Tag Archives: swarm

It’s hard to believe it’s been more than two months since the last blog post! The bee season is quickly coming to a close and I feel like I’ve got so many tasks left to complete! It’s been a summer full of swarms, trap outs, honey processing, beekeeping events and some massive steps forward with our product line in preparation for 2011. Over the next week I'll be discussing all of these topics in detail.

Swarms: This year we had a long list of customers interested in populating their top bar hives and Warre hives with natural swarms rather than packages or nucleus colonies. After a chaotic spring and summer catching swarms and doing our best to coordinate pickup with customers, we are investigating simpler methods to provide honey bees to the foundationless beekeeping community. This may include a combination of top bar and Warre nucleus colonies from our own apiary as well as swarms to supplement.

Early this Spring I built around 20 top bar hive nucleus boxes, which are essentially 7 bar top bar hives with two entrance holes that can be closed with corks. They have the same internal dimensions as our full-size top bar hives, making for easy transfers for our customers (and for me!). They are the perfect size to throw in the trunk of your car or in your back seat, as swarms generally choose the least convenient times to make themselves known. As I would catch a swarm, I’d take it home and line it up next to a half dozen others awaiting pickup by customers, or to use for requeening or supplementing our own colonies.

Here are the nucs lined up in our back yard:

Working full-time in another career, running the beekeeping supply business, continuing education and attempting to be a good husband and dog owner makes time hard to come by. With so many swarm calls this season (at least 100), I became relatively picky about the swarms in order to increase efficiency. If the swarm was too far out of the way, or required more than a step ladder to catch, I generally passed the swarms off to more eager, less picky beekeepers and I’m glad I did!

Here are some photos of our Warre hives that a swarmed from neighboring colonies and decided the roofs were good resting places:

Populating a top bar nucleus colony with a swarm:

A very large swarm hanging from multiple branches of a tree:

Lastly,  here's a video of a swarm leaving one of our Warre hives earlier this year:

I spent the day in wine country today doing a trap out at Cristom winery. After that I figured I should check on my 9 warre hives at the other wineries since I hadn't seen them for a few weeks. The first 6 went swimmingly and I was making good time.

Trap out:

Then I got to Lachini vineyard. These bees are notoriously hot, but I figured it's helpful due to the rural, wild space in which they reside, as their ferocity should thwart skunks and other would-be intruders.

I checked the bottom boxes for comb building -- hive 2 was full up and ready for a third box. Hive three was exceedingly violent, and as soon as I tilted the top box up to check inside I received a face-full of bees and quickly closed it up and walked back to the car speedily.

As I normally do after checking on my hives, I took off my suit and began e-mailing my hive update e-mail address with the status of each hive. Then out of nowhere I was bombarded by 5-10 angry bees. In my hair, on my face, buzzing angrily. I was caught off guard fumbling with my phone and began moving away. Their assault continued and I soon I began running away, swatting furiously attempting to get them out of my hair.

At 50 yards they were unrelenting -- the assault continued. At this point I was sprinting...thump! I tripped in a hole and my glasses went one direction and my phone the other. With bees in my hair I was able to find my glasses, but had no time for my phone.

100 yards and still going. The bees wouldn't cease. I'm panting, spluttering and somewhat hobbling away, hoping that the enraged guards would give up the chase and return to their abode. I trip again. At this point I'm attempting to crush the bees in my hair to no avail.

At around 200 yards their attack finally ceased and I clutched my knees breathing heavily. I'm phoneless, exhausted, in the middle-of-nowhere and in the distance I can see at least 10 bees patrolling in massive, sweeping circles at least 100 yards wide. My water and suit were in the truck right next to the hives, and my phone is in foot-high grass somewhere. I began laughing at what any onlookers must have thought watching me swatting, falling and swearing in the field.

Slowly I began to creep back toward the truck, hoping the bee patrol wouldn't notice me. 50 yards in and they were on me again. There I was again swatting and galloping away with a parched mouth. A few more attempts to get back to the truck and finally I decided to bolt for it, get in the driver seat and come to my senses. I ran, bees following closely behind, hitting my head a few times. I opened the door, jumped in and to my frustration the window was open. I fumbled for my keys, turned on the truck and got the window up, somehow avoiding any bees.

At that point I moved the truck far from the bees, suited up and got out and spent 20 minutes searching for and finally procuring my phone.

Needless to say I will be crushing all three of the queens at Lachini and replacing them in the near future. In addition, at any site with hot bees I plan to park farther away and only remove my suit once I'm safely in the car!

It's been an exciting couple of months. We're now back up to 23 hives as one of our new-found neighbors wanted to keep the swarm that showed up on their property. Fortuitously, they have the most amazing garden of all Oak Grove, Oregon, and are inclined to trade us an almost-unlimited supply of beautiful organic produce.

The top bar hives throughout Oak Grove/Milwaukie, Oregon are absolutely booming. The two top bar hives in our back yard are so full of bees that at night, when the entire population is home, there are at least 1000 bees huddling together outside the entrance. Out of the 30 bars they've been given, they've already filled up at least 26, meaning that harvest time is here! Yesterday I harvested the first bar of honeycomb from one of the backyard hives. Later this week, after acquiring 20 food grade buckets, I will be harvesting from the rest in preparation for the massive loads of blackberry nectar that are beginning to show up.

Comb prior to crushing and straining:

From 6-2-09 Photos

Comb after crushing:

From 6-2-09 Photos

Here's are some pictures of one of the Warre hive swarms from our backyard last month:

From 6-2-09 Photos

From 6-2-09 Photos

As said before, the blackberries are beginning to flow in the Pacific Northwest. Being our largest nectar flow, I am excited to see how quickly the girls fill up their top bar hives. I am a tad concerned about the winery Warre hives as they haven't been inclined to build in the bottom box, thus likely making them interested in swarming as their populations begin to rise. I moved a few bars of comb down to the bottom box on all the Warre hives in hopes that they will begin building below. Next weekend I'll check them and plan to see gloriously-full boxes ready for a third.

Here's a view into a top bar hive from a few weeks ago:

In the window:

From 6-2-09 Photos

Bee chains:

From 6-2-09 Photos

View from inside:

From 6-2-09 Photos

Bar removed:

From 6-2-09 Photos

The past few weeks have been incredibly hot for the Portland metro area, with temperatures reaching the low-90s, leaving the bees working overtime attempting to cool their hives and evaporate their honey. Here's a picture of one of the hives at Eleanore's house in Oak Grove attempting to stay cool:

From 6-2-09 Photos

Over the past month I've also had the opportunity to do a great deal of education of neighbors and the public on beekeeping and foundationless methods. Here's another shot of Eleanore's yard where I was giving a brief overview of top bar beekeeping to the neighborhood leaders:

From 6-2-09 Photos

Lastly, one of my favorite hives that has been most prolific swarmed a couple weeks ago and landed on the same tree all of the other swarms frequent. To my delight, dozens of bees were checking out the swarm trap on the back of our shed. I decided to let nature take it's course, in hope that the bees would find the trap to be a worthy home. Sadly, I returned from wine country to find the bees were gone and the trap was empty.

Swarm:

From 6-2-09 Photos

View of trap from swarm:

From 6-2-09 Photos

Trap being closely examined by scout bees:

From 6-2-09 Photos

Even the bumble bees don't like the heat!:

From 6-2-09 Photos