A Journey of Bees

On Friday I witnessed an amazing sight, one that frightened me, mostly because of ignorance, but also had me captivated. I went in the check on Ted our playful little rabbit, as I walked into the room, which has a direct eye shot to the hive, I saw a large number of bees flying and circling outside the hive. My first thoughts are the bees are about to swarm or we have a robbing situation on our hands, either way, we had trouble. I grabbed my phone and walked towards the hive. As I was recording I noticed the circling was methodical, not chaotic for a robbing situation and noticed no fighting between bees. The swarming theory was still a very real possibility but it just didn't feel that's what it was. I walked away to do some digging and no longer than 5 minutes later the circling had stopped and the hive was back to its normal pace. After a little more digging, what I had witnessed was new foragers orientating themselves. In a way, I still had the thought of a swarm in the

 Sunday, Ed came by to drop off a new set of bees. We're going to keep them in the 5-frame nuc boxes instead of moving them into a full size hive. Hopefully, they can grow in numbers so that they can keep themselves warm thru the winter. They seem healthy and busy. The bottom nuc box is full with brood and nectar. The second box was just introduced a couple weeks ago and there is one frame with comb. The next time we check on them, there should be more progress.  The new Queen is a lot lighter than the last one, who was black. These are the same types of bees, Carniolan. Her majesty, marked in yellow, born this year. On Ed's suggestion, we moved the hive location out from under the garage and closer to our back fence. This way, the sun will hit their hive earlier, prompting them to get out and start foraging earlier. Matt also built a hive stand :) We're not expecting to harvest any honey from his hive, getting them so late in the season and not having any

Yesterday, I got a phone call from Matt asking if I had seen his text message. I'm driving and #adulting so I don't text and drive anymore. The bees have swarmed. Luckily, they attached themselves to our back fence, easily accessible. I immediately called Ed and told him. He instructed me to do what I was still nervous about doing: Catch the swarm. Honeybees, when swarming, are even more friendly than when they're busy working. This video shows that. But, I'm not yet ready for that. We built a makeshift swarm box using a deep super with 4 frames in it. Got a piece of plywood to cover the bottom and the top, leaving a small gap for them to go in. We propped the box up right underneath the swarm and brushed them into the box, using a brush :)  You can see how small they are compared to the box. Normally, the whole box would be FULL of bees. In about an hour, they had all gone in. Still, their small numbers will not be enough to last them through the