Deceptive Swarm of Bees

Went to snag a swarm of bees at lunchtime today.  Climbed up a ladder, sprayed the huge ball of bees with sugar water and deftly scraped them into a box that had ventilation screens duct-taped over the hand holes.

Large Clump of Honeybees
Large Clump of Honeybees on a Residence

Thought that I was very crafty and had done a splendid job.  That is, until I noticed that there was a hole in the fascia.  Bees came pouring out of the spot where one of those little louvered vent buttons had been lost to the elements.   Oops.

Honey Bees in the Fascia
Honey Bees in the Fascia

It turns out that the space in the soffit area was very hospitable to them, and that I had just made off with a large “beard” of bees.  The rest of the hive was just fine and in the house.  The heat (91 degrees), it seems, had caused a whole lot of them to seek some fresh air outside.  A major house extraction is beyond me, so I am working to help the homeowners find someone to come up and do their magic.

In the end I at least get a bunch of bees to combine with a “queen-right” colony in my apiary.  It should give them a nice boost of a field force.

Postscript:

The bees hung out in the box in my chilly dark basement (simulating night) until I had time to borrow a couple of supers from a fellow beekeeper.   As they were nice and docile, I just shook them into the hive (with newspaper between them and the queen-right colony) and was delighted to have at least 4 lbs. of new bees.

Bees from the beard combined with another hive in my apiary
Bees from the beard combined with another hive in my apiary

And a Video:



The QR Code for this website

The QR Code for this website
The QR Code for this website

A QR Code is a matrix code (or two-dimensional bar code) created by Japanese corporation Denso-Wave in 1994.

The “QR” is derived from “Quick Response”, as the creator intended the code to allow its contents to be decoded at high speed.
– from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_Code

I recently got interested in them when I started using  Beetight, online bee hive tracking and record keeping software.

It does this nifty thing, where it creates QR code that you can staple (laminated, of course) on each of your hives.  When you get to the bee-yard, all you need to do is scan the code and and, viola!, you are at the right place to do hive data entry.  Brilliant, in my book.

Beetight - online bee hive tracking and record keepingThey suggested BeeTagg to read the labels on the hives (with an iPhone).  It has worked quite well for me, do far.

beetagg logoThere is also this reader for other kinds of mobile devices: http://reader.kaywa.com/