Friday: Swarm Again

As our bee mentor put it:

It is a swarmy kind of season!

It happened again!  This one was a little bit more of a challenge, but we caught it!  Chris has the privilege to watch it leaving the hive, pouring out.  Then it swirled above the apiary and to our rhododendron again!  We will definitely be protecting that bush for years to come.  There were a lot of bees this time; so we put them directly in a hive rather than a nuc box.

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Swarm Season

Guess what time of year it is?  Swarm season!  It's a bit later this year, but it is upon us.

We missed our first hive swarming.  So we're keeping an eye on this one:

Today, my dad was out weed-whacking and found this.  I'm so glad it was low!

What did we do?  Well, I got the shears and Chris got a nuc box with three frames.  We just slid the box underneath it and clipped the branches.  We also added a frame with brood from another hive in the hopes to keep them there.  (Start to finish, no protective gear, 8 minutes and back to work-from-home!)

When it is dark tonight, we will move it into the apiary to protect them from the bear!