Thursday, March 29, 2012

Swarms and hurt feelings

Yesterday I received 4 swarm calls in 2 hours! The first one was in downtown Stone Mountain.  When I was en-route to the swarm the St. Mt. police called to tell me that the swarm had moved apparently found a better home and left.

While I was on my way to St. Mt. Daniel called from Oakhurst Garden to say that those bees swarmed as well and would could I come get them.  I turned around after the call about the St. Mt. bees leaving and headed to the garden.  It was a nice sized swarm that was about 25' in a tree.  After several attempts, with the John Jones famous bucket, I got the queen and the workers were fanning Nasonov pheromone to say 'hey everybody, the queens in here'.  I left them at the garden to let everybody get in, since I needed to go meet my son's bus.


Leaving the garden, I checked my email and had a email from another beekeeper about some bees in John's Creek.  That is quite a trip for me, so I passed them on to a friend in that area and it turned out to be a cut out.  So she called another beekeeper with lots, and lots of experience is going to do that one.  Whew!

After getting Max off the bus I got another call about a swarm in Grant Park.  I packed up more gear.  Stopped at ace to buy a new pole.  The pole I was using was collapsing on me. Daniel put a screw in the one at the Garden, so I could use it.  I hate technical difficulties. The bees were about 17' up a tree and easy to retrieve.

I stop back at the Garden to pick up that swarm.  Drive to my house to put the Oakhusrt swarm in a 10 frame with the three frames of drawn out comb I used during the removal and 7 frames of new wax foundation.

Then I drive to my friends to install that swarm, since I'm out of space in my yard.  All seems well.

This morning I checked the hive from OG in my yard and they are gone!  Just gone!  I think, what was not to like?  Drawn comb and new foundation, good view of the chicken coop in my yard, nice neighbors.  This is only the second time I have had a hive abscond. The first time was in a TBH that I never could get to work out.  My feeling are a little hurt.  I wonder why they didn't stay?  What could I have done different?

1 comment:

The Starved Idiot said...

I do not think you could have done one thing differently. Chalk it up to some determined scout bees. Your post reminded me to get a move on making my swarms traps - thanks!