The Hardest Swarm Collection Yet

If I were telling this story down the pub, then you probably would not believe me, but this is 100% true.

A few days after collecting my second ever swarm my friends call me again and they say that there is another swarm of bees in their garden. I decided to walk around and take a look, and this is what greeted me. 

I was a little shocked to see what I did, but this was not a “swarm” of bees, but a complete colony and they had been here quite some time. I decided to get on the phone to my beekeeping mentor and ask him what I should do and see what he suggests.

Well, he was very helpful, but he was not able to come round and help with this one and said I would be fine and just to take my time.

So the first part of this collection was to cut the bush back so I can get easy access to the bees and the comb. I slowly did this, and it was at this point, I started to see the grand scale of how big this colony was.

Once I had good access round the comb, I started to slowly cut the comb away and put it into frames and drop them into the nucs.

I then got to a point where I had almost all of the comb off, and at this point, I started looking for the comb that had brood in it so that I could get them all set in the frames and I had it on proper authority that if you put brood in the hive with the queen, then she won’t swar

The next problem I had to do was get the bees out of the bush and into the nucs ready for taking home. I decided that there were quite a lot of bees and so a big yellow bucket would be the best bet and I held the bucket in one hand and gave the bush a massive shave and the bucket instantly filled with bees.

I then poured the bees into the nuc and then went and had a cup of tea.

While I was having a cup of tea I was watching the three nucs I had laid out in the garden, and I was not sure which one had the queen in it and because there were so many bees I just had to sit and hope that this was going to work.

As the day drew to a close most of the bees were in their nucs, and I decided I should now go and take them to their new home.

I drove back round to my garden and opened up the new hive and put the queen excluder on the bottom of the brood box and poured two nucs of bees into the hive and then dropped the frames I had made up and put the lid on.

This was by far the most complicated and satisfying swarm catch I have ever done, and from what I can gather from my mentor is that from now on in you will be fine collecting any swarm of bees and I should give myself a real pat on the back