Swarming Bees

I was out in my garden this morning  when I first heard the swarm of bees. I searched for the source of the sound and saw thousands of bees madly flying around  in the top of a walnut tree nearby.

They were about fifty feet up. I went and got my digital camera to zoom in on the upper branches for a better look and finally focused  on a  large mass of bees hanging from the branch tips in the upper reaches. I watched as they calmed down and huddled together after about an hour of buzzing about. They would have to land in such an un-reachable tree. I did not want to lose all these bees. There were thousands of them. I have purchased five new sets of bees this year, in smaller quantities than this,  and they cost from $100 to $165 each.  I wanted to capture them and keep them home.

So High Up There

I have caught a swarm once before, a few years ago, when a friend left his bees untended at my place, but they had landed in a young apple tree and were only about ten feet off the ground. How in the world was I going to get to these? I wish I had a bucket truck. I decided to call Storm, a fellow beekeeper who is also a tree pruner, to see what he thought. He was nice enough to come right over to assess the situation. They were too high, even for him. He suggested that I rent a man lift from Jefferson Rentals over in Bardane, which is only about seven miles away, so I googled their number and called them. They had a forty five foot high, tow behind unit for $190 that I could have until Monday morning. I only needed it for about an hour and decided to ask my son in law if he was ready to paint the high end of his house yet. Might as well get our money’s worth. I drove over with my pickup right away. The guy at the yard talked me through the operating instructions and I pulled it home, every once in awhile taking  a nice, deep, calming, yoga breath.  This was turning out to be an intense day.

When I got home I backed the unit up to the tree, shut the truck off and climbed out. I was going to inch it forward a bit but then the truck battery died, so I gave up on that and started leveling the four hydraulic anchor feet. That took longer than expected and used a lot of battery power. I could plug it in to 110 house current if I was closer to the house but I would have to rely on the string of batteries out here. I had a fleeting vision of being stranded at the very top of this man lift with a bunch of mad bees and no battery power to get me down. I tried not to think about that again.

Once the unit was level it was easy to climb into the basket and maneuver it upwards from the second control box .  First I put on my bee jacket and gloves. I had to trim a few branches with loppers on the way but nothing major. I got right under the swarm and was able to reach up to clip the three branches it was draped on.

I clipped the first bunch and they landed kind of hard in the 20 gallon plastic bucket I had brought up.  I lowered the rest more gently and put a lid on them. Time to go back down. It was a little rickety feeling up there when the boom was fully extended but the base stayed stable so it was all good. Jeff looked small way down there.

Once I was back on the ground, I dumped the bucket of bees upside down over a double-deep hive body with a syrup feeder and nine frames of foundation in the lower box, and put a cover on it. Hopefully they will like their new home and stick around.

I am not sure yet if these bees are from my hives or if they were passing through and were enticed down by my bee yard. I will have time tomorrow to go through my five hives and determine that. I will be looking for queen cells, which I did not see the other day when I inspected them. I have been  feeding them pollen patties and sugar syrup every few days, and have added an extra deep box to two of them when they seemed to be running out of room. Two days ago, there were still empty frames left for them to fill. Bees will leave if  they run out of room.  I am hoping that these are from somebody else’s hive nearby.

When we were finished, we had to go buy a new battery to replace the five year old one in my truck. Then we drove it over to our daughters house so they could finish painting the high gables on their house tomorrow. It was kind of fun to be able to do this job and I will take it back on Monday morning first thing.

Never a dull moment at Edgewise Woods, Garden and Critters

-Wendy lee