It has been a busy spring. Once the weather warmed up here, we started getting calls to come get swarms. Many of the swarms were quite small, but several were a pretty good size. We hived all of our swarms, and had about a 75% rate of bees sticking around. I think we got one swarm where the queen was damaged or killed during the removal. We got a
couple of calls from a local Wal Mart store. The first call was a swarm of bees hanging off the tailpipe of a car. This was a first.
The challenge was that the bees were all the way up into the muffler. This is one swarm that didn’t stick around. I fear the queen was damaged during removal.
This was the second call from the same Wal Mart. A good swarm, and we saw the queen alive and well after getting it down. This swarm is hived and doing very well.
We got another couple of good swarms, one really nice one from an apple tree in someone’s yard. This hive is also doing really well.
All in all, I would say it was a good year for swarms. Even better, my daughter got some time handling a small swarm box capture. This one didn’t make it, but she got comfortable handling the bees, so it was well worth it.
