Swarm 2016...and away we go for another season!

Hi all, hope you had a great winter! We had a mild one in Philadelphia. I went into winter with 7 hives and 5 of them survived. Now they are all building up as the weather has really warmed up in the past week and there are tons of flowers in bloom.

The other day there was a post on the Philly Bee Keepers Facebook page about a swarm in Northeast Philly. I jumped at the chance to grab it. The car was packed with swarm catchin' gear and I headed up to my old stomping grounds to go capture the swarm. But, I broke one of the cardinal rules of swarm catching - I didn't get last minute confirmation that the swarm was still there (I tried but couldn't get a hold of anyone). Lo and behold, got there and the bees had left already! Damn - no free bees today! Fortunately, I got a call from the same guy the next day and there was another swarm in the same exact place! I had told him they might throw a secondary swarm and if they did to call me. The parent colony is living in the building not 25 feet from where the swarms landed.

So I headed out again, this time with my trusty assistant Jonah and we captured that swarm! And we even saw the queen. Here are some pics and video.

A lovely little swarm!

My assistant saying hi to the girls!

In this video you can see when I found the queen. After removing a small branch, there she was - right in front of my face. I managed to get her on my pruners.

What was that I said about queens being unlikely to fly away???

Fortunately she didn't get away. She went back into the swarm to the safety of her daughters! It is nice to be able to contain the queen, because that really ensures that the swarm won't go anywhere once you set them up in a new hive. Sometimes a swarm will leave a new hive once it is set up and opened. I have had that happen only once. If you keep the queen contained for a day or two while the bees get settled in, it greatly improves the chances that they will stay.

Jonah being very brave

We got all of the bees into the box and sealed them up. All in all it was a very easy swarm capture and the bees were super gentle. It was great to have Jonah there helping, he was into it. According to the guy who called me, the bees have been living there at least 4 years, so it seems like they will be good genetic stock. We'll see how they do!

Girls are all sealed up ready to go home

Update - Here they are settling in to their new home at Woodford Mansion...

And one final update - I checked on them one week after installing them at Woodford. Saw the queen and she is laying eggs nicely. So far so, good...