Easy swarm capture gets complicated! - Beekeeping

hey everybody this is Rich and you're with South Florida beekeeping with Rich I had a little unexpected change to my afternoon plans today had an electrician at the house doing some work and outside and he suddenly said I hear a roaring and I went oh no and I spun on my heel and sure enough Hive number one was in the air and uh well everything the rest of it is just grab the camera and do some swarm catching you'll see what I'm talking about so well but they're not going here I think this is already occupied I have one is swarming five one did not wait for them to cap the queen cells I checked hide one yesterday they have one frame that has like seven Queen cells on it but they're all uncapped yeah so I thought I had three days I was gonna come back in three days and take that frame out and move it over to uh a five frame nuke along with some resources but it looks like they decided to leave a little early or I missed a cap Queen cell somewhere else but I went through every frame in there yesterday morning there were a lot of bees in the air yep and they're way up there so this is not an orientation flight this is a swarm I feel like I should go get a metal tan and a spoon and start tanging and see if it makes them come down [Laughter] yeah and now here's the interesting look they seem to be heading that way oh my maybe they're going for one of the other traps here because this one this absolute calm over here at this warm trap oh yeah what's going on there except you know like they've moved in and they're just doing their well not just maybe activity at the entrance they may have moved in yesterday okay but a whole lot ah here they go here we are here oh my goodness I'm gonna I'm gonna walk through this come over here and this is where they're going yeah yep they have decided to go into the bucket so the bright side I'll just bring a box over here and I'll just dump them straight into the box instead of having to cut them later on you know well let's say that that don't catch your own swarms in your own yard may have to rethink that yeah because this warm obviously is coming from our Hive yeah swung around the corner here and coming into the bucket that I put up two days ago three days ago Wednesday yeah all the more reason to put up your swarm traps early yeah that's pretty definite yeah come over here and get this angle looking back through the avocado and towards the Frangipani yeah there's a lot there's just a trail of bees from hive number one coming out curving over and dropping in over here yeah now not sure how much of it gets caught on the camera and I can see it now here's the thing that is where the uh Scion was and the idea of a Scion was that the bees come that land there and you know the bees usually travel less than 90 feet to a biblack position before they do their final transfer and this may be what's going on they may not actually be going in that bucket they may just be a bit like here but regardless in half an hour when they've all congregated there I'm putting them in a bucket or I'm putting them in a box and the opportunity to uh find someplace else to be yeah come down a little lower because now they're starting to drop down a little bit you know sweeping over here above the French Penny there are a lot I checked that Hive yesterday and like I said there was one frame that has seven Queen cells on it none of them were capped and so I figured I'd go back in three days when they were capped and I was going to remove that frame well you waited too because now I don't need to do the split the bees have split themselves so I'm gonna go throw out some cone drop it into a box so they have something to start on and we'll welcome a new welcome cousins back into the eye which is great because it was Hive number one that I wanted to make my splits from this year yep no on the other hand if there are still Queen cells in Hive number one you could always grab one of those and Hive three or whatever yep it's high three even though we had a queen a couple weeks ago they um she doesn't seem to be doing too well see I don't think she made it and then there's like she made it but not well yeah didn't last well yeah they're a very weak Hive at this point at this point but this one isn't it yeah and very soon this one will be that one oh yeah hey I will I will take the three or four frames of bees that are still in number three put them into a new with a couple of Queen cells and I will move this swarm into Hive number three oh yeah why not cool and uh I guess we'll film you doing that at that point probably because I'm going to cut a couple of Queen cells out of that frame and put them somewhere else I still want to wait for them to get capped before I do it well it's warm it's amazing how quickly you'll go from all this chaos to Southern situation it's already sounding less loud yeah okay after two seconds you can detect the lowering the volume yes well it's probably not much more than five minutes from the finish on this one we'll be back and we're back and there are very few bees going inside the bucket about five minutes later you'll notice not a lot of bees are going inside if you were going inside and checking it out but I'm pretty sure this was just chosen as a bit wack location and you can see very few bees in the air anymore so they have sort of settled pretty empty and uh that's what they look like when they've settled you guys ready okay I just wanted to show you guys something you have to speak louder you don't have a mic on okay I just want to show you guys something any the other day you know we talked about making a swarm trap out of the bucket and that you know smaller swarms might be attracted to it um I just wanted to make this point this box right here was underneath that table on top of that brick and bees came in through these little holes here they chewed them out and made them slightly larger and they built an entire colony in there and in terms of volume all this wood was in the bottom so the volume of this hive was from here up which isn't even three gallons and there was a mature Hive in there that probably would have swarmed if we hadn't gotten to it and put it in a another box but so if you think that uh small small spaces you'll notice that's not much following around because it's all propolis together on the bottom there so that's not a lot of space and there was the comb from The Hive that was in there so yeah I'll be out here in a few minutes as soon as I finish another errand if you come over here you can get the view of that entrance a lot better while bees are coming in and out they're not quote unquote just going in so I'm thinking this is just a biblack position they're not choosing to move into the bucket hey everybody it's rich and you're with beekeeping South Florida beekeeping with Rich um to recap what was said earlier yeah but just to recap quick uh I went through Hive number one yesterday found seven Queen cells on uh one frame five numbers frame number seven as you're going left to right they weren't capped yet and I thought to myself okay well I'm gonna give him three more days to get capped and then I'm going to pull that frame out and I'm going to cut some of those cells out and put them out some places and you know well because I figured I'd have a grace period before the bee swarmed but the bees didn't wait for the cells to get capped apparently because I checked him yesterday and here we are today you know we filmed the Swarm leaving Hive number one arching around over here and coming to land on the bucket and there's really not many bees inside they're mostly just hanging there so I think they're just Biv whacking you know they go up to 90 feet if they can no further if they don't have to Biv whack while they go around looking which again has me all confused because I had all this scout activity at all three locations yesterday and nothing has changed over here on Swarm trap one under the cedar tree the bees bees look like they've moved in there and are completely calm and completely disconnected from what's going on here so I've got to go over a little later on get up on the ladder take a peek inside and see if a swarm moved in a little tiny swore moved in there and we'll film that but we're going to get back to this right now so what I've done here is I have alternated some frames of brood comb with empty frames I did put one frame with honeycomb on it in here to make things easier for them and yeah once they're in position over there on the end of the temporary Hive stand I will uh put a feeder on with some one-to-one sugar water on top too so they'll pull this out real quick and before you know it we'll be putting a second deep underneath our second medium underneath this one oh uh but for purposes here today you'll notice as always I use a PBC screened bottom board and I use a slatted rack but on top of the slatted rack today I'm putting a queen excluder or today it's a queen includer because they're in Biv whack mode at the moment and you know won't think twice about taking off somewhere else if they decide to so that's how we're going to do it so empty box on top of here to make it easier on me to dump the bees in and we're going to bring things down and hopefully nothing uh I'll be only cover I'm using for the moment deer will just be this okay I will carry the bees over there just with this on top of it and then we will get something more permanent yeah foreign over there well yesterday I told you that it was driving me nuts I could have sworn I heard a swarm in the trees but I couldn't find it I'm looking at a swarm right over there so we have another swarm video to do that's warm we'll find out in a minute yeah like I said I was peeking up into the bucket through the entrance and I wasn't really seeing much in the way of bees let's get this stuff out of here so I can shake these few bees out I think I will just take this out of there and let them use this because I want to see if the bees in there go running into the box um I heard of crashing or thrashing which makes me wonder if a pack of bees didn't land outside the box over on the other side so I'm gonna go take a look at that yeah there's almost see they're just randomly around in there I'll just put that down like that they have a so they have a clear path to crawl up and then if they want to see what's going on over here yeah there's a small pile there foreign foreign yeah the little pile that's on the ground over here are starting to walk up the side of the container so there's no clean in there in the pile yeah she didn't she didn't miss the Box oh my come on get back in there you I do love feathers let's say you do that with a B brush all right all right damn it here we go tight there huh yeah my keg isn't getting in the way oh there's a bunch on the outside I will look in a second oh yeah okay foreign the queen of pheromone is in the brick mostly the queen pheromone was completely on the brick which is right next to you and there's really no action going on there but yes I was still smelling Queen pheromone in the bucket I will do that now that I've gotten most of them off yeah that is a full-size swarm over there but I'm pretty sure it couldn't have come from my bees in this case oh yeah see they're going in and there's some nezernoff Banning going on there see them the end of my feather see the girls that are you sticking their butts in the air and Fanning so we can uh leave that alone for a little bit that swarm capture is pretty much complete I gotta get out my big ladder for this one foreign more and more bees are sticking their butts in the air the Queen's in there and all's well with the world we'll give them a little while in the meantime I'm going to go uh pull out my taller ladder get my five gallon water jug and a little my little net and get a nuke set up and we will see about getting that other swarm so we're going to shut this off for the moment nope just go all right second stop you know what before I do this I'm gonna get I'm gonna get on the shorter ladder and I'm gonna go look inside the box over there and see if a swarm has moved in or whether those are still Scout bees because they could be Scout bees from that as I mentioned to my wife that it was driving me nuts yesterday that I was hearing what I could swear was a swarm up in the trees but I couldn't see one and you know where I was standing at that time this was behind me and I was looking all around over in there but I wasn't looking behind me over this way so I'm gonna go check and see whether we have a swarm over here or whether we just have uh heavy Scout activity [Music] [Music] wow this is unstable that's more stable would you uh reach behind you and give me a hive tool you can turn and look at the mailbox while you get it thank you dear not good I'm thinking from what I can see through the inner cover that we have a yeah okay they moved in well I'm going to call this one swarm one cedar tree swarm well I'll get them a feeder top and some sugar water but not right this second boy talking about going zero to 80. man foreign that is a sizable swarm go prep a nuke over here foreign [Music] foreign during covid when people weren't coming around to get my bee swarms that were being built up in desperation I had to start using a clean excluder because I was stacking uh nukes on top of each other to keep them from swarming so I got a lot of Honey production Out Of Swarm nukes last uh year uh year last year it was really when I got a bunch of them okay well one thing I can't use that for what is that in this case is the queen includer I'm gonna go get three frames of Comb be right back okay brood foreign since they're primed for such things I'll give them some grungy comb let them fix it all up and you notice the difference in size there Honeycomb versus uh brood comb let's get that right there and we'll put the honeycomb over here your arrows need to go the same way there we go I probably left it up there that probably looks good high tool up on top so rather than climb up on the ladder right now just get another Hive tool if you're just a backyard beekeeper best thing I ever came up with was using that mailbox okay um foreign these things or not but in case anybody's wondering I only put that railing on there a couple of days ago then I pulled out all my nukes got them all organized and arranged on here along a couple of other size boxes my three frame nukes my regular nukes and a full size down on the end where that swarm's going that'll do for dump it in the top the side of the way all right so now when I get that out of there we can start dumping in there I did put yeah I did put one down there there's the other one there okay let's check real quick and see how this is going oh yes ladies oh yes tell it to the world tell it to the world they have they're moving in and their little butts are up in the air Fanning for all their worth The Queen Is Here the queen is here long live the queen foreign well I mean they're on two forks of a tree you're going to have to assume the Queens on the side that most the bees are on but this isn't going to be uh a nice clean captured but you know what I can probably increase my odds if I go get a sheet and kind of spread it up in this area not on the ground obviously because we're on top of the kayak and a nursery but if I can spread a sheet up there some I might be able to catch one to two thousand bees from the side a little quicker hmm and to be talking to you while I'm doing that uh proper prior planning prevents poor performance and of course you can't plan when you don't know what you're planning for one thing that is planned for is that if I get a call from mosquito control that they're spraying tonight my box of B sheets is at hand and readily available I don't have to give any extra thought to where I'm going to find a sheet to put in put over my bees so and I'm just assuming everything's an assumption you know what they say no battle plan survives first contact with the Enemy I'm assuming that all those bees there are going to fall down at the same time as I shake the other side if they don't well then fantastic all right dear would you hand me my uh container there my Plastics okay my plastic step foreign I have several thousand beasts that oh boy well that wasn't so smart was it excuse me and put the cover on and then it just fell off thank you foreign foreign okay see how the bees in here aren't clustering any particular place they're not clumping up well that's just because they're investigating the handle I mean look at there yeah it's possible she could be I guess oh foreign I don't have anything blocking the front right at the moment okay let's see how that swarm's doing okay got more yeah but I don't know if it's because they've been there more than 24 hours which is probably the case or whether the Queen's still there I don't know I don't know ow hey you didn't need to do that I wasn't pinching you I wasn't pinching you at all [Music] right they're going down inside pretty good so you think the Queen's in there yeah I think that one's in there not that I'm not gonna try to get myself a few more bees here because since they've probably been in this location for more than 24 hours you know they've orientated to it and we're only 20 feet away unfortunately I don't have an out B yard I can take swarms to everything has to stay where it is oops anyone who thought my video on Swarm trapping equipment was theoretical it's not this is the best you know having that grip there and shake them into it is just terrific oh there's still some days in here well they will be dear for another five minutes goodness let's see my little box of B sheets and it says b sheets on the front of it oh this is this is picture perfect I mean to put it mildly it doesn't get any better than this I mean everything is settled down even way up here well she's just kind of checking things out but this one has her butt in the air all these others with butts in the air check in when they're coming and checking they're going to get the feather sweep the relatively few bees that are in this top box down then containerize them okay yeah sorry I took a moment to shake some more bees off of the cloth over there I mean look at this there's almost no Bees left up here so let's see just a few and we're just in vestigating the wonderful wonderful smells of old bee equipment there we go [Music] in a moment let me see how the situation is over here yeah pretty much nobody left they've all crawled up and around so we're just going to leave them there for a little while and then we will move them back over to the rail the queen can't go anywhere because she's above the queen excluder and I'll leave that on there for a few days uh when I move them over there they'll get a top feeder they'll get some sugar water in it and a water container in the front I'll open uh one side of the queen or the robbing excluder thing there and I think that uh we're good to go let's see if there's any drones around here this Hive yesterday when I was in there inspecting I was floored by the size of the drones so all right uh Ulrich you're probably right the queen on this Hive number one was not an African derived bee because if the drones only have her genetics and I am not exaggerating when I'm saying the drones were this big they're huge now what she made it with and what kind of mutts her children were I don't know but I must have caught a good queen and a swarm because her drones were just huge and that implies that she has straight up you know European genetics hmm why are more you guys you're still waving you're still standing just fine but more of you are trying to check to see what's going on all right well we'll just let them relax let's get back over here and continue with this other one how are we going to title this or swarm captures two at once three three at once yeah if you count that one over there so that that wasn't any work and you can see nasanov going on here too [Music] not much I'm gonna crack this here to one end and I'm gonna make them a little top entrance there for a few minutes since we're still actively working on this and let's try putting the cover on again that'll teach me a lesson I intended on drilling two holes and putting this cover on so that it was permanently half on from here to here and I could just flip it over here here and I could just flip it over from the top but I hadn't gotten around to it yet which shows you prior proper planning prevents poor performance I didn't follow through on my plan because I didn't know that uh swarm season was going to hit so wild and hairy all at once yeah no not that I didn't predict it when it was going to start I just didn't expect it to start at my house quite so soon this isn't exactly a thorny tree Barbados cherry but it does have lots on it which makes it a bit scratchy kind of hard to tell [Music] yeah three four hundred come on guys give me a clear shot somewhere well I'll just put this here can I find the step net on it's all right it's all right I think we'll wind this video up at this point it's kind of gotten way long because it wasn't planned this way well we had the we caught the Swarm we intended on catching yeah well we caught this warm just by proper prior planting wasn't even sure they had swarmed in there yet until I just went and took a peek but Yep they're in there so I'll be putting uh some frames of drawn comb in that one too and I'll be putting uh sugar syrup on top of it uh they'll get sugar syrup in their container on here in short order and they'll get well that one will get moved over into this position as a single deep for a while but given that I gave them four frames of Comb it won't be long before I put that into a double deep double medium I should say sorry not double deep double medium I use two mediums as my main brood chamber so we got so you got three I got three swarms between uh yesterday and today in my own backyard one of them came from my hive the other two came from somewhere else what can I say take out boating [Laughter] it's probably cheaper to keep on throwing money into the hole in the water surrounded by wood than it is to try to keep up with swarming bees I don't know uh swarm catching is just so much fun it is probably the single best part of beekeeping is swarm catching so if you're not out there catching your own bees for free get out there make some swarm traps there's a thousand designs online don't let somebody's preconceived notion about the volume deter you that five gallon bucket is in no way the appropriate volume but they work just fine particularly with our African derived bees down here they will settle for a smaller space but they put they work so fast they build homes so fast they pack away that honey so fast that a swarm like this caught in February I could easily make 60 pounds of honey off of any one of these three swarms this season so we'll call that a wrap be sure to like And subscribe this has been rich with South Florida beekeeping with Rich everybody else I can only wish that you have this great a Sunday take care everybody

Channel: South FL Beekeeping with Rich

Views: 6,662

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Id: mdVdnyn_WYU

Length: 54min 43sec (3283 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 31 2023