Swarm!
This evening, Scott and I were relaxing in our outdoor hot tub, when Scott looked up at our big spruce and suddenly noticed THIS:    Oh NO! Our bees have swarmed! (split up and started a new hive)This is not good! Ive put in a PM to Sheepieboss, as our resident expert on beekeeping in the hope that she has some advise.  Anyone else here have experience with this? Mother Nature hates me this week, I swear!  |
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| Oh my goodness I have no experience with bees, so I can't really help you, I mean, I don't even remember the last time I was stung by a bee. Good luck though! |
| I can't help you, I'm too busy running and screaming in the other direction. |
| Now we know what the bears were after.....amazing the size of that comb. |
| Beautiful! I just sent a private to you re: the swarm. Hope they are still there and you have an extra hive all set up. Apparently the colony did well!!! Swarms are part of the colony taking off due to overcrowding. The colony has two queens so one leaves and takes some of the workers. You can get them into a new hive fairly easily as they are very docile right at this point.......smoker and some way to start shoveling the guys into the hive...through the top. Once the queen goes in they will follow. |
| I think I might faint. "Shoveling bees". Uuuuugh. Help me God. |
| HOLY MOLY!!!!! |
SamHeinous wrote: I can't help you, I'm too busy running and screaming in the other direction. I wouldn't be far behind! Where is Winnie the Pooh when you need him! |
| I would love to raise bees if I were younger. Quite a few people up here do and we love the honey from these hives. |
| When in a swarm the bees are extremely gentle. They have filled their stomachs with honey to hold them over and are very lethargic. Good chance one wouldn't need to smoke them........but I'd not take the chance. However, if they don't find a home soon...they get hungry and will die without food. |
| Oh my!!! Can't wait to hear how this turns out....... |
got sheep wrote: Oh my!!! Can't wait to hear how this turns out....... Me too!  |
SheepieBoss wrote: When in a swarm the bees are extremely gentle. They have filled their stomachs with honey to hold them over and are very lethargic. Good chance one wouldn't need to smoke them........but I'd not take the chance. However, if they don't find a home soon...they get hungry and will die without food. As Susan said, they are very, very docile! Unfortunately, they are too high up for us to easily reach, and on a slope that makes setting up a ladder very difficult. Scott managed to scoop some into a new hive, but they went right back to the tree  We just got home from an all day art fair, so he's going to try again. We are nervous about putting out honey or even sugar water to lure them, as we are *bear central* right now! Yet another bear ripped the door off of our back-yard shed last night!  |
| Our landlord had a large bee colony in the walls of their pig barn (which is about 80 or 100 yards from our house.) They had a beekeeper come and remove them one year, but they were back in full force by the next. So the beekeeper comes back the second year, does a much better job of getting them out. Only one problem - the next morning I'm sitting in my second floor office, and hear this bizarre sound coming from the wall RIGHT NEXT TO MY HEAD! I listened for a minute, then realized it was BEES. And not just a couple of bees, but what sounded like hundreds. The remaining bees had found an opening in our outside wall and decided to see if our place would make a nice new home for them. Fortunately, it is a North-facing wall, and they decided it was too cold. They left of their own accord.  I didn't go back into my office for a week.  |
| Well, we came home again tonight (from the same art fair...its a 3 day-er) and they were still there...so Scott figured out a way to scoop a lot more of them down, using a long handled rack and a snow-shovel(!) We'll see how this goes...we did seal them in, so they couldn't just fly right back up to the tree. And, on the topic of surprising things to find in the trees...check this out:  This was taken at the art fair...that black shape up high in the trees, that people are looking and pointing at is a black bear.  He was pretty high up, so not very clear photos  He hung out there, literally, all day, with live stages blasting music, and hundreds of people walking around below him. He was visibly asleep for most of that time!  The night before, he (or some other bear...hard to say for sure) broke into several food booths and had a feast, so he was quite full and happy  . |
| The crazy life of Laurel in Alaska!!! |
violet wrote: Now we know what the bears were after.....amazing the size of that comb. Oh definately, living in the wilds of where you live Bears, Bee swarms, next thing you know your going to tell us a pack of wolves too Actually here we had a bee swarm with a new queenie, deciding to make a new hive in our wall cavity of the house, I took the easy way out and called in a professional bee keeper to take the new Queen out and hoping along with her all those buzzy things also. We had the odd buzzy bee inside, coming through the down lights & vents upstairs before I realised CRIKEYS what is going All I can say is luv luv luv honey but stay in your hives buzzy ones.  |
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