The Swarm

Then one day I noticed my bees in a tree. It is exciting to encounter a swarm, but dismaying at the same time when you know they are your bees. Fortunately, collecting them could not have been easier. They were about 8 feet from the hive, in a small limb about four feet off the ground. They sure made it easy for me and I was sure grateful for that. A few snips of the branch and a gentle shake into the empty side of the hive and I was all set. I remember feeling that I had done something wrong and that is why they swarmed. I thought I was keeping a careful eye on increasing the space in the hive, but have since come to realize that although there was lots of space in the back by the honey frames, they probably swarmed due to crowding near the entrance.

The next day there was another swarm in a tree. This was a bit trickier to deal with because they swarmed around the trunk of the tree. From what I could tell, it seemed that the swarm I put in my hive was swarming again, or this was an afterswarm from the original colony. In any case, I was able to get them back into the second side of the hive. When I shook them in, they did a curious thing. All of the sudden, they all seemed to stop, turn their butts towards me, and fan their wings vigorously making a distinct buzzing sound. I have since learned that they were fanning the queen's pheromones outward to attract any wayward bees back to the group. The swarm has since stayed put and built up comb.

The Spring Install ReCap

I ordered my NUC (nucleus colony) and beehive in February. I picked up my beehive from the Rodale Institute in mid April, brought it home and painted the outside for weather protection, and with some help got the legs secured in the ground and the whole thing attached and level (having a level hive is very important for a top-bar hive so that the comb gets drawn out straight).

Picking up my NUC colony was an absolutely amazing experience. The feeling resembled that of bringing home a newborn baby. In the back of my VW were somewhere near 20,000 bees that I would be caring for. I felt super responsible for their wellbeing and thought about them constantly and dreamed about them at night. It was exhilerating but terrifying at the same time.

Installing the NUC into my hive was a real trip. I had only experienced handling one frame of bees one time beforehand at an installation demo. Now I had nearly 12 frames of somewhat-aggitated-from-travel bees to move. The install took lots of pauses for calm on my part. Three quarters of the way into the install, when I picked up a large bar of brood comb, half of it fell off. That nearly did me in. Bees everywhere, brood everywhere and substantial anxiety that the queen was on that comb and might have been squished. I think it took me nearly two hours to figure out what I was going to do. I did the best I could, and in the end the experience made me have to get real comfortable with the bees real fast . I am glad for that now, because it is so tempting to just get the bees in the hive and let that be that.