Perfect Swarm Avoids Capture

One of the decisions I made with Ed when we set up the bees in the Eagle's Rest Garden was that we'd let most of the swarms go feral. After all, his garden sits in the middle of a wooden area, there are forest tracts over the fences in every direction. Lots of hollow trees and natural structure for colonies to inhabit. Here in the middle of the third year of those original hives, I think I've only captured one swarm from them; the rest have taken flight on their own terms. The idea is to repopulate and build up locally adapted honeybees in the surrounding woods who will then be there to pollinate. It's part of that 'save the bees' idea that got me started in the first place.

Now I know there is a lot of discussion pro and con about this, and frankly ... we don't care. You're either on the bus with restoring feral bee colonies, or you are not. A link to the feral bee projects is here, and I don't have a link to those who oppose it. [smile] There's currently a bit of a discussion about the idea on the Warré group, too. You can easily find all the talking points of the issues if you look on the net.

Anyway ... I harvested about 5 swarms in the last couple of weeks, including three that originated from my own hives here behind the house. One other swarm that issued forth was from my Biodynamic Lang, full of those pretty golden bees. Here's the swarm as it first began to settle in a tree just over the fence from the hive:

Well ... aside from the boat, there's a big dog over there, just outside of camera range ... and the fence is tall ... and at the time I didn't have an empty hive ready to put them in  ... and there was this little voice coming from somewhere close to being perched on my shoulder, "Hey, let 'em go." I was all set to pass up this swarm and let them become feral repopulator/pollinators. Yet it got harder when they eventually settled into this clump, about four feet off the ground, just beyond the fence:

Now who could resist such a nice cluster??? Imean, all ya gotta do is slip the bucket up under them, bang on the branch (or even just snip it off!) and .. wall - ah ... you got a swarm o' pretty golden bees.  The dog isn't mean, Molly and I feed him cookies all the time. The fence opens pretty easily. The bees could live in the bucket until I got another hive ready. What if they decided to settle in that guy's boat? Now the little voice was saying "GET THEM!!!"  I decided that if they were there in the morning, I would.  But that evening I began to question my 'save the bees' principles. Imean, if you've decided to increase the ferals in the local neighborhood, these are prime candidates. I should. I should let them go if I'm gonna be true to my values. [sigh]

Okay, they were there the next morning, even though the temp had drifted down to 34F just before dawn. But so was a swarm in a horse park over by the filbert groves. I went and collected those bees first, since the horse owners were panicked. Late that afternoon, the golden swarm was still on that branch. By now the little voice was ambivalent. Sometimes it was "Go", sometimes it was, "Get them."  Procrastination is our friend.

By the next morning, they were -- indeed -- gone.  I'm sure they found a nice oak somewhere between my fence and Parvin Butte , less than 1000 yards away. 

And hey .. I learned a lot just watching them for 48 hours.

Year-end Update

I know I have been neglecting this blog! It's just that the Bee Girls have been so self-sufficient that I have had no real news to report. Anyway, I decided I ought to get one more post in before the new year, so here's a kind of status report:

City bees and Country bees - both doing fine. They venture out on a few flights on the sunny winter days, there's always a little ivy flowering, plus the abundance of roadside flowers and plants the neighbors have cultivated. With all the doug fir and other evergreens there's always some pine resin to be had for propolis.

The City bees are in the 36" kTBH, with about 2/3 of the bars carrying comb. They stay at the far end away from the entrance and don't ball up much, but are kind of 'slowly active' over the combs.

The Country bees are in the 30" kTBH and are about equally active, although the little brats have been mean since October and the onset of colder weather. They like to clump up on the combs closest to the entrance end of the hive.

I opened both these hives' observation windows; the City bees just looked up and said "huh"? and sent out a few scouts to check me out. The Country bees, however, jumped at the chance to boil out a couple dozen angry ladies who needed to sting me just to show who was boss. I got two nice stings and quickly closed up their window.  Both hives seem to have gone through about half their stores, so I'll be checking often now that it got colder (down to +28F last night) and feed them if necessary. I figure about another 6-8 weeks before there is a viable resurgence of springtime blooms here in the Willamette Valley/Cascade Foothills location.) I'm waiting for the grocery store Xmas candy canes to go on clearance sale, when I can load them up. I'm toying with the idea of cooking up some fondant and adding some pollen patties. Looking around for good recipes. (hint, hint)

Karen and Maria's Hive -- is that 48" kTBH that has the main swarm the City bees cast last spring. They are a big thriving colony, still doing quite well. They are tucked in for winter, too. I plan on monitoring them about as closely as the City /Country hives from now until spring. They'll get some candy canes too.

The Hard Luck Warré -- Has done the best of any of my colonies. It began this winter with three full Warré boxes, with a large population of bees. I don't take any honey, as the idea is to 'keep' the bees, and promote healthy swarms with as little interference by me as I can manage.  I put another box on just before the rains came. (and I mean right before they came!) These are that first colony I received from the farmer's stock over in Creswell. These bees turned out to be "Golden Bees", a variety of very yellow, very pretty Italian species. A member of one of the bee listserves read that I had them and wants a nuc this spring. T'will be interesting to try my hand at splitting and "nuc-ing" this colony. Stay tuned.

Here's the hive a couple of days before New Year's, everybody inside and staying warm in the +29F degree weather and the snow. (You can hear them buzzing inside if you put your ear to the boxes. Nobody comes out to object or I'd have a stung ear, btw.) It hasn't been warm enough since then to see them doing any outside flights, but I expect the first warm day will bring them out.  I've been careful to slightly tip the hive every so often to check and see if it feels like there's any honey stores left. So far so good, but they'll get fed if they seem to need it.

The Biodynamic Lang -- has been quiet. They were the second of the Golden Bee colonies from the Creswell farmer. They filled the bottom brood box with rapid growth. The bees built a lot of combs on the foundationless frames I put in there. However, they seem not to want to build up into that first super on top, although they have propolized the entire interior of both boxes where they felt they needed to. I worry most about this hive, as it had a lot of bees inside with only that one large deep for resources. It still feels heavy to heft it, but the first warmer day we get in January I'm going to set up the feeder (and stick a mirror in there to see how things are going.)

So, I end 2010 with just five colonies. The small 24" kTBH managed to lose its short occupancy of a small swarm we captured in mid-summer; and the redwood Warré never got populated, despite my best intentions. (I kept giving swarms and swarm opportunities to newbeeks.) I think the redwood hive will get some modifications before spring -- it'll prolly be the first one I try those little porthole openings on. I'm also set to produce a bunch more of my famous-unpatented-oversized-paperflowerpot swarm traps, as soon as I get the garage cleaned up. I reckon that by the end of Feburary I can spread the traps around, put my little "Got Bees?" notices up and get ready to acquire a bunch more swarms. (wish me luck!)

Okay, Solstice has passed, the New Year is upon us, and we're headed for the light. Happy 2011 beekeeping, y'all.