The Bees Are Back in Town

It was back in 1975, I think, when a rock group named Thin Lizzy released a song called "The Boys are Back in town."  It had a really catchy baseline, I remember as a kid.  The reason I was thinking about that old song is an event that began happening outside our side door just the other day.  For years we've had a colony of honeybees that live in a hollow column that holds up our side porch.  It is the perfect place for bees, like a hollow tree.  The trouble with it is that there is no way to get the honey.  But that was before we had bee boxes and we liked having them even if we couldn't get the honey because they pollinated the garden and fruit trees.  Over and over, the bees fill the column up with comb and then probably run out of room and move out.

The column has been vacant for, I don't know, around a year, maybe?  That began to change last week.  We noticed scout bees looking around.  If you look closely you can see them hovering around the entrance at the top of the column.

With quickness, I quickly got our swarm trap, ratchet-strapped it to a ladder and put a cotton ball with 2 drops of lemon grass oil on it and set it up by the column.  The lemon grass oil attracts the bees.  In the swarm trap are some frames of drawn out comb.  Here's the strategy:  The scout bees are checking out possible sites for a queen and her swarm to move in.  If we could coax them into our box versus the column, well, that would be a real coup.

Bees aren't lazy, but they are efficient.  If they find a location that was previously occupied with bees and the old hive had plenty of drawn out comb, that's perfect.  They move in, clean the place up, and the colony grows.  It's like moving into a house that is fully furnished.  You don't need to buy furniture.  The bees, instead of working to build comb, can instead focus on making honey.  It's an effective allocation and usage of energy.  Bees never cease to amaze me.

Now we're at a disadvantage, I know.  I couple of frames of comb in a bee box that we use as a swarm trap doesn't compare to a column-full of comb, but I had to at least try!  We'll wait and see...  You can see some that are checking out the swarm trap, like an Open House in a subdivision.  See the bee?  That looks promising!

At one point we had as many bees around the swarm trap as we had in front of the column!

Until one day last week when there was A LOT of activity around the entrance to the column.  The queen and her entourage had arrived and decided to move into the furnished home.  We thought our swarm trap had curb appeal and we were offering owner financing with low mortgage interest rates.

I was very tempted to get up there and scoop them into the swarm trap, but there was a good chance the queen was already in the column, so I chose not to.  I'll move the swarm trap back out into the yard.  There will be more swarms coming, no doubt.  We'll catch one, I'm confident.

For now, the BEES are back in town.  We can't sing the BOYS are back in town, because the colony is mostly females.