Swarm n3-h3 is swarm number 3 from hive number 3 or hive number 3's third swarm. Thats the aggressive italian have btw. This one was also very mean for a swarm, once they were in a box they are alright, if you look closely at the image you can just make out the queen in the bottom left part of the cluster. They all went into a box with some open brood (they stayed put I think) the funny part was the queen kept climbing out of the hive into the box I had shook all the bees into, so I kept picking her up and putting her at the entrance (at this point she would climb into the hive body), this went on for about ten minutes. That was the first time I have ever even seen a queen in a swarm. The next time my italians swarm I'm letting them go. The new queens that this hive is producing will be open mated with my other hives drones though so they will be just as feral as the rest of them in a while.

On the left is a picture of my number 2 hive (nuc from number 5).

Piping, Have you ever heard a virgin queen pipe before? Today I was doing some minor checking up on a couple of hives, when I heard the familiar sound of a new queen piping, I regularly listen with my ear pressed against the hive boxs. You can learn all kinds of things about a colony by doing this. The hive that was piping was number 3, they had just swarmed, I could actually hear about three different pipes. Later that same day I heard something totally new to me, I didn't even have to press my ear against the box, it sounded like a small motor or growling animal, almost made me jump. I had read about this kind of sound before from BushFarms.com, I tried to record it but my mp3 player has a terrible mic on it. I'm sure it has something to do with new queens and wining over the colony.

Meh Number 3 swarmed again, notice the separate clusters? Look familiar? They must have just gone back to their mother hive last time, this also happened with number 8, the plus of all this is I get to keep them, the downside is I had to shake four swarms (two twice) to get them both. This time I was done fooling around so I took two frames of brood from number 1, put one in each box installed each swarm, they should stay put this way, even if I had empty comb it would have helped.

Number 8's swarm was doing fine last night, but I wanted to make sure so I checked them this morning, presto, nobody was home, before I could give into despair and fall on my hive tool I caught a glimpse of a nice cluster just down the hill! Ye merrily! I proceeded to hive them as described above. All this swarming is from just two of my hives, I hope this isn't just the beginning. I love swarms but I am fast approaching my target of 15 hives (currently at 11) with heavy scouting at two of my hive locations today I might have 13 by this weekend. Thats an increase from six to fifteen, two and a half times what I had last year! Fortunately most of my other hives are starting to work in their empty boxs, it always seems to go like this, dandelions are heavy swarm activity little work on new boxs, then when clover hits we get lots of working on honey production. The problem comes when bees run out of room for storing honey, then they start swarming a lot.

Oh yes I forgot to mention this  swarm from number three was by far the nastiest meanest swarm I have ever dealt with, when I raped the branch to shake them into my cardbord box I had almost a hundred bees trying to kill me, the second time was worse and they found a gap in my protection around my ankles, twenty of the little buggers followed my fleeing ankles all the way to the garage, I fixed the issue by tying my pants ankles down around my heels.

Alright enough already! So today number eight swarmed again, I suppose that they had just went back to their hive last time anyway this was a nice big swarm, I moved a hive body to their cluster location (20' from the mother hive) then sprayed with water a bit then shake into hive add bars to the top box carefully ect. Number eight swarmed late around five or six in the evening, nice normal swarm not overly aggressive cluster quickly settle in nicely ect. Checking them out after sunset they looked good lots of bees and I could hear that distinctive "chittering" sound (ear pressed against the hive box) that indicates they are working inside, empty hives do not sound like that. I will know tomorrow if number 8's baby will stay, I hope so they are a very nice hive, they start the earliest on cooler days and go the longest.

Nothing like the swarm around noon from my dreaded italian hive number 3, it was small and angry as heck, never seen a swarm that mad before they were attacking people 30+ feet away (normal attacking not africanized level). I know they were queenless because I have their old queen in a new hive that issued from that mother hive. Thus I am concluding that the swarm I got from them today was virgin maybe even two queens (two clusters close together) since a lot of bees from that original swarm went back, this might be the after effect of too many bees. This evening I checked on them (new hive from number 3) and found nothing, zipo, ahh well I didn't like them anyway, virgin queens don't smell as nice as mated queens (I'm guessing) so the inclination to stay was much lower. By the way we are still in may, our normal swarming season is june and july.

I really do not mind swarming at this time of year, so long as it is at a natural rate and not because they are low on space, I don't even mind letting some go feral once my targets are reached. Sort of and offering to the wild, if we take something we must give something back.




Shown above is that frustrating nasty swarm from number 3.

Well yesterday number eight swarmed, I knew it would happen so I was keeping an eye on it for just this reason. As you can see they made landing on this tangle of branches. I probably did not handle it as well as I should have, for one I decided to cut them out of that tangle (I probably should have just knocked them into a cardboard box). Once I finally got them over to the hive they were going in I sprayed them down with water then "woosh" into the hive box they went. Everything went seemingly well, then I checked on them this evening, listening at the entrance I heard nothing so I peeked inside, nothing, they had left either back to the mother hive or off into the wilds when I wasn't watching them. Oh well this early in the year I'm not worried about some of my bees getting away (impacting honey harvest ect).

I checked on my nuc from #5 and the first swarm from one of my italian hives, both are doing well both have eggs, the nuc is almost done a whole new frame from nothing! Amazing. The italian swarm ended up being very small since most of the bees went back to the mother hive, short of moving them over two miles away then back. The only way to handle the bees simply going back to the mother hive would be to move the mother hive and place the new hive in its place this would set the mother hive back some, or I could confine them for 36 hours to incite reorienting flights, in hot weather though they need to be able to get outside the hive.

I made a nuc from Number 8 a couple of days before they swarmed this is how I knew they would swarm soon, lots of swarm cells scads of bees everywhere, they will be hanging  around in open places doing nothing when they want to swarm, it almost looks like they are building comb but no comb is being built. Several swarm cells went into the new nuc and the rest stayed in the mother hive, I could not find the queen in all that mess. This hive had a lot of a lot of frames that were joined with comb, the frames were spaced with my old spacing of 1-1/4 I'm using 1-3/8 now since it gives me more room for manipulations and is inline with warre standard, this might decrease the crossing somewhat. It did not help that I made the nuc in the morning of the hottest day of our season so far.

Well, Number three (the one that was "too small") decided to swarm today, may 15 is very early for our area usually we get swarms from the second week of June until the end of July. I was happy because I had wanted to make a nuc from this hive but found them in only one box. I'm not sure how this will turn out though.

The swarm looked normal enough except they were very close to the ground. Then I noticed a small fist size clump of bees near the mother hive, when I looked they were actually gathering around a queen! So I put her in a cage just in case. Then I cut the branch off with the main swarm on it and shook it into a new hive. I think I should have moved the hive further away from the mother hive before shaking, much of the swarm ended up back on the mother hive, I put the queen I had found into the new box then closed it up.

Then I started thinking, that maybe this small queen was just a virgin that ended up outside the hive when the main swarm left.. Time will show whats what, I will wait and see what happens. Too bad it couldn't be a straight forward kind of swarm. But swarm season has struck! Time to check my bait hives.

Finally signs of life, on 5/7 I started a new hive from #5, they were generously provisioned with a full frame of honey from their mother hive, a frame of capped brood the queen and an empty frame. Now on 5/14 almost exactly a week later around 3pm having shown absolutely no external signs of life up until now, they came out in a big show all getting in their orientation flights! I must say I did a little happy dance, this was the first nuc I have made this way.

What I should have done was close them up with screening for three days, this would have kept all the "oriented" bees inside forcing them to reorient once the screen was removed three days later, instead what happened is all the oriented bees left one by one going back to the old mother hive. This is not a big deal since for me the idea was to make increases plus get more diverse genetics by open mating, I still plan to make nucs from my two italian hives, plus maybe one of the others, in a coupe of weeks they should be strong enough.