Got me good.

I got tagged by a very ticked off guard bee yesterday while swapping out a feeder jar. Can you guess which hand? :)

Backyard Flight Patterns

It is a lot of fun to sit outside between the hives and watch the various flight patterns that they follow.

Swarm Checkup

The temperature got up into the 70s today in Atlanta and I was very interested to see how the swarm hive was doing. When I got home, there was still plenty of daylight *and* activity, so I decided to go ahead and clean out all of the leaves and things that got in when I scooped them all up off of the ground.


Once that was done, I put a hive-top feeder on, filled one side with 2:1 syrup and closed them up for an hour with the intention of checking it in an hour. When I came back, I was very pleased to see them take to it like crazy.


They were still too clumped together to try and find the queen, but hopefully I'll be able to find her this weekend.

Capturing a Swarm

My friend, Keith, got two nucs of bees last Sunday, just like I did. Last night I got a "911" text message from him with only one word: "swarm!" We can only speculate that one of the frames in one of the nucs had a queen cell that he missed during the transfer. I drove down to his farm in Merriweather county and saw what he was talking about.

They were on a branch about 10 feet from his two other hives. The picture above was taken after we had cut the branch down.

Luckily, I had an old 10-frame hive body with some drawn comb in it (foreground) that we could shake them into. They really did *not* want to leave that branch, so I used a bee brush to "sweep" most of them off.We got most of them off of the branch but there was still a large cluster left on the ground.

I had no idea where the queen was, so I decided to just scoop them up with my hands.

It was only 45 degrees outside at the time so they hardly moved during them move. I dropped them in the center of the frames, sealed up the hive and drove them back to Decatur. They make a nice addition to the bee yard.

Tuesday is supposed to be warm enough to check on them, so stay tuned...

Installing the Nucs.

Monday afternoon was warm and sunny enough to try and move the Nucs into their new hives. I invited a fellow newbie bkpr over to the house to watch/photograph. Some neighbors and their kids came over to watch as well.

We heard the buzzing from the minute we pulled into the driveway. The source turned out to be my old 10 frame hive from last season (above photo). There are about 4 frames of capped honey still in it and they were determined to get in there.
Based on P.N.'s description of "these are stout nucs," I was a little concerned about their stress level, etc. They confirmed my worry by stinging me above my right eye before I could event get my gear on. (no photos, please).
I got my smoker lit in a hurry (I still don't understand why people have any issue with this). I use cedar shavings as fuel with some toilet paper as kindling. It works every time, see:

I opened up the first nuc to find more bees than I ever saw in my entire first season. The photo below is what they call "boiling with bees." They were pissed.

Once I figure out how to embed a slideshow, I'll post it. Here is the final shot before we closed up the second hive. Everyone seems happy for now.

A diet of sugar syrup will start for everyone tomorrow.

Bringing the Girls Home

Last night at 6:30pm, I got the call from P.N. Williams that my nucs were in and ready to be picked up. I got in the car and drove down to Forest Park, about 30mins away. When my turn came, he asked if I had done this before, which I have, so he said "go put this one in your trunk." This is what he was talking about:

I loaded up 3 more just like it, only one of which had a screen, and headed back to Decatur. I fully expected to open my trunk to the mother-of-all-swarms, but instead I was greeted by this:

Instead of going into the hive on the ride home, they decided to come on out and play in the trunk. I let them rest for an hour, moved the boxes to the ground next to their new homes and went to bed.

This morning, I found a small group of girls that had decided to "spend the night" in the trunk. This is an overhead shot of the back of the Passat.

The bee suit went back on. I grabbed a bee brush and an LL Bean catalog and moved them to the back yard. Several sisters rode in to work with me, nonetheless. Later today, I plan to install the nucs into my new Brushy Mtn hives.