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.