really use this level of bee intake myself.


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## Cobbler

May 3 - The swarm season is on. I’ve caught swarms for 4 days in a row, today was a triple, and tomorrow’s forecast should bring the best swarm day yet this year.

#1 I was surprised to get a call so early this morning. It was only about 10 o’clock, cool, and cloudy. I’m pretty confident this one was not cast today. Medium small Swarm on a bush right at ground level. Luckily the bush wasn’t too sturdy, so it was an easy shake.


















this was at a car dealership so they were happy to have the problem resolved quickly. They gave me a $50 Visa card to show their appreciation.

#2 came in right after lunch. as I pulled up to the house, I looked out my window across the street and immediately saw where the swarm was coming from.










Cool feral hive in a big oak tree. The cluster was less than 20 yards away, again at the base of a bush. This time it was a very sturdy bush with lots of nooks and hard places to get the bees out of. However, it was also the biggest swarm I have seen this year. Definitely a 10 frame situation.


















I set out my tarp and mostly had to scoop one handful at a time. Eventually I had the vast majority of the bees in my box, but there was a small crowd intent on remaining in the nook of the trunk.

















As I was grabbing whatever bees I could, I suddenly noticed the queen, grabbed my queen clip, and nabbed her.









The man that had called me said he had only just discovered this worm today as he was mowing the lawn. But I also talked to a neighbor who said that she was pulling out of her driveway and ran into the swarm cloud on Friday. So, these bees were already in their fifth day outside the hive.

#3 - as I was leaving the second place, I noticed that I had a missed call. Good thing I noticed, because the message led me to a swarm on the same side of town. I arrived within an hour of when the woman said she spotted the swarm cloud moving in.

This one was a medium large Swarm about 15 feet up in a filbert tree, exactly where the lady said a swarm had clustered about 19 years ago.



















I used my bucket on extension pole and made quick work of it. However, a grapefruit sized cluster of bees was persistent about returning to the original cluster location. I bumped them off and dumped them in front of the nuc box a few times, but eventually I just snipped off that branch and brought it home in a separate bucket. The branch itself well go into the next swarm trap I set.

#4 doesn’t actually count, because I didn’t bring it home, but I stopped by one of my traps along the way and found that it seems to be occupied. There’s not a lot of traffic, but the bees do seem to be going straight in and straight out as opposed to the buzzing around and investigating typical of scouting behavior.

So yeah, the swarm season is on.


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## Cobbler

May 4 - I thought this would be the biggest Swarm day of the year so far. Temperatures up over 70° after a month of cold and wet with few breaks. I expected to have phone calls coming in all day. That didn’t happen. But there’s a little more to the story including an adventure.

A guy from the parks department called, and I was expecting him to start talking about a Swarm in one of the parks. It wasn’t quite what I expected. He started talking about finding my number on the bottom of a bee box. He was upset. But he was cool about it. He said he wasn’t mad, but made it clear that there was no way that having a bee box in the park was going to fly. It turns out that as he was making the call, he was standing in a massive cloud of bees. He later sent me both video and a photo. I can only share the photo on this forum.










sadly, that box has been hanging there for nearly 2 months. I’ve hardly seen any people at this park, and that tree is way on the edge of the park right up against the light rail track. The swarm event probably lasted 15 minutes, but Park security or maintenance just happen to be there right at that moment. Otherwise nobody would have ever noticed. Sad, because this was a new location for me this year, and I it seems like the kind of place I’d like to keep.

like I said, the guy was cool about it. He let me leave the box in place until dusk, but said that he’d be back first thing in the morning, and if it was still there, he’d call another beekeeper to take it away.

So, yes I guess my streak is still alive. I have caught a Swarm every day for five days in a row. I usually don’t count my trap catches for this kind of thing, because I usually don’t know when the swarm actually arrived.

I also got a call from my best pest control company. They referred me to a swarm across town. However, as I talked to the apartment manager where the Swarm was, I figured out that this was not a Swarm cluster. Take a look at the Swarm arriving, and another photo hours later. What does that look like to you?


















sadly for these people, they have some new rent free tenants, not a Swarm cluster.

so I saved myself a trip across town, but no bees for me.

While I was on the phone with the pest control guys, they mentioned that they had sent two other people my direction earlier in the day. Those people never called me. I wonder what makes a person want to save the bees enough to call somebody, but not enough to make the second call after being informed that I am definitely the guy that can solve the problem.

We are set for another week of cold and rain, so I expect this thread to cool off quite a bit. However I am still holding out hope that there is a Swarm or two that was cast yesterday and hasn’t found a home yet. I just need someone to notice their surroundings and give me a call. In the meantime, it’s time to make the rounds to check all of my traps.


----------



## GregB

Cobbler said:


> May 4


I hate you, Cobbler.
In a good way. LOL

Okay, okay.... Give us a couple of more weeks.


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## GregB

Cobbler said:


> A guy from the parks department called,


Yeah...
Few years ago I asked for a permission from my city to be hanging the traps in the city parks. They said: "Hmm.... Maybe not". 
The county parks did give me the same permission, but after a couple of years I got tied of "renewing" my permit. 
Nowadays it is just sneak in - sneak out - no questions asked - no phone numbers posted.

Your trap does look to be way to obvious.


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## Cobbler

GregB said:


> Nowadays it is just sneak in - sneak out - no questions asked - no phone numbers posted.
> 
> Your trap does look to be way to obvious.


This trap is unusual for me. Most of my traps are in natural areas, not parks (still technically part of the parks department). I will also say that the photo is taken almost standing on the light rail tracks behind the park. It really is a forgotten corner of the park.

I am a big supporter of the idea of just putting boxes where nobody knows or cares. That is my typical MO. I really liked this neighborhood for its large amount of mature trees. I guess I got a little too bold in my placement.

I am glad I had my number on the box. The guy said that he had just received a list of beekeepers from the office and was about to call one to come take the box away when he noticed my card. I would have lost my trap - unless I was the one he called. That could have been funny playing along. Anyway, I am on the beekeeper list at the parks dept.

If I were ever called to clean up after another beekeeper, I would definitively make the effort to get the equipment and bees back to the owner. I hope others would do the same. Maybe that part of it could be accomplished just as easily by writing my number inside the box

I am a big supporter of the idea of just putting boxes where nobody knows or cares. I really liked this neighborhood for its large amount of mature trees. I guess I got a little too bold in my placement. Hopefully this episode doesn’t lead to more awareness of my 23 other boxes hanging around town.


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## AR1

GregB said:


> Your trap does look to be way to obvious.


I am thinking the way it is attached to the tree might make park staff...unhappy. I put a couple out in a park last year, no luck there, but they were carefully disguised in brush.


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## Cobbler

May 9 - I finally got that call I was looking for back on Friday the 6th - the day I had pegged as the biggest swarm day yet this year, but no calls came.

There’s no way this swarm was cast in the last few days - too cold and rainy. It just goes to show how a swarm can go completely unnoticed, right in someone’s yard.

This one was way across town, so I asked the homeowner to Pitch in $10 for gas. As I left, she handed me a bill, which I pocketed without looking at it. When I got home, I discovered it was a $100 bill. Very generous.

The Swarm was about 10 feet up in a tree. The homeowner said it had been there at least 24 hours. It was an easy shake into my nuc box, but quite a few bees were pretty persistent about returning to the original spot. Other than requiring several additional shakes, the whole thing went off without much adventure. That’s number 12.


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## ncbeez

Cobbler said:


> May 9 - I finally got that call I was looking for back on Friday the 6th - the day I had pegged as the biggest swarm day yet this year, but no calls came.
> 
> There’s no way this swarm was cast in the last few days - too cold and rainy. It just goes to show how a swarm can go completely unnoticed, right in someone’s yard.
> 
> This one was way across town, so I asked the homeowner to Pitch in $10 for gas. As I left, she handed me a bill, which I pocketed without looking at it. When I got home, I discovered it was a $100 bill. Very generous.
> 
> The Swarm was about 10 feet up in a tree. The homeowner said it had been there at least 24 hours. It was an easy shake into my nuc box, but quite a few bees were pretty persistent about returning to the original spot. Other than requiring several additional shakes, the whole thing went off without much adventure. That’s number 12.
> 
> View attachment 69195


Nice swarm! And money to go with it!


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## Cobbler

May 10 - So there I was, driving a couple of youth and another leader to a gardening service activity with the church when I get a Swarm call. I told them I was really sorry but I was booked up for the evening and I’d have to come first thing in the morning. It turns out they were calling from a food truck and the swarm was on their canopy over their picnic tables. It wasn’t good for business. They begged me to come as quickly as possible. The other leader pulled it up on his phone and found that it was pretty much right on our way, and he wanted to go see a whole pile of bees. So I drove over to take a look . At least I would know what I was dealing with. 

When I arrived, I found that it was a tiny, little swarm, hardly the size of a tennis ball. I asked the food cart people for takeout box, stacked three picnic tables on top of each other and scooped the bees into the takeout box barehanded. Then I proceeded on to the regularly scheduled activity only about 30 minutes late, but with a trunk full of bees.

























As I was finishing up, I noticed a ton of dead bees on the ground. I am pretty sure that these bees were sprayed, but the guy who called me wasn’t offering any explanation. The Swarm is so small, it’s questionable whether or not it’s even viable. Nor do I know whether there is a queen. I’ll wait a few days and find out.

While at the gardening activity, I got another call from a woman who sent me a video of a Swarm on the sidewalk. In my experience, that’s a good indication of a damaged queen. However the swarm looked big enough to be worth my effort to drive across town. It was too late tonight, so I asked the lady to put her recycling bin over the swarm for shelter and told her I’d be there tomorrow morning.


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## Cobbler

May 11 - I didn’t really expect to see much action today with a forecast high of only 60° and a storm rolling in for the afternoon, dropping tomorrow’s high to barely more than 50°. But, that’s the fun thing about chasing swarms. You never know how The day will turn out. My day turned out to be a triple.

#1 was the swarm on the sidewalk that the lady called me about yesterday. She had placed her recycle been over the Swarm, and the bees, as I told her was likely, migrated up the sides of the bin overnight. when I arrived, all I had to do was bump the bin into my nuc box.









These bees must have been there a little while, getting pretty desperate, because there was quite a lot of wax on the sidewalk. You can see some of that in the photo.

#2 was a beekeeper who had two hives. One of them had swarmed about 10 days ago. He collected that swarm with help from a friend, but in the process he took about seven stings, found out he was allergic, and had to go to the emergency room. The same hive had swarmed again yesterday, and he wasn’t interested in catching this one.

I was impressed by the size of the Swarm, especially considering it is a secondary Swarm. I debated for a minute weather I could fit it and a five frame nuc, or did I need a 10 frame box.










This one was up about 12 feet in the tree, which was on there slope, so I decided not to mess around with a ladder. I used my bucket on extension pole, which worked great. I was able to bump all of the bees into the bucket, but quite a lot of them insisted on flying back to the cluster location after I dumped them in the nuke box. So, I repeated the bump several times and eventually got most of them into the box. I didn’t see the queen, but since I had all of the bees in the bucket when I dumped them into the box, I feel pretty confident she’s in there. I hope so, because these are nice, orange Italian bees. That’s unusual around here. The vast majority of our bees are Carnis. 

By the way, I was catching a ton of very dark queens last year. That is not the case this year. We are mostly back to normal, Carmel colored queens.

And as a second by the way, this guy needs to sell his hives, so if anyone is interested in a couple of established hives in the Portland, Oregon area, let me know.

#3 came in while I was grocery shopping with my wife. It was a private elementary school, and so they were understandably freaking out. They had to have indoor recess. Not only did they have a swarm cluster, but they also experienced the swarm cloud moving around through the playground and other areas.

I rushed over thinking this was going to be a big one. In fact, they said that it was actually two swarms. You never can tell what people think is a lot of bees. People get excited when they see more than two bees at once. That’s what happened here. The two swarms were probably just one swarm on two branches close together. Each cluster was only maybe softball size.









of course, I had an audience at the window, which I always enjoy. These were probably less than 10 feet up, so it was a quick bump with my bucket and pole. I tried to bump both clusters at the same time, but the upper cluster completely broke up and went flying upward. I dumped the bees on a tarp at the entrance of my nuc box and knelt down to look for the queen. I saw her wandering around and tried to nudge her toward the box. I had forgotten my Queen clip. I guess she didn’t appreciate the nudging, because she took off flying. It’s not very often you get to see a queen fly, but I didn’t really want to either. Luckily she soon came back and I watched her walk into the box. She’s probably about the smallest queen I’ve ever seen. I am guessing she’s unmated.

I have never had more than three Swarm calls in one day or caught more than three swarms in one trap location in a year. I think both of those records can be beaten.


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## Cobbler

May 14 - I went to the farmers market early this morning. I wanted to buy my tomato plants and be done in case I got a swarm call. It was a beautiful day for swarms, but nobody called.

On the way home from the market I stopped at one of my swarm traps that I haven’t checked in a while. Good thing I did, because it was occupied. It was still early enough in the morning that the bees were barely moving, but the few that I did see were flying right in like they knew that what they were doing. Because the traffic was light, I popped the lid just to make sure.

I brought the trap home this evening and transferred the contents into a nuc box. Two frames mostly drawn out plus the bait frame. So three frames mostly full of brood and resources. Plenty of the brood was capped, so I’m guessing the swarm arrived a couple of weeks ago. Not a big swarm - not big enough to draw and fill five frames in the first bird cycle, but once that first brood starts hatching out, it’ll quickly be a great five frame nuc.

Update on some swarms from above. That tiny swarm from the food truck canopy that I thought had been sprayed was in fact queenless. The big Swarm from the allergic beekeeper completely absconded. That’s really the first time that’s happened to me. However, the bees seems to have gone right next-door to that small Swarm that was under the recycling bin. That box is now full of bees. The question will be which queen is in the box if any.

Also, that swarm that clustered right next to my Bee yard – the one from the trivia photo has zero brood, but the hive is packed with eggs – many with multiples in one cell, but all at the bottoms of the cells. It has now been 20 days since I caught that swarm, so apparently it was a virgin queen that took a long time to start laying. Any other possible explanations? I find it a little weird that a virgin queen would be able to lay up three pretty solid frames before even one egg hatches.


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## GregB

Cobbler said:


> It has now been 20 days since I caught that swarm, so apparently it was a virgin queen that took a long time to start laying. Any other possible explanations?


Pretty sure virgin.


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## Cobbler

May 15 - I have the first data point on the box size experiment I am doing this year. Last year I had 22 swarm traps all of the same design and roughly 40 L in size. This year I added two more traps of approximately 60 L. Each of these was placed in locations where I caught three swarms last year and some of the biggest swarms. because these are such great locations, I also placed standard size boxes within about 30 yards of these larger boxes so that I wouldn’t miss out on my best locations by using boxes that were too big for the bees to choose. The new boxes have the assumed disadvantage of being new wood, but that has never been a problem for me in the past. I have no problem attracting swarms to new boxes when baited with LGO and old comb.

So, the first data point is that I have trapped a swarm in one of these locations. The Swarm chose the smaller, standard size box. It is also worth noting that in this location there is a feral bee tree which died out late last summer and which has a history of being the first location in the area to catch a swarm each year. These colonies have very poor winter survival rates. I gather that this is because the broken-off tree allows rain in from the top and hot air to escape upward. There is also a standard five frame nuc box that some other beekeeper hung in the tree right next to the bee tree more than a year ago. So, there are four options for a swarm to choose - each no more than 30 yards from one to the next. It is also worth noting that there is a beautiful feral hive in a giant oak tree maybe 200 yards away. I’d be happy to attract a swarm from that hive. Hopefully I did. This is also the location where last year a neighbor reported that a giant swarm of bees had moved into/onto my trap, but then left. I assumed this was because the box was too small for the colony. Three other swarms chose that same spot and stayed.

I brought this trap home today and transferred the colony into a five frame box. It is a very nice, big Swarm with bees completely festooning all five frames and many bees on the walls and in the space below the frames. I’ll have to add a second five frame box tomorrow. The point is that this swarm was plenty big enough to inhabit the 60 L box nearby.


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## GregB

Cobbler said:


> The point is that this swarm was plenty big enough to inhabit the 60 L box nearby.


Still though - it is hard to beat the trap that *smells like home*.



> The new boxes have the assumed disadvantage of being new wood,* but that has never been a problem for me in the past*


But you did not have two traps side-by-side:

a used one
a new one.
Let see which one smells better.
The used one hands down.
Not a fair test.


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## Cobbler

GregB said:


> Still though - it is hard to beat the trap that *smells like home*.
> 
> 
> 
> But you did not have two traps side-by-side:
> 
> a used one
> a new one.
> Let see which one smells better.
> The used one hands down.
> Not a fair test.


That’s all true. It will be difficult to make a truly fair comparison until the bigger boxes get propolized and smelly.

It makes me wonder whether having an old box nearby may prevent the bigger new boxes from ever being chosen.


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## GregB

Cobbler said:


> That’s all true. It will be difficult to make a truly fair comparison until the bigger boxes get propolized and smelly.
> 
> It makes me wonder whether having an old box nearby may prevent the bigger new boxes from ever being chosen.


Well, nothing wrong with priming the new boxes on your own.
You have plenty of propolis and slum-gum. 

Just this last Saturday, I primed the brand new top bars with propolis tincture for a beginning beek. I always have a jar of propolis tincture for the utility purposes. 
Nothing wrong with melting propolis either.


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## Cobbler

GregB said:


> Well, nothing wrong with priming the new boxes on your own.
> You have plenty of propolis and slum-gum.


The boxes are definitely primed. I apply both beeswax and propolis tincture liberally and toss in all kinds of slum gum, old bits of comb, and maybe some au de queen.


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## GregB

Cobbler said:


> The boxes are definitely primed. I apply both beeswax and propolis tincture liberally and toss in all kinds of slum gum, old bits of comb, and maybe some au de queen.


OK, best you can do.
I still can see something is different between the true authentic bee smell and our crude ways to fake it. But out side of keeping the bees for a season in a box - the best you can do is fake it.


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## Cobbler

5/16 - After yesterday‘s adventure with the larger size swarm trap, I had to go check my other 60 liter trap. And sure enough, we have a second Datapoint in the trap size experiment. This time the swarm chose the larger box, and interestingly enough, it is a pretty small Swarm – about the size of a large grapefruit. So far the Swarm size to box size preference is not at all what I had expected. Maybe this swarm is just really optimistic.

I retrieved the trap and transferred the bees to a nuc box. They seem to be particularly gentle bees. I was able to transfer the inhabited frames along with a handful of bees on the wall of the box into the new box without any protective gear. Hardly any bees even bothered to take flight during the process. I also saw the queen, which was quite small, presumably a virgin.

we are headed into plenty of warm weather with little rain over the next 10 days, so I should be busy.


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## GregB

Cobbler said:


> So far the Swarm size to box size preference is not at all what I had expected.


What I can tell (and this is obvious) - a very large swarm will not fit into a very small trap.
At which case this very large swarm is likely to leave.
We don't want that.

And so it is best to err on the larger size (especially so because expense-wiser or labor-wise the difference between the 40L trap and 60L trap is negligible).

Otherwise they can take whatever trap they want - no difference as long as they take it.

Example of a very large swarm (about as many bees are inside already). I ended up breaking this swarm into two normal, strong colonies. Very appropriately, they ignored a 40-50L trap standing 4 feet above this brown hive - too small for the swarm.


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## Cobbler

The question. Is whether bees will choose some other cavity if they judge the trap to be too big. We all know of colonies living in ridiculously large spaces - as inside sheds. Large size is obviously not a complete deal breaker. 

The 40 liter idea comes from Seeley’s work. Does anyone have personal experience showing any preferential difference between 40 and 60? - other than the fact that large swarms have been seen to leave traps that are too small?


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## GregB

Cobbler said:


> Does anyone have personal experience showing any preferential difference between 40 and 60? - other than the fact that large swarms have been seen to leave traps that are too small?


I did not bother to study that - side by side.
But neither did Seeley, the expert.
Look carefully - he never studied 40 and 60 side by side.
He only concluded that 10L was too small, 100L was too large, and 40L was about right. 
Unsure where that 40L idea came from.
Nothing about 30, 50, 60, 70.....


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## Cobbler

That’s right. His sizing work seemed like it had far too few data points.


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## GregB

Cobbler said:


> That’s right. His sizing work seemed like it had far too few data points.


Live of the Bees, pg. 117.
He discusses his prior work there.
Pretty much the focused on the smaller sizes - 10L, 17.5L, 25L, 40L.
It was established that the 25L and 40L were "readily" taken.
The smaller sizes - not.
Also the 100L sizes were not taken - as reported.

Even though he mentioned having 70L sizes included into one trial - no conclusion on the 70L sizing reported (?). What is up there? Just crickets.

Basically, anything between 40L and 100L remains uncharted territory where 40L is good and 100L is bad. In fact, if Seeley does refer on pages 117-118 to others studies where 80L was compared to 40L. 80L was found to be used in some trials and ignored in other studies.

I can guess, the 80L size comes from (40x2) - one box vs. 2 boxes. It was convenient to test 40L vs. 80L using existing equipment.

But really, no one bothered to study the sweet spot *- *what really happens between the 40L and 80L. One thing for sure - *60L* happens to be *right in the center* of the 40L-80L range.
Also conveniently for the Lang operators - this is just a deep box + medium box - there you got your 60L trap.
What is up with this trials to just include a simple 60L test while already having bothered with the testing at all?


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## Cobbler

May 22 - I’m really in the mood to catch a swarm. The weather has been great for a few days, but no calls. I finally got one today, and even though it was across town I decided to go for it. It was a nice size one about 10 feet up in a tree, but spread out across sort of a mat of small branches.










I couldn’t really use a ladder, because the swarm was hanging over a retaining wall. It was 10 feet up on one side, but more than 15 feet on the other side of the wall. I went with the bucket on extension pole method.

When I bumped the cluster, most of the bees fell into the bucket and I dumped those into a nuc box, but a second portion of the bees were tossed into the air by the mat of branches. At first, I didn’t worry about this. I figured I probably got the queen in the bucket and the other bees would just cluster back up where they were before.

I was wrong. They did start clustering back up for a minute, but when I turned around, they were gone. They had decided to Move on. The swarm cloud was in the neighbors yard and was starting to move across the neighborhood. I dropped my gear and started running after the cloud.










I have always heard that a swarm will cluster within about 100 yards of the original hive. I chased this one at least a quarter mile across the neighborhood. They were moving so quickly that I figured they must know where they were going. Were they already in the finals stages of preparation before moving to their chosen new home?

Eventually, they stopped and just hovered for maybe 10 minutes. For a while I thought they were going to cluster at the top of a 40 foot tall tree. However they moved over a little bit and clustered about 7 feet above the roof of a house.

I knocked on the door of the house and explained the situation to the homeowner who was completely caught off guard but agreed to let me climb on his roof. Meanwhile the homeowner at the first spot called to let me know that the bees in my box were leaving and flying all over his yard. With that information, I was pretty confident that I didn’t have the queen. I asked the homeowner to toss a beach towel over the entrance of the nuc box to try to save whatever bees were still there.

I ran back to the first place, and drove my ladder and gear back to the second place. I was able to shake the bees from a fairly sturdy branch into a bucket, but I didn’t have my bucket lid, so the bees immediately started escaping while I tried to fit a screen over the top. At this point I had about half of the second cluster. And an equal amount of bees were re-clustering. I got another bucket and repeated the shake. The results look like this. Do you think I have a queen in one of these buckets?











At this point I was pretty confident where the queen was, so I decided to take my chances and dump that bucket into the nuke box. Then I dumped the other bucket at the entrance.










The bees headed right in. I hustled the last of them into the box and hurried back to the first place. I set this new box next to the first and I removed the towel. The bees in the first box headed right for the second box.

including the Half hour drive each way, I think I spent a little over three hours on this one, but I got a nice five frame nuc size swarm of unusually yellow bees. Italians, I assume.

This was a strange one. I have never seen a Swarm cluster take off after being disturbed, nor have I seen a Swarm move off leaving more than half behind. I guess every swarm capture is different, but this one was really different.


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## Cobbler

May 23 - while I was out on errands this morning I stopped by one of my traps. This one is in a new location for me this year, and I had started to lose faith in the location. However, the trap was either occupied or heavily scouted. Because it was only 9 o’clock, I am guessing these were not scouts. That’s a good way to start off a day. 

A little later, I got a call from a woman who was housesitting. She had a swarm clustering under her eaves.










As I got the details, she let me know that the cluster was suddenly getting much smaller.










I knew what that meant. This was not a cluster, but new residents inside the wall.

I decided to go check it out anyway. As soon as I got up there, I could smell beehive. This was not the first time this space had been occupied. In fact there was wax debris scattered outside.

No bees for me, but I did my good turn for the day diagnosing the situation and providing advice and referrals.

While the lady was texting me the photos above, a friend that is hosting a trap at his house was sending me the exact same kind of photos.









I picked up that trap this evening. I wasn’t able to replace it, because the trap I have ready to swap into place was getting a ton of scout action on my back porch today. I figured I had better leave it there.

I’ll move the new swarm into a nuc box tomorrow, see what kind or swarm it is, and take the trap back to my friend’s house.

And, I also stopped to check another trap along my travels and saw bees carrying out debris. I assume a swarm has moved in there too. The traps are finally starting to fill up, and I’m running out of space to put more hives. I built 4 more nuc boxes over the weekend, but it looks like those will be full soon. I may have to start leaving swarms in the traps. A good problem to have, but that just means that space is the factor limiting the number of swarms I can catch. Last year I missed a lot of the prime Swarm season because all my traps were full.


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## William Bagwell

Cobbler said:


> This was a strange one.


Yes, thanks for sharing! What's up with the thumbnail picture of the kids on a bridge? Audience or a stray picture got included?


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## GregB

Cobbler said:


> May 22 - I’m really in the mood to catch a swarm.


Cobbler, I enjoy readings your swarm chasing articles. 
Though I would not have let you climb onto my roof.
You know - those are just bees.


PS: who are those kids on one of the pics?


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## BEE J

That's totally unbelievable, cobbler!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!😲😲😲😲😲😲😲😲😲😲😲😲😲

I wish I could have seen the look on that guys face, when you climbed up his roof! 😄😄😄

I am glad you didn't get hurt, and that your having a great swarm season!

Keep Buzzing, BEEJ


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## JustBees

Cobbler said:


> May 23 - <snip> I built 4 more nuc boxes over the weekend, but it looks like those will be full soon. I may have to start leaving swarms in the traps. A good problem to have, but that just means that space is the factor limiting the number of swarms I can catch. Last year I missed a lot of the prime Swarm season because all my traps were full.


Don't forget they will outgrow the nuc's quickly, have gear ready or sell some off.
Steal some brood to boost a strong one, one strong colony can bring in more nectar than 2 small ones.


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## AR1

William Bagwell said:


> Yes, thanks for sharing! What's up with the thumbnail picture of the kids on a bridge? Audience or a stray picture got included?


Audience, waiting to see if the man falls off the roof, covered in stinging bees...hopefully one of them has 911 on speed dial.


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## GregB

AR1 said:


> Audience, waiting to see if the man falls off the roof, covered in stinging bees...hopefully one of them has 911 on speed dial.


Never know when a swarm of AHBs shows up (some Texas prankster could very well drop off a swarm and watch from around a corner).

Why, here:
Landscaper Killed by Swarm of Bees While Suspended in Harness (msn.com)


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## Nicksotherhoney

I sat out my trap in an old Union Pacific / public transportation field and the very next Monday they broke ground for a state of the art transportation hub and lifestyle/ mall..So,grabbed my trap before they started to really break ground and placed it on my patio table..I decided to see if rebaiting would bring me any luck and sure enough I had about two dozen bees checking the trap out and now three days later there is only a handful checking it out... the temperature has been low 60s the last few days. Does warmer temps encourage swarming? This spring has been all over the place as far as sunny, snow and rainy.


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## Nicksotherhoney

I opened it up and saw four to five bees walking all over the frames and comb. Are they getting it ready for the swarm or just getting what resources they could from the old comb( no honey)?


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## GregB

Nicksotherhoney said:


> I opened it up and saw four to five bees walking all over the frames and comb. Are they getting it ready for the swarm or just getting what resources they could from the old comb( no honey)?


Either way:
1) there are bees around
2) they found your trap.
These both are good signs.


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## AR1

Nicksotherhoney said:


> I opened it up and saw four to five bees walking all over the frames and comb. Are they getting it ready for the swarm or just getting what resources they could from the old comb( no honey)?


I advise against opening traps to check what the scouts are doing. I believe I have scared off several possible swarms that way. Heavy scouting, and I couldn't resist popping it open several times to 'check'. No swarms came. Maybe just bad luck, but I think the bees are aware of the sudden light and air moving in.


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## Cobbler

It does seem like the world has suddenly gotten more worried about falling off roofs and that kind of thing. I have very rarely been asked before about insurance. This year, I have already had several people ask about whether they are going to be responsible if I fall off a ladder or the roof or just about anything else. Come to think of it, I also feel like I’ve taken a lot less risk this year. I just haven’t had any real high Swarms.

Pay no attention to the kids on the bridge thumbnail. I’m writing these entries on my phone, so sometimes I accidentally select a photo as I am scrolling through. I deleted that, and it doesn’t show up on mobile, but I never know what it’s going to look like on PC.


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## GregB

Cobbler said:


> I have already had several people ask about whether they are going to be responsible if I fall off a ladder or the roof or just about anything else.


Because that is the reality.
I am already thankful people even allow me on their property to begin with (talking with both feet on ground, not climbing the roofs).


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## Cobbler

May 24 - sometimes you can tell when a swarm has arrived at a trap. Sometimes it is unclear whether your looking at scouts or foragers. See if you can decide whether the swarm has arrived in this photo.










That’s what I found when I checked one of my traps on the way home from dropping my son off at school this morning. I poked a stick into the cluster to check for comb. That came out negative, so I ran home and grabbed a nuc box, then ran back and unceremoniously scraped the cluster right into the nuc.










And set the nuc box on top of the trap.










As you can see, there was almost no comb. The swarm must have arrived yesterday. Lucky I found it before it became a cutout situation.

It was actually easier than taking the trap down and replacing it. I felt pretty good about it until I checked back later, on the way home from picking up my son at school. At that point, there was just as much traffic in and out of the trap as the nuc box. I was worried that I might have a zombie swarm situation and I’d have to take both boxes home and combine them.

Fortunately, when I went back after dusk, there were only maybe a couple dozen bees in the trap. I shook those out and left the trap in place.

So, this is the big 60 liter trap next to a smaller 40 liter trap that a large swarm recently rejected in favor of the smaller box nearby. Is there something wrong with the smell of this box enough that one swarm rejected it and another swarm wouldn’t move into it? It smelled fine to me. Very mild. The three drops of LGO on a cotton swab in a zipped plastic bag was placed more than two months ago, so there’s not much odor if any there.

And, then there’s the question of why the swarm didn’t move to the smaller box next-door after rejecting the inside of the bigger box. It is a substantial swarm, but not at all too big for the 40 L box. There may be a simple answer to that question. The box nextdoor is also occupied. I’m not sure on that yet, but it did have a lot of traffic even early in the morning - later, not so much. Maybe the same swarm was scouting a move nextdoor.


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## Nicksotherhoney

I like the laminated label at the bottom!


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## Cobbler

May 25 - I got A call about the swarm on the ground. In my experience, that means that the queen is damaged or otherwise unable to fly. This usually isn’t a complete disaster, because the queen usually survives long enough to lay up some eggs and is soon superseded. However requeening a swarm from scratch is generally a losing proposition. By the time the queen grows up, goes on her meeting flights, comes back, lays some eggs, and those eggs grow into adults, the majority of the swarm bees are already dead And the colony is near collapse. Still, I have a hard time saying no to a Swarm, especially when it’s less than 3 miles away.










While talking to the lady on the phone, she said, oh look now they’re flying away. I told her that if my damaged queen theory was correct, they would soon be back. I explained that I had just been sitting down to lunch, so I would go ahead and eat and then call her back to see if my prediction was correct. The bees came back, so I headed out.

When I pulled up, I thought the bees were trying to go airborne again, because there was a cloud of bees hovering around a tree. I told the lady they were trying to escape again, and she said, yeah they’re just settling down. I was confused, but soon figured out that we were talking about two different things. I was looking at a cluster in the tree, and she was looking at one on the grass - in fact it was now 3 clumps on the grass. Could this be two separate swarms?
















Because the bees in the tree were still largely in the air, still settling down, I decided to attack the ground swarm first. I walked over, found the queen within 15 seconds and caged her. I couldn’t see anything wrong with her, in fact, If anything she just looked too fat to fly - or as fertile as the Tennessee valley as HI McDonough would say.

With the queen and some comb in a box placed next to the cluster, the bees were happy to walk in, although they struggled in the long grass. I moved the box from one group to the next and then went to see how the bees in the tree were settling. They had mostly left, and I realized that they had flown back to the queen, so even though Most of these were walking into the box, the queue in front of the box was getting longer.









So just one swarm, but a decent size one and I never even had to leave the ground or put on my veil.

The lady told me that the swarm had already been on her lawn for five days, so these bees must have been pretty desperate. Still, they were very gentle.

I also grabbed anotherfull trap this evening, so I’m up to 24 swarms this season.


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## AR1

Sounds like a good place to leave a trap! Great pics.


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## GregB

Cobbler said:


> Is there something wrong with the smell of this box enough that one swarm rejected it and another swarm wouldn’t move into it?


A trap never occupied by the bees prior is always a *suspect*.
That is my rule.
I like my rule.

This is one reason I got all my traps bee-primed.
With this approach you also never build dedicated traps, but rather have multi-use hives usable for anything bees (and routinely just going in and out of rotation).


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## GregB

Cobbler said:


> And, then there’s the question of why the swarm didn’t move to the smaller box next-door after rejecting the inside of the bigger box. It is a substantial swarm, but not at all too big for the 40 L box. There may be a simple answer to that question. The box nextdoor is also occupied. I’m not sure on that yet, but it did have a lot of traffic even early in the morning - later, not so much. Maybe the same swarm was scouting a move nextdoor.


The box next door does not need to be taken by a swarm.
But it is sufficient for it to be taken by competing scouts.
Competing scouts can and will repel any other new scouts.

Also - the box next door can be taken by few bees from a failed/intercepted swarm (before the swarm made the final landing).
Those few bees will linger there until they die and yet will repel any new scouting bees.


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## Johnwb

Cobbler said:


> May 4 - I thought this would be the biggest Swarm day of the year so far. Temperatures up over 70° after a month of cold and wet with few breaks. I expected to have phone calls coming in all day. That didn’t happen. But there’s a little more to the story including an adventure.
> 
> A guy from the parks department called, and I was expecting him to start talking about a Swarm in one of the parks. It wasn’t quite what I expected. He started talking about finding my number on the bottom of a bee box. He was upset. But he was cool about it. He said he wasn’t mad, but made it clear that there was no way that having a bee box in the park was going to fly. It turns out that as he was making the call, he was standing in a massive cloud of bees. He later sent me both video and a photo. I can only share the photo on this forum.
> 
> View attachment 69068
> 
> 
> sadly, that box has been hanging there for nearly 2 months. I’ve hardly seen any people at this park, and that tree is way on the edge of the park right up against the light rail track. The swarm event probably lasted 15 minutes, but Park security or maintenance just happen to be there right at that moment. Otherwise nobody would have ever noticed. Sad, because this was a new location for me this year, and I it seems like the kind of place I’d like to keep.
> 
> like I said, the guy was cool about it. He let me leave the box in place until dusk, but said that he’d be back first thing in the morning, and if it was still there, he’d call another beekeeper to take it away.
> 
> So, yes I guess my streak is still alive. I have caught a Swarm every day for five days in a row. I usually don’t count my trap catches for this kind of thing, because I usually don’t know when the swarm actually arrived.
> 
> I also got a call from my best pest control company. They referred me to a swarm across town. However, as I talked to the apartment manager where the Swarm was, I figured out that this was not a Swarm cluster. Take a look at the Swarm arriving, and another photo hours later. What does that look like to you?
> 
> View attachment 69069
> 
> View attachment 69070
> 
> 
> sadly for these people, they have some new rent free tenants, not a Swarm cluster.
> 
> so I saved myself a trip across town, but no bees for me.
> 
> While I was on the phone with the pest control guys, they mentioned that they had sent two other people my direction earlier in the day. Those people never called me. I wonder what makes a person want to save the bees enough to call somebody, but not enough to make the second call after being informed that I am definitely the guy that can solve the problem.
> 
> We are set for another week of cold and rain, so I expect this thread to cool off quite a bit. However I am still holding out hope that there is a Swarm or two that was cast yesterday and hasn’t found a home yet. I just need someone to notice their surroundings and give me a call. In the meantime, it’s time to make the rounds to check all of my traps.



I would have asked the park guy if he would rather have a box that could be checked and removed regularly or a hive in a natural tree or other spot that would live there all summer/year and bother park guests.... lol haha
I had a similar conversation with a natural prairie person about putting a swam trap on the prairie. they were worried that the honey bees would over compete with the "natural pollinators" on the prairie. I said, wouldn't you rather have me be able to remove the honey bees from the area?


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## Cobbler

May 26 - nothing really special today, except that the cool weather made it possible for me to collect a trap in the morning rather than my usual after dusk. I think that was number 25 for the season.


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## Cobbler

Nicksotherhoney said:


> View attachment 69535
> I sat out my trap in an old Union Pacific / public transportation field and the very next Monday they broke ground for a state of the art transportation hub and lifestyle/ mall..So,grabbed my trap before they started to really break ground and placed it on my patio table..I decided to see if rebaiting would bring me any luck and sure enough I had about two dozen bees checking the trap out and now three days later there is only a handful checking it out... the temperature has been low 60s the last few days. Does warmer temps encourage swarming? This spring has been all over the place as far as sunny, snow and rainy.


Swarms are definitely more likely to occur when the weather is nice. The only swarm action I get when it’s raining is calls about bivouaced swarms that were cast when it was sunnier. I have seen one of my own hive start to swarm, But then return when it started drizzling.

Dozens of Scout bees is a good sign, and indicates a good chance that a swarm will arrive, but it’s never guaranteed.

I have had heavy scouting at the trap on my back patio for a week now, but still waiting.


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## Cobbler

Nicksotherhoney said:


> I like the laminated label at the bottom!


I just print those up and sandwich them between packing tape front and back.


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## Cobbler

GregB said:


> A trap never occupied by the bees prior is always a *suspect*.
> That is my rule.
> I like my rule.
> 
> This is one reason I got all my traps bee-primed.
> With this approach you also never build dedicated traps, but rather have multi-use hives usable for anything bees (and routinely just going in and out of rotation).


I did catch a swarm many years ago in a dead out hive I had set up in preparation to dump a captured swarm into. But, that’s the only time I have ever caught a swarm in regular equipment. Even around my house, I have several regular hive boxes set up as beehives and one dedicated trap. The trap is the only one getting any scout attention. I know people swear by using regular, old equipment as bait hives, but I just can’t make it work.


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## Cobbler

Johnwb said:


> I would have asked the park guy if he would rather have a box that could be checked and removed regularly or a hive in a natural tree or other spot that would live there all summer/year and bother park guests.... lol haha
> I had a similar conversation with a natural prairie person about putting a swam trap on the prairie. they were worried that the honey bees would over compete with the "natural pollinators" on the prairie. I said, wouldn't you rather have me be able to remove the honey bees from the area?


The parks department is very protective of wildlife. We have beavers running around killing hundred year old oak trees. Apparently that’s cool, because the beavers get to do what they want. And the parks department loves bees. If a swarm moves into a tree, they’ll put up caution tape and signs about protecting our pollinators. I guess bees in a man-made box don’t count as wildlife.

I think the guy that called me was a security guard. He’s probably more concerned about public safety than wildlife. An arborist might have called to thank me for my service to the bees.


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## Cobbler

May 27 - Another swarm that doesn’t know where it’s home is. This one had 4 combs going, mostly just 2 desert plate size combs. I assume it has been there a couple of days.









So what the heck is going on here? It is unsettling to have two of these so close together. How many swarms am I missing, because there’s something not quite right with my traps? One interesting point is that this trap has probably had an external swarm once before as you can see from the wax remnants on the bottom. There were ants between the inner cover and the telescoping cover, but I didn’t see any ants inside the box.












I held a nuc box under the cluster and slid my hive tool along the bottom of the trap, cutting the combs off. It was a pretty clean transfer, even though I left the comb lying on the bottom. I’ll try to rubber band that into a frame tomorrow.

After scraping the bees off the trap, there was a fair amount of bees behind the trap, between the trap and the tree. In addition, a lot of the airborne bees were starting to go into the trap entrance. I decided to pull the trap off the tree and set the nucbox on top. I left everything this way all day and returned after dark to grab the nuc box and put the trap back on the tree.










We had some pretty heavy rain this afternoon, so I was surprised to get a call about a swarm. Of course, it turned out that the cluster had been there for a couple of days before the homeowner decided to look for help.

This was a very nice size warm, but I wasn’t able to get there until 9 o’clock. It was mostly dark at the time and the bees were pretty sleepy. 










The cluster was in a tree hanging over a steep hill, so it was about 10 feet high from the lawn, and 15 feet high from the sidewalk. Either position was not terribly convenient for working with the extension pole - I had to come in at an angle, not straight underneath. And I couldn’t do anything with a ladder on that hillside.

I decided to try to scrape the dangling cluster with my bucket and pole, rather than bumping it. The bees were so sleepy that small clumps that missed the bucket completely fell to the ground without getting airborne. After a couple of scrapes, I moved on to bumping cluster and successfully got the vast majority into a nuc box. When I looked at the hillside under the tree, there were quite a lot of bees just mulling around aimlessly on the ground cover. I was worried that the queen could be among them and even if she wasn’t, I didn’t want to leave that many bees behind, so I decided to leave the box overnight. Hopefully the lost bees will find their friends in the morning, and hopefully the whole swarm doesn’t decide to move on. I’m pretty confident they’ll stay, because we’re in for cold and wet this weekend. It’s not‘s swarm weather.


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## Cobbler

May 28 - I went back to pick up the hived swarm from yesterday evening. There had been a few hours of cool, but dry in the morning, then rain for most of the rest of the day including some very heavy rain. It appears that all of the bees that missed falling into the bucket spent the night on the ground, then returned in the morning to the original cluster spot in the tree where they proceeded to get absolutely drenched. I bumped the New, grapefruit-sized cluster, but they were holding on for dear life. I had to bump them repeatedly to get them to fall into my bucket. When I dumped them on a tarp in front of the nuc box where 90% of the swarm had been keeping warm and dry for 20 hours or so, they didn’t even walk in. They were pretty much in a state of suspended animation. Eventually, I just decided to wrap the tarp loosely around the nuc box and transport the whole thing home that way. When I got home, I shook the wet bees onto the tops of the frames in the nuc box so their friends could warm and dry them.

lesson learned - don’t try to shake a swarm at night. The bees that the miss the target won’t figure out where they’re supposed to be going until morning. I should know this from previous experience. I should have waited until morning. Night time swarm catching has only worked out well for me once. Last year, I had a Swarm dangling on the very end of a branch. After climbing onto the roof, the swarm was at Eye level. I was able to snip the branch and put the entire swarm into a bucket without a single bee taking flight. Somehow, that swarm turned out to be queen less anyway. Maybe it was a virgin queen that didn’t return from her meeting flights.


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## BEE J

Cobbler said:


> lesson learned - don’t try to shake a swarm at night. The bees that the miss the target won’t figure out where they’re supposed to be going until morning.


We installed my swarm late at night too, and there were bees still outside the hive on the frames and boxes (of swarm trap) in the morning. I guess we "live and learn".  

Congrads on the great season, cobbler!!!


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## Cobbler

June 1 - I brought home two traps this evening. One had some capped brood already. The other one looks like it arrived maybe just yesterday. Only one new piece of comb started. Both colonies are smallish, probably secondary swarms.









We are two days into a nice warm stretch, but no calls yet. Hopefully that picks up tomorrow.


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## Johnwb

How many hives do you have @Cobbler ? seems like with all the swarms you catch you would have quite the collection!
dp you combine some of the smaller swarms to be bigger stronger hives?


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## BEE J

Johnwb said:


> How many hives do you have @Cobbler ? seems like with all the swarms you catch you would have quite the collection!


I was wondering that too.


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## Cobbler

Johnwb said:


> How many hives do you have @Cobbler ? seems like with all the swarms you catch you would have quite the collection!
> dp you combine some of the smaller swarms to be bigger stronger hives?


That’s a good question with a slightly complicated answer. My target is about 10 hives. Right now, I have 25 in my yard. This is not sustainable with the space I have. The vast majority of these hives are working up to 5 frames, so that’s a completely different thing than a hive of 20-40 frames.

I have already lost several swarm colonies this year. My experience is that probably more than one in 10 swarms has a queen that lasts long enough to lay for a week or so and is then superseded. This is a viable if not ideal situation in the wild, but for me it’s an opportunity to free up space and equipment while providing a resource boost to other colonies. What I have seen is that by the time a swarm raises a new mated and laying queen and then her first cycle of new brood, there’s hardly a swarm bee left. Such a colony will have to be fed all summer just to have a chance at overwintering.

And yes I do combine smaller swarms at times. Although I do try to give each one and a very good chance to survive and prove its viability.

I have also started several friends into beekeeping and provided the bees to get them started.

And this year I have also accepted invitations to host my bees at friends’ homes.

And I will sell several swarms as established nucs. This covers my gas and other expenses and produces a small profit probably equal to about $0.25 per hour. The important point is that having a hobby that doesn’t cost money makes all the difference in my relationship with my wife.

So, I have caught 32 swarms this year. I currently have 25 in my yard, 27 including other yards. I hope to catch around 50 swarms and end the summer with 10 regular 20 frame hives plus (new this year) several 5-10 frame nucs that I will overwinter and part with as the swarm season starts up next spring.


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## Cobbler

June 3 - today really felt like a day of good luck and timing. I had been thinking just yesterday that with all the swarms I’ve ever caught, I have never seen a Swarm arrive. Hint: that’s a little foreshadowing for what would unfold.

#1 I had just headed out on my bike to ride a circuit through about half of my traps. I was at the first trap on my route when I received a call from New York, which is usually a job recruiter, something I’m not all that excited about, especially when I am busy with the bees. But, in this case, it was actually a homeowner just seven minutes away with a Swarm in his tree. When I asked him how big it was, he said it was really big, something about 36 inches long and 6 inches across dangling from the end of a branch. I changed my plans, rode back home and jumped in the van.

Anybody who has ever taken more than a couple of swarm calls knows that swarms are always bigger in the lay person’s mind than in actual reality. Maybe I just didn’t hear right, because the swarm cluster was more like 6“ x 6“. That’s OK. A swarm is a Swarm.

This one was around 12 feet up in a cherry tree with branches all over the place so that it was difficult to even see the swarm, let alone get my bucket pole up to it and then back through the thicket to the ground before the bees recovered and went airborne. Here’s the photo. You probably won’t even see the swarm unless you zoom in and look carefully.








Anyway, I found my angle, moved some branches out of the way as I extended the pole bucket, and gave it a bump. I was able to get the bucket back out of the tree more quickly and easily than I expected, but when I dumped the bees in the nuc box, I totally missed and dumped them on the tarp. I knelt down to take a look and almost immediately spotted the queen. As I tried to grab her by hand, she flew away. I watched the cluster on the tarp for a while expecting her to come back, but when she didn’t, I went and got my Queen clip, so I’d be ready next time. Meanwhile a orange-size cluster had re-formed in the tree, so I gave that another bump and dumped the bees on the tarp in front of the box, then knelt down to look for the queen again. She wasn’t there. So I looked in the bucket, which still had about five bees left in it. The queen was one of them. As I went to grab her, she took Flight again, and I watched her fly around for about a minute, trying at times to get her to land on my hand. Eventually she landed in the cluster at the box, and I grabbed her with the clip.








It is not very often that I find the queen with one of these bump and dump swarm catches, but it turned out to be very opportune this time. I rubberbanded the queen clip into a frame and put that in the new box. And, of course, the Bees started filing in. At this point, I thought my work was pretty much done. I was just waiting and watching for the point where there were no longer more bees going into the box than coming out of the box at which point I would close the entrance and head out. I had just explained this idea to the homeowner, when she said, yeah it looks like more of them are starting to come out. She was right. Within seconds they were really coming out, and in less than a minute they were all gone.








I opened the box to make sure the queen was still in the clip, which she was, but there were almost no other bees in the box. Still, I knew I didn’t need to worry, because they weren’t going to be going anywhere without their queen. Sure enough, within about five minutes, the swarm had settled on the box again, and within 10 minutes they were mostly back inside. I closed the entrance and headed home.

While driving home, I decided that the swarm was too small for the five frame nuc I had it in, especially since that was my last wooden nucbox, and I would have to start using disposable nuc boxes to collect any more swarms. I decided that this swarm would easily fit in a two frame mating nuc and that I would make that transfer as soon as I got home, before even opening the entrance. As soon as I opened the lid, all of the bees were gone within seconds. Even though I had the queen caged, I figured there was no way that those bees were going to find their way back to a place they had never oriented to in a very small beeyard with 23 other hives.








I started thinking about what use I could make of a queen and a half a dozen attendants while I pulled up a chair and watched the swarm cloud. To my amazement, the swarm returned to the box. I’m not saying every single be found her way home, but it certainly looked that way.








so, quite an adventure with a small swarm. If I hadn’t caught the queen, I might have lost the Swarm twice. As it was, I technically got to see a swarm arrive twice. It also makes me wonder if this Swarm was perhaps in the final stages of preparation before leaving to its identified new home - like the one on the mailbox earlier in the season.

#2 with that swarm call out of the way, I resumed my plan to bike around checking my traps. This is what I found at trap number three along my route.








I was maybe five minutes late for the very beginning of the arrival, but just in time for the climax. And this one looks like a very nice size swarm. It is interesting to think that if I had not received the Swarm call and had checked this trap earlier in the morning, I probably would’ve just seen a few scouts. Even if I had arrived five minutes earlier, I might have seen nothing at all as all of the scouts may have been back leading the colony to its new home. And if I would’ve been 10 minutes later, it would have just looked like a swarm had moved in sometime in the past few days.

One of the really great parts about swarm trapping is being out in the forgotten wilds of my suburban neighborhood. I’ve talked in the past about the wildlife I’ve seen, beautiful sunsets, and watching the seasons change. Today I enjoyed riding my bike through grass taller than my bike and almost at my eye level as I rode. That trap was empty, but I enjoyed the experience of getting out and checking it.









#3 not long after I returned from my ride, I got another swarm call. This was a landlord with a tenant who is allergic to bee stings. She said she had a huge swarm in a rhododendron bush right by the driveway and kind of blocking the front porch. She wanted it gone immediately. Well, she had found the right guy, and she also knew how to differentiate a large swarm from a small one.









This one was great. I hardly even had to get out of my car it was so close. And, as you can see, it was close enough to the ground to be touching. In addition, the bees had chosen to cluster right on the very tips of three small branches, which I was able to clip without disturbing the bees and without causing any noticeable damage to the bush. I put the bee branches into my handy re-purposed 5 gallon paint bucket, which has a convenient pop out pour spout. This set up provides a comfortable, dark environment for most of the bees while the others file information through the spout. 









once the bees are all in, I can give them a quick bump to the bottom of the bucket, quickly lift the lid, place a screen on top, and replace the lid while I fit and elastic around the bucket to hold the screen on. The bees get plenty of ventilation on the way home. Then I dump the bees into their box at home. This swarm Was big enough to go straight into a 10 frame box.

Great day. Lots of fun. Technically a 3-swarm day. I still can’t seem to break that record - not that I’m complaining. 

We are set for a couple of days of rain now, so I’ll have a chance to get organized and hopefully build some more equipment. I have 4 empty 5 frame boxes, but no bottom boards or lids to go with them. Making a few tops and bottoms seems like an easy way to make room for another 4 colonies. I also expect that there’s still a swarm or two sitting in a tree somewhere, waiting to be discovered, and unable to scout for a home in the rain. Hopefully that will result in just a little excitement for me before we head into more great swarm weather next week.


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## Cobbler

June 8 - when it rains it pours, and then you go five days or so without any kind of swarm excitement. It almost starts to seem like the season is over. But today’s swarm was worth waiting for. I’d say this is the biggest one of the season.









big enough that I went straight for the 10 frame box instead of even trying to fit it into a five frame box.

This was in a neighborhood common area right next to the mailbox bank for the entire neighborhood and near the pool and park area. The swarm was around 9 feet up in a tree, wrapped all the way around the trunk. Luckily, the tree was small and flimsy enough that I could shake the whole thing.

I started off by scooping a bunch of bees with my hands into a small bucket as I stood on a ladder. Then I carried those bees down to a hive body on the ground. I did two or three rounds of that, then started dumping the bees in front of the hive rather than opening the lid each time.









Lots of bees were pretty persistent about going back to the original location on the trunk, so I started shaking the entire tree. That worked a little, but many were determined to return.









Eventually, I had the idea to put a nuc box on the ladder right next to the original cluster spot. It took a little while, but eventually the bees decided they liked the nuc box better than the tree.









Before long, the bees had totally abandoned the tree for the nucbox, and I moved the nuc box next to the hive body. The bees in the nuc wandered out and into the hive body.

I guess in the end, the bees did what they were supposed to do, it just took a little patience. Meanwhile many neighbors stopped by to see what was going on and to learn about bees. I think it’s great how a bee swarm can bring a neighborhood together.

I could also mention that a couple of days ago I stopped by one of my traps and found quite a lot of traffic. If it was scouts, then it was more scout traffic than I think I have ever seen. It looked like an occupied hive amount of traffic. The thing that confused me is that the bees we’re not coming and going like they were on a mission. They were really flying around and investigating the box and entrance the way scout bees do. Ultimately, I couldn’t decide which it was. Now I am starting to think that maybe I arrived soon after a Swarm had arrived and the behavior I saw was orientation flights.


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## SeaCucumber

How do you get the swarm calls? I thought I had my contact info all over the internet. I only got 1 swarm call this year.


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## Cobbler

SeaCucumber said:


> How do you get the swarm calls? I thought I had my contact info all over the internet. I only got 1 swarm call this year.


I have an ad on craigslist and nextdoor. I also built a website, and I left my name with several pest control companies, The parks department, and other city offices, including the police. And I do get repeat calls and people who were referred to me from a previous caller. All of that takes time to build. Each year my network grows. I have never received a call from one of the online Swarm call registries.


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## Cobbler

June 14 - It has been a week almost to the minute since I had a Swarm call, so I was itching to get one. It came from a fellow beekeeper across town, and he just wasn’t able to make it to this one closer to my side of town. But he told me it was 8 feet up and big.










He was right. It was beautiful. The hardest part was that it was hanging right over a big ditch, so I spent more time figuring out how to position my ladder than anything else.

I opted for the ladder rather than the bucket pole, because I felt like I could get a clean shake right into the bucket if I could get just three or four steps up on the ladder. I thought I’d have a lot of flying bees if I went with the bucket pole.

I still used a 5 gallon bucket, but without the pole, and I was amazed how well the bees fell into the bucket without flying when I gave the branch a shake. I’d be surprised if there were even 50 bees that didn’t make it into the bucket or left before I got the lid on.

Unfortunately, I removed the lead to put a screen over the top, and when I did that I lost hundreds of bees.

Not a big deal. It just took more time. I opened the bunghole in the bucket lid and stuck the whole bucket back in the tree where the cluster had been, then waited 20 minutes or so. In the photo you can see the bucket and the positioning of the ladder. 










I really like 5 gallon buckets for swarms that require a little climbing. They are light, it’s easy to get the lid on, the lid snaps on tight. It’s the perfect cavity to keep a swarm happy, and the bunghole is perfect for letting in the remaining bees. I just need to make myself a lid with most of the top cut out and replaced with screen for the ride home. It would be super easy to loosen the regular lid, bump the bees down, and quickly swap to the screen lid.


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## Cobbler

June 15 - i’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again; every swarm is different. You never know what to expect. That’s why it’s an adventure. When I woke up this morning, Yesterday’s Swarm was on the outside of the box. I assumed they were offended by the somewhat moldy comb I had put in the box, so I replaced those frames with freshly drawn comb and scooped the bees back into the box.

A couple of hours later, I was lucky to be nearby doing yardwork when they all decided to swarm out again. I sat down to watch, and figured I’d have to chase them down the street or something. Fortunately, the very lightest of rain started to fall, and the bees decided to come home. Unfortunately, they apparently couldn’t remember where Home was. Half the bees went to the original box, but the other half went into a neighboring box. That neighbor hive was a small swarm, so I didn’t mind it catching a little drift to increase its numbers. But, an hour or so later I noticed a cluster of bees on the ground right in front of the hive. Sure enough, there was a dead queen in there. I’m not sure which queen she was, but my theory is that she was the swarm queen. I think she tried to join with the other bees going into the neighbor box, and was rejected. The main reason for this thinking is that the queen was rather small, possibly even a virgin queen, but either way she was small enough to fly. This is strange however, because the population of the new swarm was several times greater than that of the neighbor hive.


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## Cobbler

June 16 - this may have been the easiest swarm I have ever collected. It was dangling on the end of a small branch, right at eye level.










I decided to try to make things even easier by snipping off excess parts of the branch before snipping the entire branch into a 5 gallon bucket. Unfortunately, I ended up snipping off a twig that was part of the cluster support, so a good size handful of bees fell to the ground. That wasn’t a problem, except that I had to wait an extra 10 minutes for those bees to return to the cluster.









I put the 5 gallon bucket right up onto and around the bees so that when I snipped the branch, the bees hardly even know they were no longer connected to the tree. I had the lid on before any of them went airborne.

I was still intrigued by the swarm that absconded from a couple of days ago, so I used the same moldy comb for this swarm. This swarm seems not to mind the mold at all. They look like they’re completely happy with their new home as I write this 24 hours later.


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## Cobbler

June 20 - I got a call from A guy who said there was a big swarm in his neighbors tree. As he started explaining, he mentioned that he had a few hives and it was possible that this one was cast from his hive. I’m gonna go with probably on that one.

When I asked how big it was, he said smaller than a beach ball, but larger than a basketball. I have come to expect that The swarm is always smaller than the people say, but I thought a beekeeper might be a little more accurate. It was a good size swarm, but I don’t think it would be fair to say that it was any bigger than half a basketball.










once I was up on the roof, it was conveniently located right at chest level. I gave it a shake into my bucket, and got nearly every one.

When I got home, I dumped the bucket into a nuc box, and it seemed that everything was in order. I watched for a while, and the bees seemed happy with their new home. I went inside, and not too much later, my son came in saying that my neighbor was alarmed by all the bees in his yard. I hopped the fence and saw a cluster just breaking up and moving back to my yard. Eventually the cloud of bees ended up right over my hives where there was plenty of other air traffic. It kind of looked like they went back into three different hives based on the traffic back up at those hives. Otherwise it was impossible to tell where the bees had come from or we’re going to.

The problem was that maybe a couple hundred bees went back to the original cluster spot in my neighbor’s yard, which was bothering my neighbor. The bees there never really got organized. They tried to cluster a little, and I climbed up a ladder to get a look. The only thing I could figure was that maybe my new swarm queen had flown off and become disoriented. Why else would bees be attracted in any number to my neighbors tree? I think I got a pretty good view of every beer, but didn’t see a queen.

This story does not have a resolution. The bees dispersed as the evening cooled off. I’ll have to find out in a few days whether I have a queen.


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## GregB

Portland, OR is a swarmy place.
All I can say.


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## Cobbler

GregB said:


> Portland, OR is a swarmy place.
> All I can say.


Yes, it is. I had no idea until I really got into it. I used to get one or two calls a year, but then I started expanding my network and trapping and found that swarms are a fairly common occurrence.


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## BEE J

Cobbler said:


> Yes, it is. I had no idea until I really got into it. I used to get one or two calls a year, but then I started expanding my network and trapping and found that swarms are a fairly common occurrence.


How do you do it, Cobbler? You just amaze me with how well your doing in the swarm removal business!!!
What does your apiary look like now, compared to last year?


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## backyard smallcell

Hey, one of my hives swarmed, and I placed an 8 frame deep underneath it. And swept half the bees in it, it's just about night fall. What's my next course of action. They're not quite where I want them to be. And I'd like to be able to go into winter with more hives, even if it means I've got more hardware to assemble, I wasn't expecting my first year packages to swarm. But I'm glad MB suggested to have a spare hive ready.


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## Cobbler

BEE J said:


> How do you do it, Cobbler? You just amaze me with how well your doing in the swarm removal business!!!
> What does your apiary look like now, compared to last year?


Thanks. I don’t know what to say. I put some ads on craigslist, left my name with a few pest control companies, and made a little website. Somehow the word is getting out and people are calling me. Of course, it really helps that I don’t have a day job. I can go running almost whenever a call comes.

My apiary looks a lot like it did last year at this time. I have a target of 10 hives. Obviously I have a lot more than that right now. I give away a lot of hives to friends who want to get started in beekeeping. Some swarms are queenless or otherwise just not viable. I try to sell a few nucs to cover my gas and other expenses. Unfortunately, this year I have not sold a single nuc, So the apiary is over-crowded. This is starting to be a familiar situation, where I am out of space and equipment, and I just have to start leaving my occupied swarm traps in the trees.


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## Cobbler

backyard smallcell said:


> Hey, one of my hives swarmed, and I placed an 8 frame deep underneath it. And swept half the bees in it, it's just about night fall. What's my next course of action. They're not quite where I want them to be. And I'd like to be able to go into winter with more hives, even if it means I've got more hardware to assemble, I wasn't expecting my first year packages to swarm. But I'm glad MB suggested to have a spare hive ready.


If you don’t know that the queen is in the new hive, then I would try to get as many bees as possible into the box. Once you see that traffic is headed into the box, you can be pretty confident that all the bees will be headed in. This information is probably coming too late. By now you have probably already learned whether the bees are content with their new home. Because these are your own bees, they will want to get some distance from the original hive. One good way to keep them in their new hive, Presumably very close to the original hive, is too give them a frame of open brood. You’ll want to move them to their final location as soon as possible – before they orient to where you caught them.


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## Cobbler

June 21 - I checked on two traps today. Both were occupied. One of them was the location where I collected the trap on the 17th - 4 days. I had a feeling I needed to open that space for a new swarm. I guess I was right. The other trap was a new location that I decided to try just a couple of weeks ago.

I’ve really only gotten serious about chasing swarms for the past three seasons 2020 and 2021 both followed similar patterns. I got most of my Swarm Calls early in the spring, but caught very few swarms in traps during that time. Later in the spring, the calls mostly stopped coming in, but the trap action picked up. Ultimately, in those two years, I ended up getting about a third of my swarms from calls and 2/3 from traps. This year, I have had more calls than ever, but not a whole lot of trap catches. Of course I’ll get all the statistics together by the end of the season, but right now I probably have four or five times as many swarm calls as traps catches.


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## Cobbler

June 22 - I got a call to rescue a swarm in an apple tree as I was driving a group of teenagers to a backpacking trip. I told the guy he should probably call someone else, but he apparently really felt like I was The perfect one to do the job. He was willing to wait until tomorrow afternoon to have me come. Unfortunately, as I write this entry on June 23, I can report that the Swarm moved on. I missed my chance. I guess that’s three times this season that I have received a Swarm call while actually on a youth activity. I was too late for two of them, but caught the third with a couple of youth in tow.


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## JustBees

GregB said:


> Portland, OR is a swarmy place.
> All I can say.


 20 min west of portland

16 colonies collected since Apr16 2022


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## AR1

Cobbler said:


> June 22 - I got a call to rescue a swarm in an apple tree as I was driving a group of teenagers to a backpacking trip. I told the guy he should probably call someone else, but he apparently really felt like I was The perfect one to do the job. He was willing to wait until tomorrow afternoon to have me come. Unfortunately, as I write this entry on June 23, I can report that the Swarm moved on. I missed my chance. I guess that’s three times this season that I have received a Swarm call while actually on a youth activity. I was too late for two of them, but caught the third with a couple of youth in tow.


Those meddling kids!


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## Cobbler

June 24 - I received a call at about 8 PM as I was getting off the river after boating. I still needed dinner and a half hour drive home, but this was a Swarm on the road, so it kind of had to be tonight, not tomorrow.
















It was an experience I am glad to of had.

I tried to find the queen squatting down next to the bees. After searching for a minute I noticed that the beers were making two paths, one to each of my feet. Weird, right? Why would they be attracted to me? Heat?

I couldn’t find the queen, so I just put a box with some partially drawn frames next to the bees, and they all started marching in. As is typical with nighttime bees, the communication was all messed up, and it took longer than it should’ve, but they all eventually made it into the box, and I was home just a little after midnight.


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## Cobbler

June 27 - I checked a bunch of traps today. I really thought I was on a roll when the first two traps were occupied, but those were the only ones. These two traps are one of the pairs that I am doing the trap size experiment with. They are right next to each other. I have already caught one swarm in each of these, so that’s four swarms in one location, although it’s not technically the exact same location.

At this point, I am pretty much willing to say that it doesn’t really matter whether you use a 40 L trap or a 60 L Trap. They both seem to work just fine.

I had actually planned to check a few more traps, but my trip was cut short when I almost stepped on a nearly dead fledgling kestrel. There were no parents around, and we are in the middle of a heat wave. This little guy was barely able to move, so we decided to take it home. I had my son with me. He had come across the same kind of situation one year ago with a crow. He had a great time with that bird, and we think the kestrel is going to be even better.









After feeding him some chicken and providing some water, he is doing much better, already moving around and looking comfortable.


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## Cobbler

June 28 - I am feeling anxious about getting The bees out of my swarm traps, because you can’t catch a swarm in an occupied trap. I decided to start with one trap that had particularly low traffic. I figured it was a small colony, which would be easier to find a place for in my bee yard. I brought that one home today. It turned out to be a fairly small swarm occupying only about half of three frames, but looking good and healthy.

Update on the swarm in the middle of the road from a few days ago. I think I mentioned that it was not too happy with the box I gave it. There were plenty of bees inside, but most of the bees spent two or three days plastered all over the front of the box. In the last couple of days those external bees had disappeared. I inspected the hive today and found good coverage on about two frames, but no sign of a queen. I was about ready to concede that the queen had probably been smashed on the road, but then I inspected the nuc box directly below this hive. This colony had overwintered, but had not been thriving. When I inspected it today, I found A very healthy population, no capped larvae, and only one day old larvae - lots of it. My theory is that this colony went queenless and the Road swarm Took it over.

I forgot to mention that yesterday, before we found the kestrel, I also found that one of my favorite bee trees, which had died over the winter, has been re-populated. It’s at an elementary school. Don’t tell anyone.


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## Cobbler

June 29 - I brought home two more traps today. I also got a call from a lady way across town. She had seen a swarm cloud in her yard, and said that it was just settling in her tree. I quickly gathered my things and ran off, but it took me about an hour to get there. By that time, the swarm was gone Dash only a couple dozen lost bees buzzing around the bivouac site. Luckily, the lady had offered me $40 for gas money in advance.









Looks like a pretty good size swarm. The good news is, as we rapidly approach July, the swarm season still going strong.


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## GregB

Cobbler said:


> I forgot to mention that yesterday, before we found the kestrel, I also found that one of my favorite bee trees, which had died over the winter, has been re-populated. It’s at an elementary school. Don’t tell anyone.


A perfect story of a bee-tree - thriving year after year.


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## GregB

Cobbler said:


> Luckily, the lady had offered me $40 for gas money in advance.


Darn, I wish that guy I removed a swarm from the porch another day paid for my gas. 
He didn't offer.
Was 20-25 miles one way.
That swarm turned into a queen-less recovery project. Shish.


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## Cobbler

GregB said:


> A perfect story of a bee-tree - thriving year after year.


I have a swarm trap about 150 yards away from this bee tree. I guess I would rather see the bee tree populated than catch another swarm. I want there to be plenty of feral hives out there.


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## Cobbler

GregB said:


> Darn, I wish that guy I removed a swarm from the porch another day paid for my gas.
> He didn't offer.
> Was 20-25 miles one way.
> That swarm turned into a queen-less recovery project. Shish.


All I said was, oh that’s a long way for me. She came right back with, what if I chip in 40 bucks for gas.

I feel like I’ve had quite a lot of queenless swarms this year - or nice size swarms that soon went queenless.


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## Cobbler

June 30 - i’ll be honest, not all of my swarm adventures are truly adventures. Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia, said that, “it’s not an adventure until something goes wrong.“ well, today probably counts as an adventure.

I went to pick up a trap hosted at a friends house. He saw the Swarm arrive nine days earlier.










what I didn’t know was that it was a very large swarm, and very productive. In fact, the trap was so heavy that after I removed the strap securing the trap to the tree, the screw it was hanging on broke off. The trap landed on my face.









Luckily I was able to keep the box from going totally upside down and losing the lid. But, the bees were not terribly thrilled, and were riled up enough to find a way out of the screen that I had stapled over the opening.

Bees were everywhere. If you have any experience with this kind of thing, you know that bees do not navigate well after dark, especially when their hive is not where it used to be. I tried spraying them with a little water to cool them off and get them to run for shelter, but that didn’t work. So I abandoned the project and went home.

Maybe I should have taken a hint that this was a massive hive when I arrived after dark on a nice, cool evening and heard a healthy roar of bees fanning to cool the inside of the hive.

An hour or so later I came back and found that although a lot of bees had not gone back into the box, at least they were organized and mostly on the box. This is what it looked like driving the trap home in my van.











Writing this post the next day, July 1, I can report that all five frames were completely drawn, and they had a good start drawing comb from the bottom bars of the frames. There was actually surprisingly little brood - more honey than brood. I’d say the foragers went right to work, even though the queen was just getting back into laying shape. I put the colony right into a 10 frame box.


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## GregB

Cobbler said:


> In fact, the trap was so heavy that after I removed the strap securing the trap to the tree, the screw it was hanging on broke off. The trap landed on my face.


This is exactly why I prefer all my traps to be securely *standing *on some base (NOT hanging). Nothing wrong with security straps (in fact, they are desired).
But it is good to be able to just lift the box a little to estimate its heft (without depending on some screw).


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## Cobbler

GregB said:


> This is exactly why I prefer all my traps to be securely *standing *on some base (NOT hanging). Nothing wrong with security straps (in fact, they are desired).
> But it is good to be able to just lift the box a little to estimate its heft (without depending on some screw).


I totally agree. My favorite spot last year was in a treehouse. It was so easy to set and swap with nothing to secure it – and I caught three swarms at that location. My friends at that house moved away this spring. I am tempted to ask the new owners how much they like bees. 

The majority of my traps are in community owned natural areas - void of any kind of stable, relatively horizontal surfaces. I don’t get permission to have them there, so it just makes sense to have them a little bit up and out of the way and secured so that you probably need a screwdriver to steal one.

My preference would be to have lots of friends who let me just set a box on their patio, then watch it for me and report back

This particular location could have been easier, except that the yard is full of activity with kids, a small sawmill, and art classes and students. The tree I chose stood out as a landmark and had a very nice flight path right at the edge of the yard. The box is at Eye level, but I guess that’s high enough to cause some trouble

My preference would be to have lots of friends who let me just set a box on their patio, then watch it for me and report back


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## GregB

Cobbler said:


> I totally agree. .......


Well, consider *French Cleat *for that location.
This approach is actually pretty safe for hanging traps.


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## Cobbler

July 1 - Another trip all the way across town for a swarm that left moments before I arrived.


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## Cobbler

July 3 - I took a walk this afternoon with my wife and hit the area where I have the 40 liter and 60 liter traps right next to each other. This location is about 50 yards away from a feral bee tree that had died off last year, as well as someone else’s swarm trap which was placed two years ago and seems to have been forgotten. I arrived first at the feral beehive and found that it was occupied. Next, I saw that the other guy’s swarm trap had a swarm on the outside - hanging from the bottom. And then there were my two occupied traps. So within the last two weeks four swarms had arrived at locations not more than 50 yards between the furthest. This is all just 200 yards or so from my favorite wild bee tree.

I poked a stick into the swarm hanging from the bottom of the other guy’s swarm trap to check for comb. There wasn’t any, so I assumed they had arrived today. That got me thinking. I had meant to swap out my two occupied traps for several days, and especially last night, but I was not able to make it out. That really made me wonder if the swarm that didn’t want to go inside the other guy’s box would have gone to my box had it been available. I have caught at least half a dozen swarms in this area during the time that the other guy’s box has been sitting there. During that time, I have hardly seen a couple of bees ever investigating his box.


















So I went back this evening to collect my two traps. The 60 L trap was good and heavy, but the 40 L trap was extremely light. Sure enough, when I got home and opened the box, it was empty. Now I am completely rethinking all of my assumptions about the scenario I described above. I think it is entirely possible that the swarm on the other guys box is not a newly arrived swarm that is going to start building comb from the bottom of the box, but rather a standard swarm bivouac that just happened to choose the bottom of that box as the site for the bivouac. The traffic at the feral beehive and at my 40 L trap would be the scouts from that swarm looking for a suitable place to stay.

So, what is the etiquette for a presumed swarm cluster hanging outside somebody else’s swarm trap which seems to have been abandoned for two years and which has no identification attached? That seems like fair game to me. The swarm obviously doesn’t want that box and it is likely to move either to the extinct bee tree, to my nearby box, or possibly to set up shop under the other guy’s swarm trap. The whole scenario is beneficial to the other guy only with that last option where the bees decide to start building comb under the swarm trap . However, if the trap is abandoned, then those bees will die as the cold sets in.

So, I am thinking I get up early tomorrow morning and treat this as a standard swarm cluster - go collect it before the bees decide to move on.

This is the second time this season that I thought both of these traps were occupied at the same time. I am starting to think that it’s a bad idea to have traps too close together. When one gets occupied, there is plenty of traffic at the other, so it just looks like the other one is occupied too. Of course, I placed these traps close together to ensure that I didn’t miss out on any swarms in my favorite spots by using 60 L traps. At this point the 60 L traps have worked just fine, so there’s no reason to put two boxes in one place anymore. I’m ending the trap size experiment and expanding my range.


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## AR1

Excellent pics, particularly that first one.

Do I need to go back and read again the whole thread? What size traps are you using, and what results? If you already said all this, just tell me to read the thread again!


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## Cobbler

AR1 said:


> Excellent pics, particularly that first one.
> 
> Do I need to go back and read again the whole thread? What size traps are you using, and what results? If you already said all this, just tell me to read the thread again!


I like to think that the whole thread is worth reading. I use traps that are basically five frame double deep.


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## Johnwb

Cobbler said:


> June 27 - I checked a bunch of traps today. I really thought I was on a roll when the first two traps were occupied, but those were the only ones. These two traps are one of the pairs that I am doing the trap size experiment with. They are right next to each other. I have already caught one swarm in each of these, so that’s four swarms in one location, although it’s not technically the exact same location.
> 
> At this point, I am pretty much willing to say that it doesn’t really matter whether you use a 40 L trap or a 60 L Trap. They both seem to work just fine.
> 
> I had actually planned to check a few more traps, but my trip was cut short when I almost stepped on a nearly dead fledgling kestrel. There were no parents around, and we are in the middle of a heat wave. This little guy was barely able to move, so we decided to take it home. I had my son with me. He had come across the same kind of situation one year ago with a crow. He had a great time with that bird, and we think the kestrel is going to be even better.
> View attachment 70107
> 
> 
> After feeding him some chicken and providing some water, he is doing much better, already moving around and looking comfortable.
> View attachment 70108


hope that you call your local raptor recovery, as it is illegal to possess a raptor. we have education raptors at my work. DM me if you need some help getting the little guy to the right place.


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## Cobbler

July 13 - it has gotten hot in the Portland, Oregon area, and the swarm season seems to have tapered off quickly. I have been pretty busy with other things since my last entry. Today I had a chance to get out and check a few traps. Here’s what I found at one of them: 










The main hanger screw had broken off, and it was mostly just the ratchet strap holding the box to the tree. I propped it back up and to the correct position. I wish I could have gone back and retrieved it this evening, but I had other work. Hopefully tomorrow, and hopefully that screw broke, because just so dang full of bees and resources.










The count right now is 45 swarms recovered. I have two more confirmed in traps, and one more that I am pretty confident is occupied. Last year I got 50. I’m feeling like I still might exceed that number this year.


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## GregB

Cobbler said:


> The count right now is 45 swarms recovered. I have two more confirmed in traps, and one more that I am pretty confident is occupied. Last year I got 50. I’m feeling like I still might exceed that number this year.


Someone is having a blast.
Not me.


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## BEE J

Cobbler said:


> The count right now is 45 swarms recovered. I have two more confirmed in traps, and one more that I am pretty confident is occupied. Last year I got 50. I’m feeling like I still might exceed that number this year.


Unbelievable!!! That is SO cool cobbler! I am sure you are becoming a master at swarm removal by now.
Thank you so much for documenting this years swarms for us!
I think I'll put up more traps next year, do you have a plan you followed? 


GregB said:


> Someone is having a blast.
> Not me.


Did you not catch any swarms from outside your apiary this year, Greg?


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## GregB

BEE J said:


> Did you not catch any swarms from outside your apiary this year, Greg?


Just two.
But one of these does not count as trapping - I took a swarm call.


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## Cobbler

BEE J said:


> Unbelievable!!! That is SO cool cobbler! I am sure you are becoming a master at swarm removal by now.
> Thank you so much for documenting this years swarms for us!
> I think I'll put up more traps next year, do you have a plan you followed?
> 
> Did you not catch any swarms from outside your apiary this year, Greg?


I feel like I’m getting pretty good at understanding the way swarms work. It’s still a new adventure every time - something is always different. But I’m to the point where I’m not caught completely surprised very often, and I usually have ideas as the situation involves.

I wouldn’t really say that I have a plan. I called around to several local pest control companies to let them know that I’m happy to deal with honeybee swarm situations that they don’t want. I also created a free website this year. All of those things yielded several calls. I have 24 traps, and my strategy there has just been too scatter them around in places where I can check them along my normal travels. I like suburban areas with mature trees. When I find a place that works, I keep going back there year after year. If I don’t get anything, I am unlikely to go there the next year.

I did not catch any of my own swarms this year. I’m pretty sure I never cast a swarm. I do keep a swarm trap at my house, but didn’t get one there this year.


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## Cobbler

July 15 - last night I collected the crooked swarm trap from a couple of days ago. Today I transferred the bees into a regular hive box and did an inspection. There was heavy capped brood and four frames, but the fifth frame was not even touched. Not a big swarm, especially considering that it has been there a couple of weeks.

One thing that is different this year than any other year is the number of ants. it seems like every trap I collect has tiny ants and larvae between the outer cover and the inner cover. I don’t think this affects the bees much. They probably don’t even realize the ants Are there.


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## Tigger19687

I took down 2 traps yesterday. One had ants and ant larve/eggs . It also had water since it got tilted on the tree (styrofoam trial trap)... No bees in either. I did put them out a little late.
I need to make a free website for the swarms around here too. That's a good idea for next year. I've not called pest control. How do they respond to you calling ?


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## Cobbler

I used Wix for the website. It took a couple of hours to write some nice things and place some photos. I was worried that it wouldn’t show up in Google searches, but people are finding it. I had maybe 5 calls or so from it. You could try searching for it – Beaverton bee rescue.

Most of the pest control companies responded very well. You have to find the local ones, not the local guy who works for some big National organization. In my area nobody wants to kill honeybees, but there’s no money in swarm removal, so the pest control guys are happy to pass them on. I’d say half of my calls come from pest control companies. I also put my name in with the city, which covers police, fire, public works, etc. That’s usually good for three or four calls a year.


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## JustBees

Cobbler said:


> – Beaverton bee rescue.


Hey Neighbor!


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## BEE J

Cobbler said:


> I wouldn’t really say that I have a plan. I called around to several local pest control companies to let them know that I’m happy to deal with honeybee swarm situations that they don’t want. I also created a free website this year. All of those things yielded several calls.


Sorry, I meant, did you have a plan you used for building the swarm traps? I need to make some for next year and was wondering what the dimensions of yours were.

I googled your website and it was the first non-ad site to pop up. I like the this site, especially with all the pics and the cool video you put at the bottom!

BEEJ


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## Johnwb

Cobbler said:


> July 15 - last night I collected the crooked swarm trap from a couple of days ago. Today I transferred the bees into a regular hive box and did an inspection. There was heavy capped brood and four frames, but the fifth frame was not even touched. Not a big swarm, especially considering that it has been there a couple of weeks.
> 
> One thing that is different this year than any other year is the number of ants. it seems like every trap I collect has tiny ants and larvae between the outer cover and the inner cover. I don’t think this affects the bees much. They probably don’t even realize the ants Are there.


 I have seen lots of ants in my traps, one had a nest of earwigs, so the little critters are sure active.
we use Ecolabs for our commercial pest control(big guy) and our tech is happy to call me if he gets a call, though it hasn't happened yet. just getting the word out I think is great.


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## Cobbler

BEE J said:


> Sorry, I meant, did you have a plan you used for building the swarm traps? I need to make some for next year and was wondering what the dimensions of yours were.
> 
> I googled your website and it was the first non-ad site to pop up. I like the this site, especially with all the pics and the cool video you put at the bottom!
> 
> BEEJ


I don’t really have a swarm trap build plan. In fact, all of the wood that I used for my traps was free. I’ll let you in on my secret, but leave my Home Depot alone. Home Depot will cut your wood for you. A lot of people need some piece of plywood, so they buy the sheet, have it cut to size, and leave the rest behind. The store can’t sell these scraps, which are often more than half a sheet, so they are happy to give them to friendly beekeepers. I end up with the whole range of thicknesses, which has to be taken into consideration.

The key is to start with a bottom of 18 1/2“ x 7 1/4“. All of the front, back, and side boards go around the bottom piece.









then add sides which are 7 1/4 inches wide and about 18-20 inches high. At this point you have a U shape with bottom and sides. Depending on the thickness of The bottom and side walls, I add a front and back wall to fit. These walls need to extend about 3/4 inch above the sidewalls to make a space for the frame hanger and handle. 









The frame hanger is the top edge of the side boards, and the handle is a piece of one by. This is a common construction for nuc boxes.

I make my lids out of a piece of plywood with a one by rim around it. So the whole thing looks like this:









drill (recently I have been routing a slit entrance) an entrance near the bottom. I add a couple of pieces of one by to the back wall to offset the hanger board to allow for the lid to slip on and off. The hanger board also does a good job of keeping the lid from moving around.










I put everything together with waterproof wood glue and my pneumatic staple gun – $20 at harbor freight. I like to use thicker boards, (at least 5/8) for the bottom and sides, because that’s where all the staples are going. I like to use thin plywood for the front and back walls, because that makes a big difference in the weight, and therefore the ease of installation and retrieval. of course, I use screws for the hanger. I also like to use at least five eights for the lid, because that’s where most of the wear and tear and warping happens.

Thanks for the report on the website search results. It seems to be working. Glad you liked the site.


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## Cobbler

July 20 - I went to retrieve the last of my traps which are currently occupied on the 18th. This one is my most dangerous spot - up a tree for around 15 feet. It’s at a friends house, where I have caught swarms, but there’s no other good place to put it. The tree has plenty of thick branches and is easy to climb, so I haven’t been too bothered by the height. 

anyway, I climbed up the tree tied a rope onto the trap, and unsecured it from the tree. I was lowering it down from the tree by the rope, with my friend standing on the ground holding out his hands ready to make sure the box had a nice, level landing.

suddenly, the box just dropped. Luckily, it didn’t land on my friend. I told him to run.

My knot was good, but the hanger board was not. Here’s what it looks like:









Of course this makes perfect sense. It’s a really bad design flaw. You drill a big hole in a piece of linear word. I guess it should come as no surprise if cracks develop along the grain. I’ll be using plywood for these hangers in the future.

So, I climbed down from a tree and was surprised that the bees weren’t going crazy. The lid had popped off. It looked like a disaster. Turns out, a swarm had moved in, built 3 frames of comb in addition to the bait frame, raised a bunch of brood to pupae, and then died out. There was exactly one bee left in the box. No dead bees. Plenty of beetle larvae and fermented nectar. 

I usually don’t count a swarm until it arrives at my bee yard, but I’m still counting this one as number 47, because there is no question that it was a swarm. We watched it for over a month. And technically, this friend’s yard is my secondary be yard. I keep two other hives there.

Who wants to guess why are these bees died?


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## BEE J

Cobbler said:


> I don’t really have a swarm trap build plan. In fact, all of the wood that I used for my traps was free. I’ll let you in on my secret, but leave my Home Depot alone. Home Depot will cut your wood for you. A lot of people need some piece of plywood, so they buy the sheet, have it cut to size, and leave the rest behind. The store can’t sell these scraps, which are often more than half a sheet, so they are happy to give them to friendly beekeepers. I end up with the whole range of thicknesses, which has to be taken into consideration.
> 
> The key is to start with a bottom of 18 1/2“ x 7 1/4“. All of the front, back, and side boards go around the bottom piece.
> 
> View attachment 70456
> 
> then add sides which are 7 1/4 inches wide and about 18-20 inches high. At this point you have a U shape with bottom and sides. Depending on the thickness of The bottom and side walls, I add a front and back wall to fit. These walls need to extend about 3/4 inch above the sidewalls to make a space for the frame hanger and handle.
> View attachment 70457
> 
> 
> The frame hanger is the top edge of the side boards, and the handle is a piece of one by. This is a common construction for nuc boxes.
> 
> I make my lids out of a piece of plywood with a one by rim around it. So the whole thing looks like this:
> View attachment 70458
> 
> 
> drill (recently I have been routing a slit entrance) an entrance near the bottom. I add a couple of pieces of one by to the back wall to offset the hanger board to allow for the lid to slip on and off. The hanger board also does a good job of keeping the lid from moving around.
> 
> View attachment 70459
> 
> 
> I put everything together with waterproof wood glue and my pneumatic staple gun – $20 at harbor freight. I like to use thicker boards, (at least 5/8) for the bottom and sides, because that’s where all the staples are going. I like to use thin plywood for the front and back walls, because that makes a big difference in the weight, and therefore the ease of installation and retrieval. of course, I use screws for the hanger. I also like to use at least five eights for the lid, because that’s where most of the wear and tear and warping happens.
> 
> Thanks for the report on the website search results. It seems to be working. Glad you liked the site.


Thank you for all the information and specs (and the tip about the scrap plywood from Harbor freight)! 


Cobbler said:


> Who wants to guess why are these bees died?


I don't know. Why?


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## Cobbler

BEE J said:


> I don't know. Why?


I’m not saying I know why. Maybe I’m putting it out there for speculation. what causes a colony of bees to disappear - leaving brood - with not a single dead bee left behind?


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## Cobbler

July 21 - I checked one of my traps that I hadn’t seen in a little while. Woohoo! It was occupied. My first new swarm in quite some time.

I also got a real live swarm call later in the evening. Luckily I asked for photos before driving all the way across town. Here’s what I got.









What is that, maybe 50 bees? it pained me to give up a swarm, but I had to tell the lady that I just couldn’t justify the gasoline for the hour and a half round-trip for a golf ball size swarm.


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## Cobbler

Aug 16 - I have fallen behind with my reporting. Last week I collected three trapped swarms – the only occupied traps of which I am aware.

One of them turned out to be queenless. I assume this was a virgin queen swarm, and the queen didn’t make it back from her mating flights. It was a fair sized swarm, so I combined it with a queen-right hive.

The next trap was at a friend’s house where I have collected swarms for many years in the past. There is a feral bee tree right nextdoor, but that hive didn’t survive last winter. I still need to get a reliable report on whether the bee tree was also re-populated. The hive I got was well-established and fully filling all five frames. It had been there a while - I saw worker brood emerging.

The third trap was in a tree at a friends house. This is a new location for me this year, and this was the third catch at this location. Every one of those three colonies have been the highest quality. This one had the most beautiful, tight patterns I have ever seen. The population was actually a bit on the weak side, but clearly the population will explode in the next few days as new bees begin to emerge.

Those 3 bring my total 2022 swarm count to 50 - the same as last year. I still feel like there is a swarm or two to be had this year.


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## GregB

Cobbler said:


> Those 3 bring my total 2022 swarm count to 50 - the same as last year. I still feel like there is a swarm or two to be had this year.


You should be in bee-selling business, Cobbler.
With such annual intake, there is plenty to sell off (to pay for the gas, at least).


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## Cobbler

GregB said:


> You should be in bee-selling business, Cobbler.
> With such annual intake, there is plenty to sell off (to pay for the gas, at least).


My business model is to prioritize having fun chasing the bees. It is also nice if I can cover my expenses. With that in mind, I have been selling off several nucs after they have been well established and proven. I figure this covers my gas and other expenses, and it’s such a small part of the entire experience that it doesn’t take away from the fun. In fact, this has been a great way to meet some other beekeepers, many of whom have purchased bees, and then become long-term beekeeping contacts. Some have called me to offer up swarms or other beekeeping resources. I have also called some of these to respond to swarm calls that are just too far away for me, but closeto these people.

I have also started a lot of friends into bee keeping. Unfortunately, some of them have required replacement colonies or queens at a fairly high rate.

This year, I’ve had an unusually high rate of swarms that soon end up queenless. I find that naturally requeening a swarm seldom produces great results. A colony that has little brood and mostly a bunch of old bees will be almost dead by the time a queen is produced, mated, and laying. And with little support, it’s going to take some time for that new queen to generate a viable population. I generally combine a queenless swarm into a queen-right colony. On some occasions, when I have a good feel for the genetics of the queenless hive, I will move The Queen cells into a two frame mating nuc, and then later use the resulting Queen to re-queen a lagging queen with a fair sized population of workers.


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## fieldsofnaturalhoney

Cobbler said:


> I’m pretty sure I never cast a swarm. I do keep a swarm trap at my house, but didn’t get one there this year.


Me too😂😁So your caught swarm trapped bees are not generally swarmy later?


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## Cobbler

fieldsofnaturalhoney said:


> Me too😂😁So your caught swarm trapped bees are not generally swarmy later?


I used to cast a fair amount of swarms back before I became a real swarm chaser. I am pretty certain that none of my hives have swarmed (maybe once) in the past three seasons, since I got serious about catching swarms.

In my opinion, the difference is that I now understand why and when hives swarm, and I make splits or take other preemptive measures to prevent swarms.

I have very little experience with commercial bees, but I have not seen “swamy” behavior in my swarm bees. I think if you take any colony and feed it, and get the population up beyond the space in the hive, then they will swarm. I haven’t seen the same response from any bees that are given plenty of space.


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## Cobbler

October 2 - it’s getting very late in the swarm season, but there has still been some recent adventure I need to catch up on.

It’s time to pull in all the traps for the season. I have been pretty casual the past couple of months about checking them. Many of my traps are right along my way in my daily travels, so I still see those pretty regularly, but I haven’t even seen a single scout be at my traps since before July. Still, I was hoping that as I collected the traps, I might be surprised to find one occupied.










Sure enough, that is what happened this week. For those who have followed this thread, the trap where I found the baby falcon has a colony in it. I’m looking back at my notes, I had checked this trap last at the very end of June. I assume the swarm moved in right after that.

The trap was one of the heaviest I’ve ever moved. That makes sense. The bees did a good job setting up for winter. They didn’t draw at all below the frames. They had set up a very nice pattern with a solid band of capped honey at the top half of each frame and brood in the bottom half of each frame. A very compact and well stocked colony, which I think will do well overwintering in five frames. I’ll probably see if they’ll take some syrup, just to be on the safe side.

I also did a cut out in the beginning of September. Again, if you’ve been following along, perhaps you will remember one of the first few swarms I was called out to this season. It was on a mailbox, and while I dithered taking photos and putting on my veil, the swarm decided to leave. Well, maybe 200 yards from that mailbox - in the opposite direction than the swarm left in - there was a very nice little colony living in a chimney.

I typically don’t have a lot of time for cut outs, but I try to do about one each year. This was the one for this year. It was down the chimney about as far as my arm is long.










The only complication getting it out was working with scrapers on the ends of PVC pipes. I was cutting and grabbing the combs with basically long chopsticks. I only dropped one comb, and had to fish that out through the fireplace.










I left the framed comb in a nuc box on top of the chimney and figured the bees would all find their way inside. 










It was a decent plan, but I think there might have been just as much robbing going on as bees finding their way home. When I came back to collect the box, there weren’t a whole lot of bees, and I didn’t get the queen. It’s sad to lose a colony, But I think I learned a few things, and I do believe the bees would not have survived the winter in that space unsheltered from above.

I anticipate this is my last adventure log for the season. I’ll check in one more time with the final stats for the season.


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