A Land Flowing With Milk And (Hopefully) Honey

We mentioned in previous posts that we've been attending beekeeping classes.  We've learned a lot, but beekeeping is like learning to ride a bike.  At some point, you've got to stop watching and listening and start doing.  To that end, a friend let us borrow an old box with three frames that he wasn't using.  We put it out on the trampoline.  You can see that a few bees smell the wax that's on the frames and they are flying around, checking things out.  Hopefully, those are scout bees checking out a new piece of real estate and ensuring that this new home has "curb appeal."

To catch a wild swarm, I learned that you should place the box about 10 feet off the ground.  I put in on top of a ladder and used a ratchet strap to tie it down.  I wouldn't want it to blow off in the wind or be knocked off by Belle.  We took a drop or two of Lemongrass essential oil and put it on a cotton ball and put it in the box.  Bees love that scent.  You have to be careful, though.  We learned that while the worker bees love it, the queen does not.  A couple of bees found the box!  Followed by a couple dozen.

We checked out the box in a short while and there were a lot of bees flying around.  We were praying that they had little suitcases with them and were moving in.

I took a short video of them flying around.  You can hear them buzzing and also the rooster crowing in the background...  Click the arrow below to watch.

We checked on the box a little while later.  There weren't as many flying.  Maybe the queen never came?  Maybe they didn't like the box and moved on?  I figured I would check.  I didn't put the full bee suit on, but put on just the veil and gloves.  The plan was that I would remove the ratchet strap, open the top and see if there were any bees in the box.

When I took the lid off, there was a WHOLE BUNCH of bees inside!  I called a friend and he brought another box with 9 frames and a telescoping lid.  Our plan was to take the top off of the box of bees, set the deep box with frames on top of it and lift the bottom box off the bottom board and insert a queen excluder.

The excluder keeps your queen from escaping.  The workers can go where they please, in and out, but the queen can only move between the two boxes, laying eggs and building her colony.

So we went about doing just that.

Soon, we were finished!  We got the excluder on and the box set up just the way we wanted.  

Bees don't fly at night.  We decided to put the bees in the wagon.  As soon as nightfall came, all the bees came 'home' and into the box.  Since none were flying, I pulled the wagon full of bees out to the location where we are placing the hive.  We will set it down on top of some cinder blocks.  We're really excited!  Tomorrow we plan on buying some additional boxes and set out some more swarm traps.  We'd like to catch some more.  We will open the box of bees in a couple of weeks and inspect in order to see if we see eggs/brood.  We will keep you posted.