Flew the Coop

SWARM!!!: Friday morning, I was getting out of the shower, and I looked out the window, to the south. I noticed dozens of bees flying erratically (straight up and down, zig zagging and such). Usually bees are pretty linear - they're on a mission and fly efficiently.

Naturally, I thought, "Are those 'our' bees?' and moved to my bedroom window where I could see the hive. 

Uh oh.

There were hundreds and hundreds of bees swarming in the air above the hive. 

We knew our hive was getting crowded - our bees have been such prolific breeders! We had even purchased another bee box to double their space. It had arrived the night before, and we hadn't had a chance to install it yet. :(

I quickly called Christian to let him know what was going on, and he hustled home from work. Meanwhile, I was off to the Google. Never before had I used the search phrase "what do do when your hive swarms." Thankfully, I quickly hit on some super helpful advice, including an article called "How to catch a Bee Swarm and Install it in a Beehive" by Beebuilt.com.  I also watched this video. ...


Once Christian got home, we went looking for our runaway bees. We found a cluster about 18 feet up a neighbor's tree. We armed ourselves with the necessary tools for capture, asked the neighbor's permission, and off we went.

He climbed up the ladder and I called out 'orders' to him, drawing upon my vast (LOL) knowledge having read one article and watched one video about how to capture the swarm.

Here's CJ's retelling of the event. ...

A few months ago, my family bought a large amount of bees (as well as a hive for them to live in). Since installing their hive in our yard, the bees have been very active, and built a sizable amount of honeycomb (most of which has yet to be filled with honey). However, the hive appears to have some overpopulation problems, with the bees not using the hive's second level for reasons unknown to us. Yesterday, likely as a consequence of the overpopulation, the bees swarmed over a section of our yard. Perhaps needless to say, the sound of thousands of bees swarming in a chaotic fashion was rather loud.

After swarming for a bit, most of the bees went over to part of a tree in one of our neighbors' yards. My dad returned home from his workplace to assist in "catching" some of the bees. Using a ladder, a beesuit, and a box, my dad shook the trunk that the bees were inhabiting, and made many of them migrate to a large white box intended to hold the bees. Early the following day, my father took the white box containing the bees, and brought them next to our original hive box, hoping to make the bees migrate back to the hive.

Even though they were just in temporary digs for less than 24 hours, check out the honeycomb the split squad made in the cardboard box overnight.

Here's a photo of our new temporary set up, with the dual hives. The one on the left is the old queen and her swarm.

It's amazing how much we've been through with our hive in the short time it has been established. 

I really can't believe we successfully retrieved the swarm, considering five months ago, we knew hardly anything about bees and beekeeping.