Hello readers,
Temperatures today were up to 27°C. As I woke up to feed the birds and check the activity near the hive my daughter came outside; I got a call for a swarmsighting.
The activity near my hive was good, but I left my bees bee and returned the call to ask some more questions before actually heading out.
Arriving at the scene I could see normal activity one would expect near a beehive. I asked the lady who called it in what she saw before I arrived and it sounded like the swarm arrived and walked into the wall of a building through some small holes. It is my opinion she saw a swarm arrive that had swarmed earlier today (or yesterday) and already went through the decision making process. This house was to be their new home.
I tracked down the owner of the house and he didn't want the bees to stay there. Breaking down the wall was not an option, so as a newbee I decided to try a trap-out!
For people that don't know what a trapout is I'll give a short summary of it :
First you seal off all but one enterance of the hive. Then you make a one way only 'exit' for the bees. They go out to forage and can't get back in so start building up at the enterance.
Those bees you lure away with another hive where you put a frame with eggs in. They'll find the eggs and start taking care of them. At this point one of two things can happen.
The first and least likely is that the queen will come out of the hive and walk into your replacement at some point.
The most likely to happen is that the queen will realise there are no bees returning to her, upon that point she'll stop laying eggs as in a dearth (if she even started - depending on how far the comb is being drawn out). Meanwhile in your replacement hive the eggs will give the queenless hive an opportunity to build out queencups around some selected eggs/larvae. (should be around 6) So basicly you do a split from your best hive and create a hive with those genetics. The queen, losing bees constantly, will decide to leave her hive at some point and search for a new home with very low chances of survival.
In the off chance the queen does go into your replacement, she'll - if already present- kill off the unborn queens in the cells or fight it out with the queen in there. (in that case you don't really know what genetic pool you're bringing home).
This entire process can take up to 9 weeks.
I'll get to it tomorrow morning and hope to report with a video!
Bob Out
