I finally got my first confirmed swarm. Looks like they moved into a stack of empty boxes in the bee yard. About every 3rd or 4th bee was brining pollen in. Now I’ll just have to rearrange the stack . Gott love the ones you don’t have to transport.
Bill, the short answer is yes. All it takes is a box with some frames. I use old frames in old deep boxes. Bees tend to move into places bees lived before. If you don’t have any old frames you can use new ones and add a q-tip soaked in lemongrass oil. There’s tons of info out there on catching them.
Hers a couple pictures of some of my swarm traps
They can be yours, someone else’s or ferals. Swarming is how they reproduce hives to repopulate areas with bees.
Most beekeepers try to keep they’re own hives from swarming by giving them extra hive space or splitting big hives into smaller hives but bees do what bees want so if they want to swarm it’s almost impossible to stop them.
I think the two swarms I just found were probably from new young queens out of my hives. They were both within a 100 yards of my bee yard. My other hives were crazy active and still are so the new swarms are a nice bonus catch. I've been making splits all spring.
Yea I've been splitting too. Bees are booming. I just had to split a hive that was made from a split in early April. Guess I should have got another box on em sooner. Found capped queen cells in it already lol.
I did requeen 2 of the hives but as long as there a good strong colony I'll just let them take care of it. I had a couple hives that were testier than the others and those are the ones I put a different/new race of queen.
Fascinating thread. Has anyone here bought https://www.honeyflow.com/? Pretty expensive, but seems to make the process much easier. I live about 10 minutes from my small orchard so I would prefer something with a little less maintenance.
Also is it too late to start? My peaches and apples have already blossomed so I wouldn't have any benefit there but there are still plenty of flowering crops and trees.