Bee Swarms 2007

So far in 2007, we've collected 5 swarms.  I have not gone on any swarm calls so no new pictures yet.  The pictures below are interesting swarms from 2005.

1st swarm of the year 2005 - May 14th, 2005

We've been preparing empty hive bodies around this location of beehives.  The area contains a total 16 hives. The pictures below show our first swarm of 2005 which was extremely easy.  We had one live hive with an empty hive box just next to it.  We've been placing empty hive boxes around the property since we know a couple of hives are preparing to swarm. 

This empty hive box was not meant to catch a swarm, in fact Glenn was going to move it this week.  However, the bees had different ideas.  We first heard a bunch of buzzing and went out to this hive box to see thousands of bees flying in a huge circle all over the place.  Pictures don't do this justice as there are just thousands of bees when they swarm. 

The bees just happened to move in next door and didn't form your typical "ball of bees", they "flew" next door and now we have 2 hives here.     

Some of these pictures I kept pretty large so you can see the swarm.
 

Notice all the bees flying in the area. 


The hive on the right swarmed to the hive on the left.


You can see bees if you look at the pines and all the little "debris" flying in the air are honey bees.  Also below picture shows this some.




This is another close up - we walked right up to the hives and what a sight, we were surrounded by thousands of bees, tried to get my video camera (battery dead!) out and will try to get a small movie clip on the website if I can catch one while they're circling overhead.  It's an amazing sight!

2nd swarm of the year - May 19th, 2005

We were waiting for one of our hives to swarm and thought it had.  We learned after we caught the swarm that this one came from a tree that had become the home to some of our bees last year from a swarm. 
         
The swarm came from the        The bees swarmed from the tree
center hole in this tree.              & ended up in this small tree area.

  
Glenn starts to trim the area around the swarm to be able to cut the branch holding the swarm.  This branch will then be placed inside a new hive box which is shown below.  We'll leave the bees here until nightfall to make sure we get most of the bees. Then we'll move them to their new location.
    

September 27, 2005 (below)

This hive was actually on a tree branch and we knew about it for about 2 weeks prior to being able to get it.  We've been busy gearing up for the holiday season and knew we had to rush to get it down.  Weather was turning a bit colder at night and winds and heavy rain were expected.  As you can see from the photo we got it down just before dusk and into a hive just after it started pouring. 

We'll combine these bees with another hive so they can make it through winter.  What you see through the rain is their comb which is yellowish tan in the picture.  A hive like this that has attached itself to an outside tree branch will freeze to death over winter as the bees try to keep the queen warm.