The bee keeper diaries

[Iowanian]

Swarm call.

Last night while I was chopping weeds near the hives and putting a bucket of old honey comb down for my bees to use as their food sources dry up in the drought and end of summer....my phone rang.

"OMG, do you still do bees, we have a bunch of bees in an old building next to a house we bought....can you get them out"...... This would be a "cut out" because you need to cut a hole in the wall of the building-house and remove the comb and bees and relocate them. You trim the comb that has brood(babies) and use rubber bands to strap it into frames, as well as some frames of honey and pollen.....then you vacuum the bees as you've see in pics. Place them into the box with the comb at their new location. Boom.

In that case, I explained that it is a bad time of year and the bees have a low chance of living, but if it can wait I'll be happy to get them in the spring as soon as dandilions bloom. they agreed that was acceptable and I'll probably have some pics to post on that in April 2019.

A swarm call....the phone rings, email pings, FB messager dings....."OMG, there is a giant ball of bees on the tree in my yard/side of my house/fence post/mail box"

Bees get too populated or run out of room in a hive. Their instinct is to create a new queen....when she hatches, half of the bees leave with the old queen to look for a new place to live. They swarm out of the hive in a "cloud" of bees and land nearby and cluster(as you see in pics above on limbs or tomb stones etc).....then scout bees dispatch and look for a new place to live that has the proper volume of space and ventilation....then they come back to the ball of bees(swarm) and fly as a group to the new place to live.


Robbing: I'm not certain what causes it but sometimes bees will find another hive(wild and hives like mine)....they basically send an army of raiders(typical scum) and they'll fight their way into the hive....eat the honey and take it back to their hive and place it into their own comb and cap it to save. I suppose it's an instinct.....They'll clean out honey from dead hives too. Last night I placed a bucket that had some old capped honey from a tree that fell so that my bees could use it. When they cap it in their own comb it will be as good as new. I have some video of the bees fighting.....my bees lined up at the entrance and a hole near the top....the raiders flying in and trying to force their way in....2-3 of my bees would jump on one and ball it up, stinging....there were a lot of clusters of fighting bees on the ground in front of the hive.....and as they died, workers were dragging them away from the hive at the same time. Mine must have won because they were fine last night.

Fun fact. In a bees life, a single bee can make 1-2 tea spoons of honey.