My parents have a few beehives on their land so a few months ago when my parents were visiting, my dad brought up a couple of swarm traps so we could try catching a local swarm of bees to start our own hive.
At the beginning of April, we decided to put the swarm traps up – one towards the back of our property, and one at the front. We followed these steps for baiting and setting the trap.
After setting up the traps in the trees, the waiting game started to see if we would actually catch anything.
Nearly everyday after that, Jershon would check the traps to see if there was any bee activity going in and out of the little openings. Nothing yet.
In the middle of May, we had about 3 straight weeks of rain so Jershon didn’t check the traps very much. Then one day (May 24th), Jershon happened to be walking by the trap at the front of our property and saw some bees going in and out. We were excited to see that we had potentially caught a swarm!
A few days later, Jershon bought a hive box kit and put it together so we would have it ready in a week or two to transfer the swarm into a real hive since the trap isn’t big enough to house them long term.
On June 1, Jershon took the trap out of the front tree and moved it to the spot where the real hive box would be going, so the bees would get used to that area.
He also took the swarm trap out of the back tree and moved it to this same front tree, just in case it was a lucky bee swarm catching tree. 🙂
During the swapping process he decided to weigh both traps to see how much heavier the trap was that had caught the swarm as opposed to the empty trap. The trap with the swarm weighed 22.6 pounds more than the empty trap. Crazy!
The next morning, Jershon saw that there were bees coming in and out of trap #2 (which was now in the front tree). He figured that maybe these were just some of the forager bees that hadn’t gotten home to the trap in time the night before and were now confused thinking that this was their same home. He figured that they would find their way to the new location or end up moving somewhere else.
We have continued to check trap #2 everyday and so far, 10 days later, there are still bees coming in and out of the entrance. We’re hopeful that perhaps we actually caught a second swarm…which seems too fast and good to be true. haha. We’ll find out when we open the box in a week or so.
By June 7, we were noticing more bees going in and out and on the outside of trap #1.
The next afternoon (June 8), Evelyn and I were outside when Evelyn yelled out, “whoa! look at the bees!” … There were now tons of bees on the outside of the trap. I texted Jershon these pictures and we decided that it was time to move the bees to their official hive… before they ended up splitting the swarm and going to find a new home that was bigger. They were getting too crowded in there.
So Jershon and I put on our beekeepers suits and got ready to move the swarm to the new hive.
It was quite the exhilarating experience. haha. It was pretty nerve wracking (for me at least) at first, having tons of bees flying around me…but at the same time logically that they couldn’t actually sting me. By the end, I was pretty used to it and felt pretty calm and safe inside my suit. haha.
Getting to see inside the trap and see what they had built over the past few weeks was really cool. Bees are amazing! It was also super crazy to see how many bees were living in that small trap. Thousands and thousands of them.
Moving the comb to the new hive frames was pretty challenging because it was so soft and fragile since it was pretty new.
We also tried to find the queen…since that’s the most important part. If the queen doesn’t make it into the new hive, it all might be over.
But for all of our searching, we never spotted her. So we’re just hoping she made the move. Only time will tell.
A small piece of comb broke off when we were transferring everything so we brought it inside to taste some of the honey. It was really good! It’s a really light color, probably because we have a lot of clover around our place.
So now, I guess we’re beekeepers. haha. We’re excited to get a good honey harvest at some point. I’m also excited to have our own beeswax for making candles.
