Swarm in a storm isn't the norm...

Pinhole Image of the bees at College Ave. made with Montessori kids documenting their farm project

My swarm experience this year has been interesting so far. I've gone out on four calls already, which -- compared to my notes from last year -- is about a month early. Three calls concerned bees in very close proximity to massive oak trees, and you could still see the bees were occupying two of the oaks.

The strange thing about these early swarms is that once on site I would find one large cluster and two or three smaller clusters close by, obviously from the same original colony. I find that generally <  +/-  > the initial swarm doesn't fly too far from the mother hive. If you have ever seen it in your own apiary, the bees don't go farther than about 30-50', so I'm confident they were all from the same family. The first swarms were from just west of the old Red Hen Cantina in North Napa. I worked them with Michael Lauher from Connolly Ranch. We both worked for days trying to get the bees to go into a nuc box that had drawn comb, some pollen, a little capped honey, and nectar. In my experience if you offer a new swarm drawn comb,let alone all the other goodies, they'll march right in to their new home, no banging or sweeping needed. These girls wouldn't go in the box to save their lives, literally it was freezing and raining and they still held up outside on the fence post. We covered them in a plastic shelter thinking they'd move into a warm dry hive with a lil' yum yum over night. To both our surprise the next morning, coffee in hand, not only did they not take us up on "leaving the light on for them" but most of the bees had moved out. Because the bees were so entwined on the fence post with chicken wire it wasn't an option to brush them, but banging them was, and I did, with muscle truck force. I hit the top of the fence post with a 4x4 knocking about 80% directly onto the landing board of the hive. We went home that night sure we had 'em. Funny how one should never second guess a bee, since the next morning most the bees were still there sitting on the landing board. At that point I figured the best, most gentle way to get the bees would be to rest a frame of drawn comb directly on the cluster and see if they'd jump on that, and they did.... slowly. We stacked as many frames of drawn comb around the post, covered the bees back up because it was still raining and went home, less confident than the night before.

If you're wondering about where I’m talking about, stop sometime and look out behind the old Red Hen (the now defunct Ziare) compound in North Napa towards the western hills. You'll see that monster Valley Oak, that’s the one I’m talking about here. Because of the way they kept swarming, my guess is that there must be a massive colony way up in the oak. I made the mistake of keeping two of the three clusters separate on this rescue. Then we found that the third cluster was sans queen. We initially saw the queen in the biggest swarm and married it with the closest cluster w/o a problem or fighting. In retrospect, we should have put all three clusters in the area together in the same hive. I think a portion of the mother colony in the oak tree must have absconded. Why...? I don’t know. After Serge’s bee tree lecture at the 2010 Bee Symposium last week, I’m speculating that the above average precipitation we had this spring may be the culprit. But then again you know what they say about assuming....

Another thing that leads me to believe that the bees just buggered off is that they left with out any provisions. From the get-go the bees were really aggressive. Not just the ol’ "we don’t want you sticking your hand in our cluster" aggressive, but  really assertive about their space. Basically acting like a “dry swarm”, or a swarm that has been sitting without finding a new home too long and used up a lot of their food stores. They tend to get a little grumpy. The two colonies we married together with the queen are now residing at Connolly Ranch doing fabulously. It’s been about 2 or 3 weeks and the bees are booming. The queenless colony I took upvalley and offered them a fresh frame of brood at David Abreu’s Madrona Ranch Apiary,  and they have since created their own queen. It’s amazing how well the bees can adapt if you offer them all the necessities to grow. The colony I married the queenless hive to had a very difficult winter. Their queen was failing and the colony was suffering from that. The nice thing was that because the colony didn’t have a ton of brood there was plenty of leftover honey, and more importantly for raising queens, an abundance of  mixed floral pollen. I also offered them a pollen patty just to be sure they had more than enough pollen. I am curious to see how the genetics shake out on this one. The queen is a beautiful banded blonde.

 The second swarm I collected with Jason Grace was out on West Zinfandel Lane in St. Helena. It too was in an old growth oak grove and there was one main cluster and two smaller groupings of bees. In this case, because it was a call on the fly we didn’t have all the gear we needed to keep the swarms separate. Initially we captured them individually but ended up marrying them all together in two medium supers at the College Ave. Apiary. They were also very hard line and not particularly grateful for their new home. I stopped counting but I’m sure I got stung a half dozen times. After my first experience with the Red Hen swarm I quickly hit them with a little (quart) of  biodynamic  1:1 sugar water (I’ve been calling it Rudy juice) and a fat pollen patty. Today when I checked on them they hadn’t really chilled out much but they ate and stored up a lot of the pollen and drank all the BD 1:1. There is a beautiful jet black queen that is laying uniformly and they are starting to build a their own wax. 

The third swarm I picked up, again with Michael, was out on Bell Ave. off Monticello. It too came from an oak tree but this time it appeared more like a swarm. Clustered under a red Napa Register paper box, the bees were much more calm, not as jumpy, and much easier to work with. At one point I even tried using an electric drill right next to them with little or no objection. I offered them the same BD 1:1 pollen smorgie as the Zinfandel bees -- they ate less pollen but  consumed more 1:1. Interestingly enough they have a virgin queen, so very European...

I’m doing my best to be more observant, and through that become a better beekeeper. Mark Griffin said it best.. “It’s the year of more eyes and less hands”.

Trying to keep 'em dry

Zero interest in going in the box

Hanging on the post sheltered by the rain

Post hangin'

Wire hangin'

Overview

Small swarm in a tree

Bees in a bucket

Michael on bucket patrol

Stuck to the lid

Splitty waiting to transport bees

West Zinfandel cluster in a bush

 

College Ave. Apiary with newly planted Bottlebrush

 David Abreu’s Madrona Ranch Apiary

Queen from West Zinfandel swarm

Meg went to Vegas so I was rollin' with the bees in the benzo

 

Even the bees love the Napa Register

 

Thinking we'd unscrew the box - but didn't need to

 

Gary Hall called me on this swarm. Great guy, really into the bees.

 

Taking a break from bees on our Northern Empire Brewery Bike Tour.

Check out the seed packet Micheal found at Beekind 

 

 

Comments

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