The First Swarm Capture

Emily, Maggie, and I took a trip to the hives on Saturday morning.  The blue sky dotted by puffy white clouds provided the usual hot and humid South Florida summer day.  As I geared up I explained to my companions the goals of this hive inspection.  "I am checking for worker brood lay patterns.  I want to see tight brood patterns and lots of them.  I am also looking for amounts of drone cells and the presence of any queen cells", I told them while pulling the gloves all the way up my arms.   Unbeknown to us, we had walked by something very special and never realized it!

We walked right by this and didn't notice until it was pointed out to us!

As Jerry scrambled to get a box together to catch the swarm, I continued my work on the colonies so I could finish and go help.  Queen Sophia continues to lay plenty of brood.  The hive still contains plenty of room and no signs of honey production, so I put it back together and will check next week for more progress.

It is nice having someone else there to take the pictures...but I feel compelled to "ham it up".

Moderate bee levels with a great tight lay pattern in the middle of the frame.  Also, this is from the upper box, which is a good sign of the overall health of the hive.

Queen Sophia has been busy.  All those filled cells are worker brood!

The other hive, however, had signs of preparations to swarm.  These signs include: crowded chambers, queen cells (not hatched) attached to the upper frame, and tons of healthy worker brood.

The inner cover and the hives are pull of propolis!  This plant substance glues things together pretty good. 

Always start a full hive inspection with the bottom box.

There is still room to draw comb and continue to expand populations...so I don't think it was this colony that swarmed.

This colony needed more room to expand!  Plenty of empty cell remained for continued worker brood development, so I removed a frame of honey and added it to a new box.  This new box placed atop a queen excluder is called a "honey super".  It will only contain honey since the queen cannot fit through the screen I placed below and prevents her from laying eggs in the box.  The extra room also allows the bees to spread out a bit and helps prevent swarming.  This delicate balance between an apiarist and their hives remains the never-ending challenge and one that takes a while to master.  I am no master.  The hive now contains 3 boxes and will, hopefully, have a box full of honey within the next few weeks (depending on the local nectar flows).

All the white is capped honey.  Bees cap the honey when it is at the right moisture content and ready to be stored.

There were two frames that looked like this.  I moved one up to the new honey super.

Close up of the capped honey.

Adding the honey super above the queen excluder.

Now to the swarm!  Jerry geared up as well and we both marveled at the sight of tens of thousands of honey bees stuck to the branch.  The simple plan consisted of lightly misting the bees to weigh down their wings then clip the branch off, hold it over a new box, and shake the branch.  Getting the queen into the box means a successful catch.  So that is what we did!

Jerry getting ready for the capture by cutting back some excess branches.

Placing the new box.

Maggie and the Swarm!!!  She shows no fear!

Going over the plan. 

Weighing down their wings with a little misting of water.

Removing the swarm infested branch from the tree.

It only took one shake to get the bees off and into the box!

Pretty impressive!

Sealing up the box to trap the queen inside.

I think we got her seeing how attracted to the box all the bees are.

We are not too sure where the swarm came from.  Jerry has quite a few hives and mine did not show strong evidence of already swarming.  Either way, this rare opportunity greatly increased my understanding of the swarm and capturing it remains one of the coolest things done since starting this new hobby.

A special thanks to my lovely wife, Emily, for documenting this trip!

Next on the agenda: procure extracting equipment, make a solar wax melter, start harvesting honey (hopefully sooner than later).  Being in South Florida, we have 11 months of honey flow.  The rest of the US has a few weeks of flow in the spring and autumn.  This proves that life is sweeter in Miami...HA!  So until next time, bee kind to your neighborhood pollinators!