hiving a swarm

I caught the swarm in a cedar tree. It was about 6 - 7 lbs of bees. I sprayed them with 1:1 sugar syrup to get their wings wet so they wouldn't fly as much. I put a 5 gallon pail underneath them, a sharp shake of the branch and most of them fell into the pail. Dumping them into the hive is easy. After doing this three times, I had capture most of the bees. Being they stayed in the hive the queen must have been in the mass. The white towel under the bees in front of the hive helps them crawl inside.

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• beekeeping
• bee
• honeybee
• swarm
• catching a swarm
• honey
• bees
• hive
• beehive

[dills2403]

how many times have you been stung/ with all the killer bees out there it seems like its risky to get a colony from the wild...

[beefitter]

I live in Minnesota, there are no Africanized bees here.

I run 50 hives, i get stung about 10 times a season. Usually it was my fault for not wearing my protective equipment properly.

[yekic]

I heard that bees gorged themselves with honey before swarming and so I'm confused as to why sugar water would be helpful in collecting a swarm?

Also, I saw someone in England collect a swarm using only a smoker which I thought induced the bees to gorge on honey and calmed them down. Of course they had already swarmed and didn't have access to honey so why did he use a smoker?

I'm confused, can anyone enlighten me?

[beefitter]

The reason I sprayed them with sugar water was to get their wings wet, so they wouldn't fly as much and would dump them into the hive box easier. A smoker is usually a bad idea. When you shake the bees into the box there are many airborne bees. The bees in the box will expose their nasnov gland and emit a homing odor. They fan their wings to get the odor into the air. A smoker will mask this odor and the flying bees will have a difficult time homing in on the swarm.

[s4xton]

Poor cat!