Easier Yet (almost)

In the last post I said, "But I doubt I'll soon get any more already boxed up and ready to go ... for free!"

Ya know, it's hubris to think you can predict the future with that kinda certainty. My friend Julie, sometimes known as 'the mentor bee lady who lives down the road', delivered a swarm to me, all boxed up and ready to go! What's better than that???

It was from the same farmer who had called me for the last swarm. He was working off the swarm list, I guess, to give away this second swarm too. Julie is the chief honeybee swarm rescuer in this part of our whereabouts. Normally she has every hive of her own populated, but she loves to save the swarms and to collect them for others. She knew I still needed to populate my last two hives, so she brought them to me. (A couple of long-time beeks have adopted the label "Lazy Beekeeper" on the 'Net, but with this delivery, I may be in the running for the title.)

Anyway, it was the same kind of big box o' bees, perfectly taped-up, with more little windows and everything. I figured, "Hey it's gonna be a snap! I'll just put 'em in the Biodynamic Lang the same way I did the others and let 'em settle in next to the Hard Luck Warré."

Sure.

Hubris, overconfidence, too easily thinking I'd graduated past "newbie"? It was a big unwieldy box and I was a little too careless in shaking them into the Lang hive. About half of them stuck to the side of the box and didn't quite slide out with the rest. I didn't notice this since I couldn't see over the side of the big box well enough. As I was pulling the box away the rest of them fell out onto the deck next to the hive. I had soaked them down pretty good with my water spray bottle, but still ... lots of them flew up, or they were all scurrying to find the rest of the colony. Next thing you know I am down on my hands and knees trying to grab them all in big handfuls and toss 'em into the Lang. (You would have laughed your ass off at the sight of me in my veil and helmet trying to see well enough to determine where they were crawling.)

Yes, I did have my gloves on, and that made it worse actually. First it was hard to feel them well enough to grab properly; and either I held 'em too tight or the bees just slipped out of my fingers. Second, about this time some of the honeybees decided they were through being Miss Nice Bee and crawled down in my gloves to sting some sense back into me. Owwww! Ow, ow, ow!

{Sigh} Eventually I got them all into the Lang, although I was a bit worried that the bees I had spilled included the queen - Julie had said she was a marked Golden Bee queen, two years old. I haven't seen her yet. I set up the entrance reducer, along with a piece of queen excluder I stapled over the hole to keep them from absconding and let them be for the night.

The next morning I went out early. The Hard Luck Warré had their bees out and foraging, lots of activity even though it was cool weather. The Biodynamic Hive had a few straggler bees wandering across the landing board but not much else happening. I snuck a peek inside and was at first pretty disheartened. There was a smallish cluster in the super, not nearly half of the about 5 pounds of bees I had put in there last night. Oh no! The queen hadn't made it into the hive! -- and the rest of the bees had struggled out of the entrance reducer/excluder barrier and had absconded in the night! I was an idiot! The queen had fled under the deck as soon as I spilt everybody!

I tilted the super up and looked in the bottom brood box inside the foundationless frames. Sure enough there was a half dome of sleepy bees covering the whole underside of the top bars, about the size of a basketball. Whew! Everything was copacetic!

I noticed that the bees that were moving in and out seemed to stack up for a long time at my makeshift reduced entrance, and I kind of don't trust that piece of excluder. In K&M's hive the bees just about refused to go through it. I headed off to Glorybee and bought another new plastic excluder and some frames for the western supers. When I returned, the sun had warmed up the Lang enough that the bees were moving in and out, albeit sluggishly. I removed the entrance reducer and slid the new excluder in, figuring a whole sheet of it on the bottom would be enough for them to comfortably get in and out and still leave the queen inside. Hey, there is something to this Langstroth standardization thing! The queen excluder fits perfectly on the rim of the bottom board, right under the brood box. I'd had to do surgery on the piece sitting under the Warré. This evening the Hard Luck Warré has foragers bringing in lots of bright orange pollen, some of it prolly from the California poppies on the roadside. Since this indicates the bee ladies seem to be occupying both hives permanently, I will slip both excluders out in a day or two.

Well, I learned what I learned from this; and tonight as the sunlight fades both the new swarms are active, bringing in pollen and sucking up the sugar syrup from the Boardman feeders I set up to keep them fed until they get some comb built and are viable on their own.

I said up above, "Normally [Julie] has every hive of her own populated." But she called me that night after she delivered the swarm, wondering  if I had hived it yet.

"Absolutely," I said, like it was no big deal at all.

Oh that was too bad, since when she got home one of her hives turned out to be queenless all of a sudden; and if I still had them in the big box she would have liked the swarm for herself to put in that hive with the queenless colony.  She regretted a little bit that she had given them to me. I offered to shake them back into the box, quietly rubbing my wrist where the stings were beginning to throb and itch. No no, that's okay, we'll just get another swarm. Am I still on the swarm list? Yep, and I am expecting the bee tree grove to swarm any minute. Although there were major swarm days in May, the timing here has been all over the place for bees this year. Every action, including the main nectar flow, is late in Oregon this year because of the rain. Some swarms are still bound to happen.

I will make no more predictions about how hard or easy the next swarms will be.

Easiest Swarm I Ever Got

A farmer called me via my entry on the LCBA Swarm List. He had a swarm, "Come get it."

I asked, "What equipment do you think I need? Should I bring my ladder?"

"It's in a box already."

I drove over to the most beautiful little farm area by Creswell. Sure enough there on the picnic table behind the house was a big cardboard box, all taped up. There were even little screen windows taped in place so the bees could breathe. Next time I fix up a cardboard bee box, that's the way I'm gonna do it.

The farmer told me he had 5 hives, but was moving and didn't want to start any more colonies. So when this swarm issued from one of his hives, he just called me as the closest beek on the swarm list. He slid the box off the table and carried it out to my car!

"How many times are you gonna get a swarm all packed in a box and ready to go?" he asked, laughing.

"Prolly never again," I admitted, and shook his hand. 

"They produce great honey, too" he smiled.

Me, I smiled too as I drove back home. I had "caught" a swarm dressed in shorts and a t-shirt, wearing flip flops. My part in the operation, minus drive time, was about 5 minutes. You know how there's usually some leak somewhere in a taped-up box full of bees? I drove home looking in the back every once in a while, expecting to see a few bees buzzing around the back window. But no, this farmer knew what he was doing. Every bee was securely inside the box.

I've decided to give the Hard Luck Hive another shot. What is this, the forth attempt? Anyway, I set the hive back up in that nice dappled-sun area by the greenhouse in my back yard. I put 3 boxes on the Warré hive, put on my veil and my gloves and opened the big box. It was big for a reason! There must have been five pounds of bees inside. After spraying them down a bit with water, I shook them into the upper box of the Warré. All around me the dryer bees flew up and buzzed around; but they were so docile that they didn't even pretend to be upset as I put the top bars back into place and fiddled around with the Warré quilt and roof assembly. No stings whatsoever this time.

Because there have been so many absconding swarms this year noted by newbeeks on all the lists, I've tried a trick from several experienced beeks who were posting to different discussion groups: If you want to avoid absconsion, use a queen excluder for the first few days until they start bringing in pollen. My Hard Luck Hive stand is constructed so that there is a raised rim between the lowest box and the bottom board. I placed the excluder over that rim and set the boxes over it, which hold it in place. Now the bees in K&M's kTBH hadn't been very easily able to go in and out through the excluder, but these gals just seemed to ignore it and right away started moving in and out as pretty as you please. I can easily remove the excluder by sliding it out in a few days. For right now, 24 hours later, the bees seem at home, making orientation flights and even sampling the borage blossoms in the back yard.

It's been a strange year for the bees here in Oregon: a cold snap right as Spring began, then a quick spell of sunlight, then almost constant rain from mid-March until just this weekend. Timing is off for everything related to the bees. Some beeks have even had to feed their bees well into Spring, according to Ken at the Beek Association. It seems to have delayed some swarming, because all of a sudden, like my box o' bees, the swarms are beginning to issue now that there is sunshine. There's no news from the grove of bee trees. But I expect they'll be swarming next. I'm looking to fill out the 'Biodynamic Lang' and the redwood Warré here very soon.

But I doubt I'll soon get any more already boxed up and ready to go ... for free!