It's the dead of winter here in the Pacific Northwest (Oak Grove, Oregon), and the bees are buckled down waiting eagerly for the arrival of spring 2010. On Tuesday there was a freak snowstorm that brought our city to a standstill, but the bees perservered in their Warre hives as well as their horizontal top bar hives. Here's a picture of our backyard with two horizontal top bar hives, two Warre hives and the natural stump hive that is currently vacant.

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Over the past week I've had 6 swarm calls, of which I've caught 3, 1 was a bumble bee colony, 1 was a bearding hive in a tree, and 1 was too high up to catch. It is both invigorating and exhausting, and I wonder if I'll feel bored when swarm season ends. 

Yesterday one of my hive hosts, Eleanore, called to inform me that hive F (Carniolan) was swarming.  It landed about 15 feet up in a Pear tree. I arrived a couple hours later to catch it and combine it back with it's previous home. The first knock into the box didn't get the queen, as they quickly moved back to the tree branch. The second was a success, and all of the bees quickly moved into the cardboard box. 

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What a week! After more than 6 months of planning and building, the first 10 packages in the 20 hive apiary expansion have been installed. 5 packages of Italians and 5 packages of Carniolans arrived at Ruhl Bee Supply on Monday, after a trek from Northern California's Oliveraz Bee Company. It was an unusually warm day -- almost 80 degrees in April!

My wife, a photographer from the Oregonian and I met at Ruhl, waited in line for 20 minutes to pay and then entered the holy of holies: The small warehouse containing over 10,000,000 honey bees -- 1000 packages. Our photographer was obviously taken aback by the sight and intense sound, but slowly began to adjust to the idea.

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