What a crazy week it has been already. Monday (yesterday) John was off work due to lack of cases, but did have to stay the night before. After I dropped Ash off at school, I went to the Wal-Mart parking lot to drop off a bag of recyclables, and saw John arriving to Wal-Mart to look for an ax and another gas can. Allie and I ended up going in with him, although we couldn't find either thing he needed there. So, off to Lowe's we went. That trip was successful, and Allie and I headed home while John filled up the new gas cans (he found two) and our original two. $70 later he was on his way home. Sheesh! At least it's tax deductible since it is for the farm!
He fired up the smoker to put two slabs of rib and a pork butt on, while Allie and I had "fun" in the sandbox. She had fun. I worked on pulling up the nasty layering material that was all messed up and re-smoothing the sand. For those of you who don't know, I really can't stand sandboxes! I could count on one hand the number of times Ash played in one until we moved here last year! Anyhoo - I have loosened up a lot with Allie - imagine that, second kid syndrome.
We ate lunch and I got Allie down for her nap and then raked up grass clippings - a new experiment with my new rake from our Lowe's trip. John drove the 4-wheeler for me with the cart attached, and as the cart got full he would haul it down and dump it in the "holler" as we country people call it, LMAO! Then, John was such a good husband and helped me steam the horrible ugly wallpaper border off the master bathroom. Yay, thank you John! I am sooo glad that is gone! Before we knew it, it was 2 pm and almost time to get Ash. We decided to all go, that the smoker would be fine. So we are on our way, and John checks his cell phone for messages, and there are two! And they are both from the police department, bee swarm reports! Of course we are in my car, already on the way to get Ash and don't have time to turn around to get the truck and all the bee equipment. So he calls the dispatch back while I sign Ash out, and we drive by the first swarm which happened to be about 45 seconds from Asher's school, one road up. Sure enough, there is a swarm in a tree in the front yard. We talk to the homeowners and tell them we will be back in a little bit.
Then we have to pick up Adam (Jeff and Cathy's son) from school as Cathy is stuck out of town all week and Jeff was on call and still at the hospital. We keep Adam with us, head home, switch vehicles, load up the equipment, and all head back to the downtown swarm location. John and I suit up while the kids are in the truck, and we suck the bees into the bee vacuum. Unfortunately John had made some modifications due to not enough suction, and there was too much suction and the bees were irreparably damaged. :( Here are some pics of the swarm and John using the vacuum. The ball of bees is the swarm, that is
nothing but bees all clustered together!
We then headed to the second swarm, which was clear over in Lewisburg, maybe 30 min from our farm, and the swarm had already moved on! Bummer. We drive home, feeling disheartened for accidentally damaging the one swarm and then missing the other, and the kids are melting down in the backseat since it is already 5:40 pm and they have been cooped up, and as we are coming up the driveway Asher says, "Look, our bees!" and I look out my window and say, "Yes, Ash, those are our hives (several of our hives are along the pasture fenceline to the right of our driveway, maybe 30 yards away) ---- OH MY GOSH, SWARM! SWARM!" As John slams the brakes on. There was a massive black cloud of bees that had just swarmed from one of our own hives, and they were trying to organize and congregate on a tree right next to the driveway! We were just floored! We park the truck up at the house, and John immediately suits up to check on our hives and see which one it was. Sure enough, our strongest nuc hive, that we have only had for a month, had swarmed.
Now, for those of you who don't know as I just realized you might not know what the heck I am talking about. A swarm is when a colony, whether a beekeeper's or a wild one, gets too big for their hive, so the old queen takes half the workers and leaves. The workers that are left behind raise a new queen bee. This is nature's way of reproducing bee colonies. The swarm will alight on a tree or fencepost or whatnot and cluster together while scout bees search for a new, suitable home. Once that home is found, usually within a couple of days at the most, the entire swarm will fly en masse to the new hive site.
THANKFULLY John was able to re-capture the swarmed bees with every extension cord we had hooked up and strung down to the tree for the bee vacuum. Craziness! And of course he had to put them in a new, empty hive as the old hive they had just swarmed from will not accept them back. We knew that the nuc hives were strong, and had put a second hive body (box) on a week or so ago, but had no idea the bees had already drawn out all the frames in that hive and therefore thought, uh-oh, we're too big, need to swarm! We will have to keep a closer eye on all the hives and add the honey supers as needed. Wow!
I am sure there are a ton of other things I wanted to blog about, but I am tired and my mind is filled with bees! Haha! Oh, we actually got TWO calls today about swarms, too! But John is stuck at work and won't be home until late, late, late if at all. So we weren't able to go get them.
Also, our order of two packages of bees were supposed to be shipped on Apr 30. They must have had some delays as we still haven't received them. I tried to call but no one answered, so will try again tomorrow. If it is an option to cancel and refund our money, then that is what we will do. We just never anticipated getting so many chances to capture swarms. Not only is it a public service, but we enjoy expanding our colonies, providing the bees survive and aren't disease laden.
We now have 11 hives, with 4 packages of bees still on order, unless I can cancel two of them. We are almost out of hive space, too. John is like, where do we stop?!
Wow, so that is the bee news here. We'll see what excitement tomorrow brings! I so can not imagine moving back to a subdivision! LOL!
We then headed to the second swarm, which was clear over in Lewisburg, maybe 30 min from our farm, and the swarm had already moved on! Bummer. We drive home, feeling disheartened for accidentally damaging the one swarm and then missing the other, and the kids are melting down in the backseat since it is already 5:40 pm and they have been cooped up, and as we are coming up the driveway Asher says, "Look, our bees!" and I look out my window and say, "Yes, Ash, those are our hives (several of our hives are along the pasture fenceline to the right of our driveway, maybe 30 yards away) ---- OH MY GOSH, SWARM! SWARM!" As John slams the brakes on. There was a massive black cloud of bees that had just swarmed from one of our own hives, and they were trying to organize and congregate on a tree right next to the driveway! We were just floored! We park the truck up at the house, and John immediately suits up to check on our hives and see which one it was. Sure enough, our strongest nuc hive, that we have only had for a month, had swarmed.
Now, for those of you who don't know as I just realized you might not know what the heck I am talking about. A swarm is when a colony, whether a beekeeper's or a wild one, gets too big for their hive, so the old queen takes half the workers and leaves. The workers that are left behind raise a new queen bee. This is nature's way of reproducing bee colonies. The swarm will alight on a tree or fencepost or whatnot and cluster together while scout bees search for a new, suitable home. Once that home is found, usually within a couple of days at the most, the entire swarm will fly en masse to the new hive site.
THANKFULLY John was able to re-capture the swarmed bees with every extension cord we had hooked up and strung down to the tree for the bee vacuum. Craziness! And of course he had to put them in a new, empty hive as the old hive they had just swarmed from will not accept them back. We knew that the nuc hives were strong, and had put a second hive body (box) on a week or so ago, but had no idea the bees had already drawn out all the frames in that hive and therefore thought, uh-oh, we're too big, need to swarm! We will have to keep a closer eye on all the hives and add the honey supers as needed. Wow!
I am sure there are a ton of other things I wanted to blog about, but I am tired and my mind is filled with bees! Haha! Oh, we actually got TWO calls today about swarms, too! But John is stuck at work and won't be home until late, late, late if at all. So we weren't able to go get them.
Also, our order of two packages of bees were supposed to be shipped on Apr 30. They must have had some delays as we still haven't received them. I tried to call but no one answered, so will try again tomorrow. If it is an option to cancel and refund our money, then that is what we will do. We just never anticipated getting so many chances to capture swarms. Not only is it a public service, but we enjoy expanding our colonies, providing the bees survive and aren't disease laden.
We now have 11 hives, with 4 packages of bees still on order, unless I can cancel two of them. We are almost out of hive space, too. John is like, where do we stop?!
Wow, so that is the bee news here. We'll see what excitement tomorrow brings! I so can not imagine moving back to a subdivision! LOL!
