When One Turned Into Four

I have a big story.  BIG STORY!!

And it goes like this...

Friday I came home and peeked at the nuc box of bees and gave them some more feed.  Looking nice.  Then I thought I'd walk back and look at the big hive.  There's been a lot of swarm activity this month and I wanted to check them at least a couple of times a day to look for signs of swarm.  Not like I know what that is...but just in case I saw something.

And y'all.  It was the Lord's goodness, it was.  Because well before I got close, I could see bees everywhere.  Like a tornado of bees!  And while our bees have been stirred up before, this was nothing like I had ever seen.  I was super thankful there were no neighbors out to see this.  Meanwhile, the hive looked more peaceful than it had in weeks.  When a swarm occurs, the hive rears up a new queen.  When the queen hatches she takes 1/2 the bees with her to start a new colony.  This means there are still 1/2 the bees left in the hive with the original queen.  If I had not been there at that exact time, I don't think I would've ever known they had swarmed.  The remaining bees were working peacefully as though nothing had happened and it looked business as usual.

I went back into the house to figure out the next step and less than a minute later Jess ran in to tell me they swarmed into a tree on the property behind us.  

Now I've been following some swarm activity lately and asking questions about how to catch them, but I never thought I would need to know this so soon.  So I PANICKED!!  And I called Honey home from work, and told my kids to suit up.

For the life of me I couldn't think out the practical workings of how to do this.  I've installed 2 packages, split a hive, and watched a swarm install.  But this was nothing like any of that.  So I called  Mr. Hardin.  THE Mr. Hardin!  The Honey Man who has been doing this for 40+ years.  And the sweetest thing...he acted like it was his joy to come right over.

He was the picture of calm.  He took one look and started asking for a ladder, saw, loppers, the smoker, and his little buddy.  Little Buddy is his pet name for Josh.  Mr. Hardin didn't seem to want my help near as much as Little Buddy's.  He coached him through cutting the vines and limbs and trees

After a good deal of cutting and calculating, we he shook the whole thing into an empty hive body on the ground and brushed off what he could.   At this point there was no way to know if we got the queen.  Without her, the bees would just fly back into the tree.  So now we wait......

After typing this all out, it sounds like no big deal.  But I assure you it was a very big deal with lots of excitement and hearts pounding in our chests.  Well, except for Mr. H.  It was no big deal to him! 

And this is where I got the "talking to" about not attaching my bottom board.  I had NO idea.  And we contemplated how to move them.  He decided to leave them there for the night.  

That done, he dug into the hive to see what was going on.  And we got us an education!!

See the queen cell where his hive tool is pointing?  It looks like a peanut hanging down.  There are 6 of them on this one frame!  He said he has never seen so many queen cells in one hive and we should be in the queen rearing business!  He went to work cutting them out and saving some good ones to graft into his own splits.  (I wish I could see how he will do it!) 

He declared everything beautiful....over and over again.  A fantastic brood pattern.  Very docile bees. And some of the best he's ever seen.  

However, it's still too big.  And he's afraid they'll swarm again in a couple of days if we didn't do another split. 

This is where we were starting to run into trouble because we were out of equipment.  I had another nuc that my kids were assembling in the house, but we were out of frames.  He worked with what we had and unfortunately we have some empty space in our hives right now.   Even after that split, he thought it could use another one.  So he had an idea to help us both.  On Monday, he'd bring over all the frames we need to complete everything we've started AND he would take a split home for himself.  PERFECT!! 

He checked our older nuc while he was there.  He's a little more concerned about this one because it needs more bees.  But the queen cells are pretty so hopefully she will hatch, mate, and start laying in the next few days.  

So now with our big hive, our swarm catch, our older nuc, and the new split, we are up to four hives if they all do well.  

But WAIT!  The story isn't over and it gets even MORE exciting!  

Stay tuned for part 2.