Bees in the Garden

This is an overview of my garden. Lettuce, onion, potatos, tomatoes, peppers, and oregano. I am going to plant peanuts this weekend.

Blanc Dubois grapes looking great this year. They are loaded.

Just pretty

Romane lettuce. (I think that is how you spell it)

Swarm Transfer from Bucket

Finished with the swarm transfer

Almost done with the transfer. The base is some styrofoam that I found on the side of the road. It makes a good platform for my bee hive.

Have you ever seen the inside of a swarm hive in a bucket?

Ok, I finally opened the bucket lid after much distress. The bees had built several sections of honey comb in the top lid.

Yep, there is a swarm in there.

Could that be a swarm in my bucket?

Another Swarm Caught

Today I checked on my swarm boxes and noticed that the 5 gallon bucket (see earlier post) swarm catch now has a rather large swarm in it. I am thrilled that this worked. Now you guys can replicate what I did and feel confident that you are doing the correct thing to catch a swarm.

Blackberries and Bees

I now have 5 hives on the tree farm. They are doing well. I should be getting lots of honey this year.

There is lots of blackberrys at the farm. The bees love them.
Should be good honey.

Swarm Transfer

These are the hives that I have on my tree farm. The first hive (with 3 supers) is a hive that my Dad caught this year as a swarm. It is a very strong swarm. The bees are more black in color than the other hives that have a higher percentage of of italian breed queens. The second hive is a hive that I split from my hive at my residence. It is fairly slow to grow, but steadily improving. The last hive is a hive that I caught this year on the tree farm property. They are more italian breed type bee and they are growing fairly well. I built a metal hive stand that will hold 4 hives.

This is me transfering the swarm that I caught to a full size brood hive.

This little bee seems happy with his new home. Out of the nuc home and into the full size brood home.

This is a photo of the swarm in its original nuc catch hive. It is simply a nuc hive made from scrap wood. It works fine. The bees do not seem to care about the quality of wood the hive is made.

Just a Note

This is basically a note for swarms. Here in Northeast Louisiana the bees began swarming at the last week of March. My Dad has caught 4 swarms in the past 4 days in the first week of April. Lots of activity with all of the pollen. The pine trees have released their pollen and every thing is now green with pollen. They strarted releasing the pollen during the last week of March. On April 8th, all trees are full with fresh green leaves. This year I will attempt to maintain 6 hives of my own and 4 hives of my fathers.

New Swarm

The white nuc hive is the swarm that my Dad caught for me. It is actually a quite large hive. I plan to move them to a regular brood hive later this weekend.

Another view

This is a make shift swarm catch hive made from a discarded ice chest.

Inside view of the ice chest swarm catch. The top bars are secured with melted bees wax.

This is a discarded ice chest that I found on the side of the road. I thought this could be modified to be a top bar hive/swarm catch hive. Lets see how it works.

Ok, Today I have confirmed that I have actually caught a new swarm in one of my swarm boxes. They are moving pollen in and are very active. My Dad also brought me a new swarm that he caught yesterday. This swarm is actually larger than the one I caught.