Despite my efforts to expand my two beehives and provide more room for my bees coming out of the winter, both hives swarmed this past weekend. I was home Friday to find the first one, but was out of town when the second hive swarmed yesterday. I called Ed (what else does one do in this situation but call his local beemaster), and he and Joni, who was home and spotted the swarm, saved the day.

Ed taking pictures as the bees march into the nuc box

We all are coming to realize how very unusual this winter was. We know it was mild, but we really didn’t know how exceptional this spring was going to be. I started feeding early, hoping that we didn’t end the winter with a late hard freeze. I also stopped feeding early and added a honey super to both of my not-quite-year-old hives hoping that the nectar would be flowing. I now suspect that all this worked out maybe too well. I don’t know if adding the honey supers had any impact at all on the decision to swarm or not. In any case the brood boxes were about 80 – 90 percent full of drawn comb and about 60 – 70 percent full of brood with a little nectar and honey and pollen here and there. My guess is that they had already decided to swarm when I put on the honey supers.

I had not yet done a complete inspection of the hives. I did swap top and bottom boxes on both hives about five weeks ago. I looked at many of the frames and liked what I saw. But since then I had not inspected the bottom boxes, so didn’t really know if there were any queen cells forming. Apparently there were.

Friday's swarm landed on the ground

So on Friday I didn’t see the swarm emerge, but did hear and finally spot the swarm around mid day. The swarm was on the ground. I called Ed in a panic and he generously offered to come help. We put a medium box on the ground and added five virgin frames sprayed with sugar water. We then put a cover on top and waited a half hour or so. The hope was that the queen and her entourage would climb up onto the sugary frames and hang out for a bit. When we got back to the box, we transferred the five frames into a cardboard nuc, put on the lid, and pulled the plug out on the end. I just finished reading Liz’s account of rescuing a swarm from Rose’s farm, and as she also commented, it is just an amazing sight. The swarm will follow the queen. We immediately saw the march of bees still on the ground into the box, so we know the queen was in the box. Had they all been marching out of the box we would have know that the queen was still out of the box. As is usually the case, the bees tell you everything you need to know.

Saturday's swarm formed a picture perfect beard

I was feeling lucky that this happened on Friday because I was driving down to Roanoke the following morning for the weekend. About an hour after arriving in Roanoke, Joni called me in a panic saying that the second hive was swarming! She actually saw the swarm leaving the hive, swirling into the air. She ran into the house to call me and when she got back outside, the swarm had already mostly settled onto the other side of the same shrub that the first swarm had found. Although I was now an expert swarm catcher (having earned my cred the previous day), I was out of town, so what was there to do, but call Ed again. He once again kindly came over to help. This swarm was at chest height and after the first shake, the bees were returning to the branch. No queen. So after a snip and a better shake into the nuc, the bees were marching in as fast as they could manage. Success! Joni filmed the whole affair with Ed’s iPad and I will post that when I got it.

I don’t have the official count, but I think Ed was involved in capturing about five or six swarms this weekend alone. It has been quite a spring.