My first swarm capture

It was a busy day and i was just going to relax tonight... and make some plans for tomorrow.

My bee's died this winter... it was unfortunate, but these things happen, and i actually am set to get some more on Wednesday... it's Monday night right now.  So I have a friend who has a drip line irrigation system for me and i phoned her up to see if i could get that before i install my bees on Wednesday.  She is telling me i can come and get it tomorrow, and then as a final note, rather casually mentions that in the giant Oak tree across the street there is a massive swarm of bees.

"The bee's are there right now" i say calmly even though my nervous system just kicked into hyper-drive... "oh yes she says".  I'll be there in a few minutes.  On the way down to get my beekeeping stuff i call my bee buddy Christof and we have the shortest conversation we have ever had..

-Hello
-Want to come and get a swarm
-Yep
click

All i had to grab them was a brew bucket and a heart full of hope... time is of the essence, nightfall is coming, for all i know another beekeeper is on the way to claim this bundle of gold.  Christof is a more experienced beekeeper than myself and is slightly more prepared grabbing a large box and a light and some duct tape... i knew my friends who lived by the swarm would have some things, like a ladder and some tools that i could figure something out.

The swarm was actually 3 clusters hanging about 20 feet up in the middle of an intersection, not a busy one luckily, and my friends had an orchard ladder and a long pole tree pruner.

As we were getting ready the zipper on Christof's veil broke and we lost the last bit of daylight getting that fixed... for a moment i almost said "don't worry about it", which i thought might be kind of funny given it was getting dark and bee's tend to be a little more testy at night.   It was a good thing we got it fixed for sure.  The first cluster came down into the box really easy.  It was on a little branch and the twig was cut easily with the pruning tool. 

As it was getting dark it was harder to see the branch that the bigger cluster was on so he pulled the branch towards me and i got an hand on it so we could try to maneuver it better... it was shortly after that that the branch snapped and the bee's rained down, mostly into the box and on to my head... not the way we had it written up for sure... it was on the street so we could sweep a lot of the clusters up into a dustpan and get them into the box.  Now the bees were very docile which was nice and they did head towards the box and some of the bees lined the perimeter of the box to fan pheromones outward... these are good signs that the queen was in the box, which is a very important piece of the puzzle... time will tell.

There was a lot of bee's, i would probably say about 15,000 and the weather report calls for rain tomorrow, so I'm happy the bee's are safe in a good hive right now.  Two guys driving home in a van in bee suits and a box of gold in the back.

A swarm in May is worth a load of hay; a swarm in June is worth a silver spoon; but a swarm in July is not worth a fly
   -Beekeeping proverb

So a monster swarm in early April is the big time Jackpot!  We put them in my hive and gave them some of the frames of honey that i had from my last hive to make their new home seem nice and beehive like.

Now about those bee's i have to go and get on Wednesday... I guess I'll be building some boxes.

You can never have too many hives right?