We caught some bees!

beesbolinas2022-04-03

Today a wild bee colony on our property swarmed, and we were fortunate enough to catch them! This was one of those stars-aligning type moments that ended up working out at every turn. 🐝

Setup §

Along the south side of our property are a few large logs, left over from the tree guys who cut down a couple of very large monterey pines several years ago. These are very large logs, probably 3’ in diameter and 20’ long, but it’s not feasible to measure them at this point, because they’re completely overgrown with head-tall poison oak.

At any rate, inside, or possibly underneath, or somewhere around one of these logs is a hive of wild bees. We can tell they’re there because we can see them flying into and out from the bushes, as they go about their bee work. But we can also tell they’re there because they’ve swarmed at least two times in the past couple years—and that’s just on the fairl infrequent days when we were camping!

Y has been wanting to get started back up with beekeeping since we moved up to Bolinas, but we were lamenting (just last week!) that we’d probably have to wait another year because we missed the optimal ordering window for new queens this year.

Swarm §

I ran off to the hardware store on Sunday afternoon to get some plumbing parts (for the water tank) and some pallets (for our newly-cut beams). Two minutes before I got back, I got a text from Y:

The honey bees in that log are swarming now! So cool

and sure enough, when I got out of the car the air was filled with the unmistakably loud, resonant sound of a honeybee swarm.

I mentioned that this hive has swarmed before, but both times we’ve witnessed it before, the swarm settled somewhere far off—we never saw the bee-ball afterwards. There are plenty of large oaks nearby to settle into, so that’s not so surprising in itself. What was surprising was that this swarm was centering on a small oak tree right next to our path! And, sure enough, a few minutes later the bees had formed two separate balls in the branches of this tree. After several more minutes the bees made up their minds and coalesced into a single ball—not only visible from the ground, but at an accessible height, and right outside the (screened) window of the yurt!

Catching the queen §

What’s even better, Y texted our neighbors and discovered that they had a bee suit ready that she could use.^[1] So I pulled up the Silver Fox under the bee-ball, Y got on the bee suit, and the kiddles and I watched from the safety of the yurt as Y, suited-up, proceeded to stack a couple 55-gallon drums on the Fox.

The process for catching a honey bee swarm is pretty amusing in my opinion, (assuming that you’re suited up and not getting stung of course). The general idea is that swarming bees are following their queen, so to get the swarm you need to get the queen. The bees are so focused on following the queen that they won’t even fly when disturbed, e.g., by being knocked off the branch that they’re holding onto. So, having placed a barrel under the bee-ball, Y proceeded to grab the end of the branch that the bees were attached to, and gave it a good hard shake. This sudden movement dislodged about half the bee-ball, dropping it down into the barrel with a plop!

After a couple more good shakes of the branch, most of the bees had fallen into the barrel, and the remaining ones were starting to get pretty annoyed at this white-coated creature messing with them. So Y got off the car, and we all waited for a couple minutes to let things chill out a little bit. If the queen had been among the bees that fell into the barrel, the other bees would eventually disperse from their branch and make their way into the barrel. (The bees communicate in this way through pheremones, with the queen in particular emitting some sort of queenly smell-chemical that tells the other bees where she is.)

Unfortunately, the part of the bee-ball that remained in the branch stayed in the branch, so Y went back up to the car, took the lid off the barrel, seized the branch again, and gave it another good shake. More bees fell into the barrel, and more bees got angry, so again Y descended from the car and we all waited. This time, the portion of the bee-ball that had been in the branch started to dissipate, and after a brief period of increased buzzing sounds, the bees started to hover more around the barrel than not.

Sealing the deal §

At this point we were pretty sure the queen was no longer on the tree branch, and we were hopeful that she was in fact alive inside the barrel. Y finished up the barrel by duct-taping a piece of window-screen over the top, and we went off to Smiley’s for some burritos for dinner. 😃 🌯

After dinner Y and I went back out to the barrel and carried it a little way into the woods where we had some Langstroth boxes waiting, thanks to our neighbors the beekeepers. Y installed the bees the next day into their new hive, and so far they have decided to stay!