Sunday, April 29, 2012

New swarm

Today I was called out to Charleston for a swarm capture.  It turned out to a large one but no pictures due to dead battery in the camera.  I clip away the dead branches then shook them into my bag.  They weighed around 4 lbs so when they hit the bottom, I almost dropped them.  I was precariously standing atop my 6 foot ladder at the time.  They began to cluster in the tree again so I shook  those into the bag also.  After a little while they began to settle down and enter the catch bag so I closed it up and put it in the back of the PU.  Many hundreds of bees hanging to the outside of the bag.  When I got home I prepared the TBH ( Top Bar Hive) and shook them into it.  That I have on film, watch.  http://youtu.be/Dyvow2HrYgU
The swarm I got yesterday seems puny compared to the 30,000 plus I got today.  Don't think I had that many all last year.

I found a planter at Costco today that I'm going to make into a Skep.  The next swarm is going into it.  Placed it by the house for English garden look.  What a trip it is to work with so many bees.

Later

1 comment:

  1. Hay Pete, you have to show me how you catch a swarm, that has to be pretty intense!

    ReplyDelete