Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Dealing with the swarm
You, meanwhile, have captured your own, or someone else's, swarm and will have placed
it in the shade, ensuring that the container has an entrance. Observe it for a while to
make sure the bees are not gradually leaving it and hanging up again. If all is well, you
can return home to prepare a hive for it. This requires just one box on a floor with
wax foundation on the frames. It's a good idea to give them a good feed of sugar syrup,
and so one of the frames could contain some good, clean comb. This will allow the
early foragers to store their honey and pollen and may enable the queen to start laying
earlier.
Go back to the swarm in the evening when most of the foragers will be back in their
temporary home and close the box. Take it to the prepared hive (with the frames taken
out), open it and tip all the bees into it. Gently place the frames in the hive with the
frame with comb (if you have one) in the centre and the frame feeder with syrup nearby.
Fill the rest of the hive with frames, close up and leave them to it.
Another way of putting them into the hive is to prepare a ramp in front of the hive
leading to the entrance. For effect, some beekeepers place a white sheet on this. Tip the
bees on to the ramp/sheet and you will see the bees march purposefully up the ramp
and into the hive. This is fun to watch - in fact it's a wonderful sight - and it is good
for the education of others but, for practical beekeeping, it is easier simply to tip them
straight into the new hive.
Handling unexpected situations
The above instructions describe ideal situations. To be honest, while these often do
occur, things occasionally don't go to plan. The swarm may hang up in impossible
situations, you don't have a swarm box handy to put them in, or you have five spare
frames only and just two of these have wax and you have no feed. Well all that's OK:
bees are hardy creatures. They weren't expecting foundation frames and a feed of sugar
syrup anyway. Just do what you can for the moment. Give them the two frames and fill
the rest in a couple of days.
Bees can survive without feed for a while, and I've often not given them any at all if good
nectar sources were available - which, of course, you have made sure about anyway.