Swarm!!!

 What a day! First I had a couple come from Alabama to see my goat kids. They ended up getting Astrid, my favorite baby of all. Because she was so friendly, they just loved her. So 1 gone, 3 to go!

Ended up having to spend that money on a new bee hive.

If you click on these pictures, you can see the bees. Yes, that's what all those dots are. BEES! I had gone out to check on the bees before I left to go to my sewing class. It was so noisy, and bees were everywhere. I mean literally, everywhere. I just stood in the middle of them all and wondered what was going on.

Then I realized they were swarming! It looked like they were all over the cedar tree to the side of the hive. My husband had come out then and asked if they were swarming. I said yes, I do believe that's what's happening. But they were going to the apple tree, on the other side of the fence. I went to look and sure enough, about 10' up on a big branch, there was a pile of bees.

                                          You can see them just beginning to make a big pile.

 
                                                     
                                                        And it's getting bigger here.

                                                                   And bigger still!!! It really didn't look like a whole lot of bees, all balled up like this. Until I started shaking the branch!

So I jumped in the car and went as fast as I could to the bee store in Lafayette. I got a bee hive kit and 5 frames that I could put in the nuc box to catch the bees while we put the hive together. Got all my stuff together and went out with the hubby to see how we could catch these guys.

We decided to get the truck so I could stand on it. At first, we tried to shake the bees into the box. That didn't work too well. They all went back up to the branch. The queen didn't get in the box. So I sprayed them all down good with sugar water and got up closer to the branch so I could get them all in a bucket. That finally worked.

Got them all in the nuc. I started seeing the bees fanning, which is a good sign that the queen was inside the box! Can you see that sweet bee with her butt up in the air fanning? I love to see that.

So here is the nuc, on top of my husband's truck, awaiting their new hive. I had to paint it and let it dry. And I wanted to wait til they all settled down. You can see the branch where the bees were. right above the nuc.

This whole process took about an hour. It shouldn't have taken so long, but I had to cut a lot of branches out of the way. Then catch them a few times. If I could have cut the branch off, it might have gone smoother. But I was lucky they went in the apple tree and not the big cedar tree. I could not have caught them in that tree.

And here they are in their new hive! I hope they like it there. It's right next to their old hive.

                                                       My bee yard is growing!

So I missed my sewing class tonight. I called the lady teaching the class to tell her I wouldn't be there because I had to catch a swarm of bees.She said that was a first.