Rosamund’s turn

,

I was late getting home tonight, but I had to go have a peek at the girls.   Isabella still had busy foragers coming in, but Rosamund was unusually quiet.  I peeked at Isabella and admired her busy, enthusiastic workers and then looked in at Rosamund.

She was very laid back.

And I could see the comb, unlike this morning when they were covering the combs so completely that I couldn’t see the swarm cells that were evident tonight.

And one was open at the bottom.

So, I hollered for Chuck and we looked and looked up in all the trees around and behind the hives.  They were nowhere to be seen.  We started back into the house, thinking that they had already headed off to someone else’s yard or hole in a tree or wherever they found a spot when I noticed a brown wad wrapped around the crook of one of our crepe myrtle bushes.

I ran in the house to get my phone and camera.  Chuck got his camera.  I called Frank.

This is what he’ll find when he gets here.

 

 

Except it is going to be DARK.  He’s an hour away and can’t get them tomorrow, so it’s now or, most likely, never.
And rumor has it that bees don’t like being messed with at night.
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We did it anyway, though.
Frank was here by 9:30 and gone by 10:20 with a box full of bees.
There were a couple of stings and a little attitude, but not nearly as much as the rainy evening we helped Marty split 3 hives. And that’s with Chuck sawing off the crepe myrtle trunk to lift them over the box. In the dark with only a couple of little red flashlights to see by.
Bee handling endorphins are a little like getting a tattoo.  🙂

4 responses to “Rosamund’s turn”

  1. Randy Emmitt Avatar
    Randy Emmitt

    Kitty,
    So sad to see both your hives swarm so quickly. Hope they recover quickly. Time to grab a few bars of honey?

    Reply
  2. chuck Avatar
    chuck

    Hey Randy,

    We kinda have a different perspective on the swarm thing. We see it as a sign of a very healthy strong hive doing what bees do. We were never going to expand beyond the two hives anyway and being able to expand the population of healthy bees and help fellow beekeepers in the process works for us. We are also not looking to harvest honey. We mostly want to make sure they have enough to get to next season. If we eventually get a little honey, maybe next year, that would be a nice bonus. We are more into it for the pollination thing.

    Chuck

    Reply
  3. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Chuck,

    When you guys first starting posting pictures of your hives I thought that the way your hives were growing would be normative; it’s not. Your hives are the strongest and healthiest I’ve seen from any of the first year beekeepers I’m following!

    Thank you both for being such good beekeepers and allowing me to reap a small portion of the benefits of such good stewardship of your bees.

    Frank

    Reply
  4. chuck Avatar
    chuck

    Frank,

    Thanks for the kind words. We don’t know if it is good stewardship or luck or probably a combination? We were fortunate to get early packages with good numbers of healthy bees, meaning very few dead on arrival. Then the forage came hard and fast, mostly in the form of tulip poplars in abundance around the hives.

    We did not “manage” them in any way other than feeding them until they quit taking the sugar syrup. Kitty kept track of the progress through the windows and that was it. We have yet to lift the first bar of comb.

    Who knows?

    Hope they prosper for you now.

    Chuck

    Reply

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