Hey everyone, we haven't saved swarms of bees for quiet some time now, however on this fine evening decided to take a wonderful walk down memory lane and do just that.
In these pictures myself and landlord/beekeeping partner preparing to remove this small swarm inside a irrigation housing. That box is out "bee-sucker" to which the bees are extracted temporarily and then later placed into a new langstroth hive
My bee partners daughter had a 'rogue swarm in a box recently move in which had to be removed as it was close to where her children play.
We use red lights at night to lessen our chances of getting stung. Bees like most animals and insects can apparently not see a red light, not sure the science is out on that, however but we normally have calmer bees whilst working with them at night with red lights.
We gently pumped a little smoke in the opening to this irrigation box and opened up to reveal a small swarm of bees which had just moved in.
The only comb they had built in a week was this one. We are currently in winter in South Africa and the general rule of thumb is less bee activity and movement due to the cold weather, hence less to forage too. Bees generally also lessen their swarm size in winter thus the reason for them taking longer to build and establish themselves.
As per wikipedia.org In modern American beekeeping, a Langstroth hive is any vertically modular beehive that has the key features of vertically hung frames, a bottom board with entrance for the bees, boxes containing frames for brood and honey (the lowest box for the queen to lay eggs, and boxes above where honey may be stored) and an inner cover and top cap to provide weather protection.[1] In a Langstroth hive, the bees build honeycomb into frames, which can be moved with ease. The frames are designed to prevent bees from attaching honeycombs where they would either connect adjacent frames, or connect frames to the walls of the hive. The movable frames allow the beekeeper to manage the bees in a way which was formerly impossible https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langstroth_hive
This will the proverbial "touch and go" whether the bees stay in their new home. They have only been here for about a week and haven't yet built any substantial combs, we got some some wax sheeting as well as built up combs from our other hives and installed them with these bees in the hope they stay, time will tell but so far so good.
All done and dusted and moved to their new location.
Their new home and surrounds at the bottom of the plot with the a few of our older swarms.
Well that was fun.
Have an incredible week.
Love light and blessings.
Cheer$;)