Swarming
Tom Seeley's Honey Bee Democracy was certainly an eye opener in that it makes one aware of the lengths bees go to choose a new location for a swarm to reside. I don't know that knowing all that I learned from that book had anything at all to do with setting up my two swarm traps near my hives in hopes of catching a swarm from them but catch one I did and I learned that unless I missed it in his book this swarm did not follow what he described as their normal methods. The first thing they did was cling to the bottom of the Long Hive they came from for 2 days before I saw another smaller ball of bees do the same near another hive just a few feet away. The next day the first larger swarm moved to a trap I had placed about 10 ft up in a tree and did the same thing, made a ball clinging to bottom of the trap for 2 days, but then that 2nd smaller ball joined the first one for another day before they all finally entered that trap. Nothing I read prepared me for this and I am relatively sure all the bees are from the same parent hive. It would seem that the bees Democracy was in as much disarray as ours has been for years now, but all worked out for them as I sure hope it does for us.
Hiving a Swarm
On this subject the results are not in as I am a day away from actually taking that trap out of the tree. I have struggled and still struggle with the issue of whether or not the bees need to be confined to the trap after I move them, so my plan is as follows. It worked before and so what I will do is screen the entrance, move as close to the new permanent hive and location as possible and leave them confined for 2 to 3 days before releasing them with a queen excluder covering the entrance in place of the screen. After 2 days I will then transfer the bees from the trap to the new hive and attach the queen excluder on that new hive for 2 days. I will report the results.
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