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?

Smithy bee swarm

I was contacted yesterday about a swarm of bees that was high (30ft) in a tree on Friday/Saturday then moved to the ground Sunday/Monday.  They were reported as being a bit defensive (poor basset hound was the one to find them on the ground) so my first thought was that they might have been poisoned already and would probably be gone by this am when I could go and look at them.  Luckily for me they had reformed on a branch that hung from about 2.5ft high to the ground with their weight.  I would guess it was 5+lbs of bees.  I picked up the part of the branch that was laying on the ground and put in into the swarm box and then simply snipped branch that held the bees and I had the queen and most of the bees.  They are now living at my friends house and they seemed quite happy to have a roof, stores and a place to lay eggs.  Per request of the nice couple who contacted me to get these bees I dub thee Smithy Bees.