And They Go Buzz, Buzz. Bunches of Bees

[jdmidwest]

Spring is here and it is time to split the hives. Pretty easy, take some frames with eggs, brood, and honey, put them in a new box and let them make a new queen. I split the hives at the house on the first weekend of May. I made 5 new hives there.

Weekends have been stormy, so I took the morning off work today to do the hives at the farm. I moved one hive out to the garden apairy from the front yard. I then split the other hive in the front yard and packed it out to the garden. 2 more splits in the garden and I thought I was done for the morning.

Walked back around to the front of the yard and ran into a swarm of bees in a bush. Looks like the first hive I worked decided to swarm, the queen left with a nice big wad of bees. Packed another hive to the garden. I grabbed a bucket and shook the wad of bees on the limb off into it. Packed them around and dumped them into a new hive. I watched them all walk in nice and calm. 2 more trips to the front yard and dumped more bees that had recollected on the limb. The queen had left pheremones on the limb that was attracting the workers back to the limb. It was my first swarm, and I was really suprised how calm the bees were. It was a big wad of bees as you can see in the pic, about the size of a soccer ball.

All works well, I have 19 hives now between the 2 locations. When the flow calms down in late June, I will make a few more splits to get to my 25.