I recaptured a third swarm from my hives today. It took a couple of tries to get the queen into the nuc box, but they are all installed and quiet for the night. I weighed the nuc box and bees (12 lbs), and an identical nuc box without bees (5 lbs). At 3500 bees per pound, those seven pounds of bees amount to about 24,500 bees. This means that there had been perhaps 35,000 to 50,000 bees in that single medium brood box. No wonder they swarmed!

Third swarm of the spring

This swarm seemed about the same size as the other two and it landed on the same wild berry bush. Again, I only discovered this swarm by accident as I was walking the dogs. I believe I saw a couple of bees doing a waggle dance on the outside of the swarm, so they may have actually swarmed yesterday rather than this morning. I really appreciate these swarms that leave on the weekend. It was nice that Joni and I were both available. The swarm was about at chest height, but gathered around several intersecting branches which made freeing it up a bit more challenging than usual. It was also rather wide, so dropping it into a five-frame nuc box was tricky. I was able to free up the swarm so that it was primarily hanging onto one main branch. When I gave it a shake about two thirds of the bees ended up in the box and about a third outside the box. There was still a small cluster on the branch. This got the bees rather excited and I decided to step away to see if I had the queen. I was also stung twice. I was not wearing gloves. If I would have cut the branch down and held it closer to the box to shake, I don’t think I would have been stung. Lesson learned.


When I came back to the swarm after about 15 minutes, the bees were starting to gather back on the branch, so I cut that branch and lowered it into the box to shake off those bees. After another 15 minutes break, I felt pretty sure I had the queen, although there were still lots of bees on the outside of the box. I gave it a couple of hours this time and was finally able to get the lid on the box and then just before dark when the air had cooled and the bees were all inside, I moved the nuc box along side of the last captured swarm.

I have no top cover or bottom board for this hive although I do have a medium box and frames. The top and bottom are scheduled to ship tomorrow from Brushy Mountain Bee Farm in NC. I hope it gets shipped.

I wanted to do an inspection of my hives today, but the swarm and other chores got in the way. Hopefully I will get to it tomorrow. I peeked into the box that swarmed and there is a lot of burr comb hanging from the screened inner cover over the top feeder box. I will need to open the box to see what else is going on there, but there is a pretty good chance that the virgin queen will be coming out of her cell tomorrow if she didn’t emerge today. I don’t want to damage her.

I also peeked into the top of the year old hives. They have had honey supers on them for a month, but there is still not even any comb drawn in either. Losing swarms from both of these hives has probably hurt my chances for a big honey yield this year.