Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Bee swarm

I just saw one in my back yard. I wish I had a hive available and some knowledge. miles

Nice and early early. If it a decent size it would be great to grab. A swarm this time of year has a good chance of surviving if you could catch it. I have three empty hives ready to catch swarms. I would PM you one but don't know how to get it into my computer.

Thanks. Any way to jury rig a hive until I could come up with one. Another problem is that they are about 25 feet up on the end of a limb. miles

A big cardboard box will do in a pinch to gather in the swarm before it takes off again which it might do.

You can jury rig a top bar style hive (Google it) pretty quickly out of a big cardboard box and 1x2 strips of pine. That can occupy the swarm until you come up with something more suitable, hopefully within a couple of days.

Look up beekeepers in your local phone book.

I hived a swarm just this afternoon. If I have time later I'll post some pictures.

Here is a list of beeks in Arkansas that will remove swarms: Beesource Swarm Removal List.

Here's a few pics.


The bees were on a small oak tree in my backyard.




I just put the hive box under the limb and gave it a good shake. All but a few of the bees went in. The queen must have gone right in the box.




Here is a picture of the outside right after the bees were put in.


Here's the hive a couple of hours later with everyone making themselves at home.

That is so cool.

Dat makes my butt pucker.....

Analogy: I am to bees/hornets/wasps what Les is to Spiders,....

NICE!

It got all the way up to 45 here. Our swarms are still a ways out.

They are really swarming early here this year. I know of one that someone was called out on 2 1/2 weeks ago. In fact several of us in this area have already had supers on for a couple weeks.

The funny thing about swarms is that they are usually pretty docile. I only get stung working with swarms if I mash a bee against something.

I would love to hive five really nice swarms this year, just as long as they are not my swarms.

dont know diddly about bees but enjoy reading the posts about em,seems interesting,thanks guys

Man I'm jealous Rick.Sounds like your about two weeks ahead of us.Put my supers on today.Shaping up to be a good year.

Same here, Whats the deal?

Someone want to take a few minutes and explain what this(swarm)is all about? Mating season? What are they doing? Why are they so docile?

Scoot has shown a few pics before on this and I'm lost on this Bee business,

Someone tell me a short story please.......

supers? What kind of language is this?

We used to recite the rhyme, "A swarm of bees in May is worth a bale of hay, a swarm of bees in June is worth a silver spoon, a swarm of bees in July isn't worth a fly". I don't remember anything about what they'd be worth in march.

I heard a swarm about two weeks ago. I'm sure if you could get them hived up on some frames or drawn comb they would do well. The huisache(acacia) is starting to bloom down here. It usually has a pretty good flow and makes a pleasant tasting honey.

I gotta get back into this. I didn't realize how much I missed it until you guys got to talking about it.

Alan

Hive were growing, producing new queens, splitting and spreading to new territories before man started boxing them up for the honey.

Imagine that it's like an amoeba

Yep. When the bees sense that the hive is becoming overcrowded they will raise a new queen, and the old queen will leave with 50%-60% of the workers to start a new hive.

Beekeepers usually try to manage their hives to avoid swarming. You run the risk of losing the swarm, and even when you do catch it the resulting two hives will not produce as much honey as they would have if you could have kept them together. Also, if the new queen isn't mated well, or gets killed or lost on her mating flight you run the risk of losing the entire hive. I just got through re-queening 3 hives that swarmed last year and never recovered because the queens never produced well.