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...

Winter Recap and SWARM!

Well, it's been almost a year since I wrote, wow! I wrote lots of posts in my head, but they never quite made it to the screen! 2013 was a good year for the bees, until winter hit! I went into winter with 9 hives, most of them looking pretty strong. We had a brutal winter, with lots of snow (3rd snowiest ever I believe) and sustained cold temperatures. It was really hard on the bees (and on most people I know!) and I ended up losing 6/9 hives! One hive just up and left in the fall, a couple of others had a population crash and were too small to survive the cold. One hive died in late winter/early spring due to a cold snap that lasted almost a week. The Birthday Swarm hive didn't survive, but the Oscar the Grouch hive did! All-in-all it wasn't quite as disheartening as last winter's mouse debacle, but still pretty upsetting. The silver lining was that all of those dead hives left me LOTS of honey!

I had resolved not to  purchase any bees in 2014 and I was doing alright until I learned that Sam Comfort of Anarchy Apiaries was bringing a load of his bees to Philly. I have always wanted some of Sam's bees but had never made the drive to his place in the Hudson Valley to pick some up. But now that he was bringing bees to us, well, I decided to buy one little ol' package of bees. This brought my total going into this spring to 4 hives. I had also resolved to consolidate my apiaries because having 5 sites was too much for me. So, I am no longer keeping bees at The Spring Gardens or at Strawberry Mansion. Now I have one hive at my house, 2 at Field Street and 2 at Woodford Mansion.

That brings us to the first swarm of 2014. I got a call at 5pm on May 12th about a swarm in South Philadelphia (thanks to Lynn for calling!). I loaded up the V-dub and arrived to see this -

Swarm hanging out, nice and low!

This was a pretty large swarm. The bees were super calm and content just hanging out there. They had just arrived a few hours earlier. I had a big crowd of people watching me, cause hey, it's not every night that you see such a crazy sight on the streets of South Philly! One guy Robert, took a bunch of video (thanks Robert). Here I am shaking the bees into my swarm catching box -

Get in the box already girls!!

And one other video from Robert - this is after closing everything up and then discovering a large bunch of stragglers clinging to the underside of my swarm box that I needed to get inside the box; you'll see me dumping them in. As I mentioned before, this was a large swarm -

I got 99% of the bees into the box and drove them home (no, they didn't get out this time!). They spent the night in the swarm box in my yard and in the morning I took them to my Woodford Mansion apiary and set them up.

All sealed up, ready for placement

Removed bottom of swarm box and placed on hive stand

Top of swarm box is off

Getting comfy in the new digs

Sittin' on the stoop, just like in Southie!

So there you have it - a recap and a new start. Looking forward to a great year in 2014 - I'm actually happy to have fewer hives to manage, it feels more relaxed to me and I can take my sweet old time with the bees.

Keeping Busy and Waiting for Spring

It's that time of year, when all of the beekeepers (and let's be real, everyone else too) are getting antsy for spring. It's been a few months since we had the chance to really look in our hives and we need to know what is going on in there. Yes, there have been a few warmish days when we've had the chance to see the bees flying (or not, as is the case with some of my dead hives - more on that later) but no chance for full inspections.

After 2 years as president of the Philadelphia Beekeepers Guild, I have stepped aside to let someone else take the reins (Suzanne Matlock is now Pres, along with a great group of other officers). Even though I am no longer president, I have been keeping busy this winter with Guild events. We had our big symposium a few weeks ago and by most accounts, it went really well. And we have our beginners beekeeping course coming up this weekend, which I will be helping to teach.

I have volunteered to videotape the Guild's Natural Beekeeping Symposium events for the past 2 years and I have finally uploaded those videos to YouTube. You can view footage of John Seaborn and Sam Comfort from last year and Michael Bush from this year on my YouTube Channel. Below is the first part of Michael Bush's talk from this year. I'll be back soon with another blog post.