05/01/2017:

Hello TQL bee lovers,

What a great day for our group and the TQL community. We added a new colony of bees and a new beehive to the family. We now have three and the newest group came from a swarm that we were alerted of last night. Fortunately, the swarm didn’t move last night and was still there this morning for us to bag. A swarm is a literal ball of bees that forms around a queen who has decided to leave behind the old hive. Think of 1 becoming two. Once the old space becomes overwhelmed the Queen will leave behind about half the hive and go looking for a new spot to live. The remaining group will start a new hive and, by feeding larva special nutrients called Royal jelly, create a new queen. The queen that left will go to a nearby spot and form a swarm. She then communicates to her scouts to go look for a new spot. Once it’s found the scouts come back and let the swarm know to move. Fortunately, we found this swarm before they did that.

Swarming is not dangerous as the bees are not aggressive in the ball and it’s the sign of bees doing well. Swarms are the best possible source for a new colony because the bees in them have overwintered and are accustomed to the climate, flora and area. They are proven winners. It’s also great for both people and the bees to catch them when they swarm and give them a hive home. This, because bees will often find places that may be unsafe for them.

Andrew Kennedy and I went out to the site to see what was going on and it was a tough situation and the largest swarm I’ve ever seen and/or tried to catch. The swarm formed on the central trunk of a medium size pine tree so getting to it was difficult. Luckily the homeowner is a friend and this pine was coming out anyway so we were able to remove part of it to get to the ball. What we did was removed some of the branches and then sawed off the top portion of the tree. We then brought it down and held it over a box. Then with one swift and strong bang we hit the base of the trunk we held and knocked the ball of bees down into the box. Then after closing it up we knew we had the queen because all the other bees started moving into the box. I would estimate the swarm size about 4-5K bees. Then we transported the bees here by car after wrapping it carefully into cotton sheet. Once here we quickly laid down the cinder block base for the hive boxes and introduced our girls into their new home!!!

Here is some video of the process. Feel free to let us know if you have any questions.