Monthly Archives: March 2012

The swarm clustered on a camphor tree branch.

This morning our top-bar hive swarmed, settling in the nearby camphor tree on a branch about 20 feet off the ground over the neighbors’ yard. We panicked of course, unsure what to do first and acutely aware of the possibility that the bees would pick up and leave before we could collect them.

A beekeeper recently told us he’s had luck getting swarms to stay put by slowly clanging metal on metal.  He speculated that the bees are drawn to the vibrations. I grabbed a kitchen pot and ladle and pounded away, while Kelly brought a ladder to set up against the back of our neighbors’ house (and earplugs for herself).

Then we looked up and realized just how high up in the tree the bees were. We decided to call for backup. We lucked out; our good friend (and president of the Beekeepers Guild of San Mateo County) Rick Baxter arrived less than twenty minutes later with all of his awesome swarm-catching paraphernalia in tow.

As it turned out, though, our bee drama was far from simple. We were able to use Rick’s swarm bucket duct-taped to a long PVC pipe to shake down and capture most of the bees from their branch. Unfortunately, after dumping them into a hive in our garden we noticed two disturbing things: first, a large number of bees still buzzed around the branch in the camphor tree, and second, the bees already in the hive gradually moved out the entrance and took off again, heading toward the same neighbors’ front yard.

Rick vacuums the last of the bees off the branch to transfer to the hive.

Rick brought out the big guns: a vacuum cleaner that sucks the bees down the long PVC pipe into a wood box, where their fall is cushioned by crumpled paper towels. By the time we got the leftover bees in the camphor tree into the hive, it was apparent that the original group was on the move again.

Bees on the go: the bees make their way to a juniper branch.

We stood in the neighbors’ yard and watched as the cloud of bees formed a new cluster on a juniper branch. Another ladder set-up and a good strong shake into the pole-mounted bucket, and we were able to bring these bees back to the hive. Our best guess was that we had missed the queen in our first capture and that the bees had taken off in search of her.

As it turned out, the story was a bit more complicated. As the bees clustered on the outside of the hive, we spotted the queen in the crowd, and Rick nudged her gently toward the opening of the hive. Once the queen is inside, everyone else will follow. But moments later we spotted a second queen, and then a third. In the constantly moving mass of bee bodies it can be hard to know for sure if you’re counting the same queen more than once, but we are confident that we counted at least three individual queens, more likely four to six.

With all the bees back at the new hive, it still took them a while to find their way inside.

This is extremely unusual, but it happened to us last year as well, and we’re concluding that we have some strange bee genetics going on. Ordinarily, a hive will raise multiple queen bees, and the queens fight to the death at birth. The victor becomes the hive’s new queen.

Last June, we found at least eight queens in a single swarm, and though we asked every beekeeper we knew and posted queries on the guild’s beekeeping forum, we found no one who had ever witnessed such a swarm. The hive that swarmed today was originally part of that multi-queen swarm, and it appears the genetics have been passed on.

A commercial swarm lure product. It gets stapled inside the inner cover of the swarm catcher envelope and all and smells somewhat like lemongrass oil.

This afternoon, in the span of only a few minutes, a huge swarm of honey bees flew into our garden, hovered over the navel orange tree, and then moved on to parts unknown.

Kelly and I had just returned home from work and had collapsed in the living room when we heard a strange sound. To me, it sounded like a very large buzzing insect trapped somewhere in the back of the house, and I didn’t pay it much attention. A minute later, the phone rang with what we now know was a call from a neighbor alerting us to a large mass of bees hovering over the orange tree.

By the time we meandered outside half an hour later to admire the raspberry vines’ new growth and complain together over the prematurely bolting cabbage, all signs of the swarm had past. But in the midst of our garden reverie, the same neighbor stuck her head over the fence and asked if we had caught the swarm of honey bees over the orange tree. The what?!?

We made a quick tour of the garden, just in case we had somehow overlooked a large cloud of bees. We scanned our top-bar hive, wondering if they had just run off to greener pastures, but all appeared normal. Next we speed-walked through our neighbors’ garden to the spot where they have generously allowed us to place a swarm catcher on their wisteria trellis. No bees.

What came next speaks volumes about our personalities as well as, I’m sure, our naiveté as beekeepers and swarm catchers. We put on our jackets, jumped in the car and, with the windows rolled down, drove very slowly through the neighborhood, heads out the windows, listening and watching for any sign of a swarm.

Given today’s experience, I can tell you that suburban white noise sounds an awful lot like bees in the distance. Especially when you really want it to. We stopped the car multiple time and walked down streets, only to find that the buzz we’d been sure we heard was really a clothes dryer, or a car engine, or our own imaginations.

When we had finally given up on finding the swarm and were on our way home, we drove past a feral hive in an oak tree about a block from our house. We’ve been keeping tabs on this hive since last year, taking walks to peer up at the telltale stream of honey bees going in and out of a rotting sawed-off limb. Today, the scar on the tree was completely covered by a mass of bees, and we strongly suspect that it was this hive that swarmed, leaving behind a group of bees to keep the oak tree hive going.

Oddly enough, there is rain forecast for tomorrow, and this afternoon was overcast and windy. We can’t quite figure out why a swarm of bees would take to the sky with foul weather brewing, and we joked that maybe we wouldn’t have wanted these bees anyway, if they were willing to swarm at such a seemingly poor time. Still, as earnest swarm catching wannabes, it’s hard not to feel bitterly disappointed that we sat unwittingly by on our sofa while a swarm congregated outside and then passed by our carefully prepared swarm catcher, with its daub of lemongrass oil, in favor of some other home.

The rooftop swarm catcher.

Urban beekeepers often practice rooftop beekeeping in places where space is tight. Keeping bees on the roof is also a great way to lift hives out of the deep shade often created by buildings and vegetation.  It’s not great for beekeepers who are afraid of heights.

This past Saturday, under a sky heavy with rain clouds, Kelly and I paid a visit to one of our new beehive hosts. At this particular location, we had decided on our preliminary visit that the nearly flat roof was the best spot for bees. But ferrying our supplies onto the roof via Kelly’s eight-foot pruning ladder was a sobering ordeal, and the thought of bringing full honey supers down from the roof makes this beekeeper quake in her boots.

Safely on the roof, we set up one swarm catcher complete with a pheromone lure, and leveled the box with scrap wood stacked up on the slight incline. The homeowner has kindly offered to install screw eyes to anchor the hives so that, in the event of a California temblor, our hive won’t go pitching off the edge.

Our second stop of the day was much less scary: a nice flat garden with overhanging oak trees. For this swarm trap installation, we set up a low stand of stacked cinder blocks, followed by a metal bar and wood contraption to deter ants, and placed the bee box on top.

Keeping ants out of the beehives

With the box securely resting on the stand, I used a paintbrush to apply canola oil to the metal bars. Honey-seeking ants can’t make it across this slick surface. Deterring ants is especially important for newly established honey bee colonies, which may not be strong enough to fend off insect invasions. We have heard more seasoned beekeepers describe losing hives to ants, though our own experience last year was far less dramatic. While we did see ants around the hives on several occasions, hand squishing the ones we could find and placing a few borax ant traps around the bases of the hives did the trick.

The swarm catcher sits on metal bars coated in oil to deter ants.

How to lure bees

We used commercial pheromone lures in the swarm catchers we placed this past weekend, but we’ve also purchased a small bottle of lemongrass oil, and we are including some nice stinky beeswax in each swarm catcher. Our plan is to test out the lemongrass oil versus commercial lures to see if we notice a difference in our success rate. Our apiary and swarm catching enterprise is so small scale that it will be impossible to know with any certainty what approach is more successful, but we are excited to experiment.

Here is a swarm lure stapled to the inner cover of the hive.

A swarm catcher in our backyard orchard.

The hive-swarming season is upon us, and in an effort to support natural bee genetic adaptation (and save money!), we are hoping to populate nearly all of our hives via swarms. This week we resurrected bee equipment from the basement freezer, ran an inventory of our boxes, frames, and bars, and set up two “swarm catchers”.

So what’s a swarm catcher? Take one bee box, fill it with the smelliest, most well-used comb you’ve got, add a little lemongrass oil on the end of a Q-tip (or a commercially produced synthetic pheromone packet), and wait for a swarm to move in.

Everyone’s seen illustrations of an angry swarm of bees chasing after some poor soul. In reality, swarms are generally quite mellow. The bees have gorged on honey to prepare them for the journey, and they’re intent on taking care of the queen and finding a new home. While the swarm waits, often clinging to a tree branch, scout bees search for a good place to call home.

And then, through some magic of bee pheromone communication and butt-wiggling, the swarm agrees on one location and moves en masse to their new hive. I don’t use the word “agrees” lightly. I’m keen to check out a new book by Dr. Thomas Seeley, of Cornell University. Seeley’s book, Honeybee Democracy, explores the fascinating and complex ways in which bees communicate and make group decisions. I continue to be amazed by the intricacy of honey bee social structure and behavior.

Setting up lures

So far we’ve set up two swarm lures. The first is in our backyard “orchard,” future site of a chicken coop for the fast-growing girls. The second swarm catcher is about eight feet off the ground on our neighbors’ wisteria trellis. We picked up some lemongrass oil from the store, wetted the ends of Q-tips , and placed these across the frames at the back of the hive. Supposedly, the lemongrass scent is similar to queen bee pheromones, thus enticing scout bees to give a favorable report of the location.

You can just make out the swarm catcher perched on this trellis. As always, click on the picture for a closer look.

This swarm catcher is ready to go, with a "magic" Q-tip visible on the right side of the frames.

Over the past two weekends, we’ve gone on field trips to six potential hive-hosting gardens, and we plan to set up swarm catchers soon in many of them. The only problem is our lack of equipment. We spent hours counting and re-counting our boxes, frames, bars, and wax foundation sheets and poring over our Mann Lake beekeeping supply catalogue.

Kelly placed the order yesterday morning and was initially told that we would need a forklift on site to receive it. She informed the operator that this is a private suburban residence without access to forklifts. Sheesh. I hadn’t realized that ordering supplies for half a dozen hives was such an involved process. Fortunately, it sounds as though they are willing to deliver sans forklift.

Top-bar hive takes on the world

We went out in the garden tonight and looked up with a flashlight into our top-bar hive through its screened bottom. We were wowed by the number of bees. We estimate that the population has tripled since the last time we looked at night, several weeks ago. The bees have drawn new white comb from the top-bars we added, and they are entirely covering the other combs, so that the whole inside of the hive looks like a huge ball of bees.

The next warm day we have, we’ll open the hive and take out the divider board that has been limiting the bees to the right-hand side. We are also considering the possibility of splitting the hive as spring progresses if the bees don’t beat us to it by swarming.