Swarm Out of Reach

[The15thMember]

Well my luck finally ran out (after 5 years!), and I had a hive swarm and land up too far in a tree for me to reach them with a ladder.  I'm surprised they swarmed right now, because we are having on and off rain that is due to continue all day.  It took about 10 minutes for them to even decide where to settle because of the weather.  They picked the trunk of an old dogwood about 15-20 ft. off the ground, and they aren't hanging nicely, they are spread all down the trunk trying to stay out of the weather.  I'm thinking the rain may force a decision out of them quickly, so I'm going to set up a hive sort of like a swarm trap and see if they pick it.  Any other ideas about how to get them?  I'll post a picture of where they are when/if it stops raining. 

[The15thMember]

Here's some pictures.

[Ben Framed]

You might try this good idea posted recently by beesnweeds. He is always coming up with good stuff!

It?s like an Easter Egg hunt.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Instead of hoping you can find and catch your swarms you can toss a rope over the branch and pull up a Russian scion or an old brood frame with a roof on it.  That way you can just lower them into a box.

[The15thMember]

I did see that on the other thread, but the trouble is I don't have a nuc box (I know, I know, I should really get one).  This tree also doesn't really have a good place to toss a rope over that I would trust it to hold. 

[Ben Framed]

Maybe you can try using a empty brood frame? Beach nothing? And you might get lucky :-). But you did mention the rain so I don?t know if you can catch it after the rain ends?

[The15thMember]

Maybe you can try using an empty brood frame? Beats nothing? And you might get lucky :-)

Maybe.  It might be worth a shot, especially if they end up being stuck up there all day in the rain.  Perhaps they'll become more desperate if they end up spending the night.  If the rain stops, I'll get out my binoculars and try and see if they are debating locations yet. 

[The15thMember]

I set up one medium in the apiary, bated with dark comb and LGO, and another one on top of the buck barn, which is about 4-5 feet off the ground and a decent ways away from the bee yard.  Maybe I'll get lucky and they'll pick one of those options.  It was really raining for about an hour, but it seems to have stopped now, so I'll go see if they are discussing things yet.   

[The15thMember]

No dancing that I could see.  The outer mantle of bees is in umbrella mode, everyone stationary with their wings open, and there are no more than five scouts flying around the cluster.  The rain has picked up again.  Poor girls, this whole endeavor was just poorly planned.     

[The15thMember]

The rain finally stopped, and if I'm reading the dances correctly, they found the box I put in the buck pen, but they aren't that into it, so we'll see. 

[Terri Yaki]

The rain finally stopped, and if I'm reading the dances correctly, they found the box I put in the buck pen, but they aren't that into it, so we'll see. 

What do you see in the dances that give an indication?

[Salvo]

Hi 15,

Fake OJ and VODKA!

https://youtu.be/lHnndSxicGo

Keep beating that drum!

Sal

[The15thMember]

What do you see in the dances that give an indication?

So the angle of the dance with respect to the vertical denotes the angle of the site with respect to the sun, the duration of the dance run indicates the distance, and the severity of the waggle indicates how excited the bee is about the prospective location.  When I was watching them, I saw only one dancer, and she was indicating a location that seemed close to where I put this hive, but her waggle was pretty meh.  I walked down into the pasture a little ways to look at the trap to see if there were any scouts at it.  I didn't see any, and then I rescued one of our new baby goats who had accidentally escaped from his mom's pen.  All that took about 5 minutes or so, and when I got back up to the swarm, that original bee wasn't dancing any more, and the duration of the entire dance is also an indicator for swarm scouts.  Another bee had picked up the dance though, which was a good sign, but she also didn't seem overly excited about it based on her waggle.  It's pouring again, and now thundering, so I'm sure the debaters have taken a recess again.   

Hi 15,

Fake OJ and VODKA!

https://youtu.be/lHnndSxicGo

Keep beating that drum!

Sal

This actually would have been a perfect opportunity to test tanging, since they weren't keen to sit down anywhere.  I forgot about it in the moment unfortunately.  It was actually raining though, and that didn't stop them, so . . . . 

[Ben Framed]

Terri, Van From Arkansas (Mr Van) wrote a piece explaining the waggle dance. I miss him posting here very much! He had great insight and was a great mentor to both Reagan and I, as well as many others!
I am placing the link below where he explained the dance for your benefit as well as others who might be interested.


https://beemaster.com/forum/index.php?topic=51143.msg451249#msg451249

[BeeMaster2]

Reagan,
I recommend that you put a frame of brood in the swarm trap closest to the hive. Just make sure it doesn?t have a queen on it. That is your best chance of catching them.
Jim Altmiller

[The15thMember]

Reagan,
I recommend that you put a frame of brood in the swarm trap closest to the hive. Just make sure it doesn?t have a queen on it. That is your best chance of catching them.
Jim Altmiller

Thanks, I can try that tomorrow.  It was too rainy to open a hive today. 

[cao]

I've got an extendable painter's pole with a bucket attached to reach the high ones.  I have also tied a frame of old comb on the end and stuck it in the swarm to get them.

[The15thMember]

I've got an extendable painter's pole with a bucket attached to reach the high ones.

That sounds like a great tool for something like this.  If it keeps happening, that might be a good investment.

I have also tied a frame of old comb on the end and stuck it in the swarm to get them.

They are taking quite a beating out there right now, it's raining hard and it's pretty windy, so I imagine they will be pretty worn out by morning.  I have this sense, which may or may not be accurate, that they may be more keen to latch onto something like that when they are more desperate, so I will probably try this first tomorrow. 

[Ben Framed]

No one has mentioned a bee vac yet on this topic.

I like my bee vac, but this type of swarm is where I 'love' my bee vac...

Phillip

[Michael Bush]

Set up a prime swarm trap at the base of the tree.  An old box if you have one.  Old brood comb, if you have it.  Some lemongrass oil.  Four drops inside.  8 or so around the entrance.  Some QMP if you have it (Queen juice or Psuedoqueen) if you can get it.  This works more than half the time especially if they haven't already started homing in on a location.

[Terri Yaki]

4 and 8? I need to up my game.

[Ben Framed]

If it's true that honey a bee has the sense of smell that is 500 times stronger than a bloodhound, then a little will go a long way.

[The15thMember]

If it's true that honey a bee has the sense of smell that is 500 times stronger than a bloodhound, then a little will go a long way.

I don't think that number is accurate.  Bloodhounds have 1000x the sense of smell of humans, and the number that I usually see quoted for honey bees is 100x stronger than humans.  A quick check in Mark Winston's book reveals that bees are not 100x more sensitive to odors across the board, only to smells relevant to them, florals and pheromones and the like, and that is only workers.  Queens' sense of smell is roughly the same as a person.  He doesn't mention drones, but I'd be curious to know their stats.

Anywho, we got managed to get the swarm down.  They were positioned differently this morning, with most of the cluster dangling over the ground, so my sister got out the pole saw and used that to shake them down onto a tarp, where I scooped them up into a hive.  It went pretty well, considering it was only in the low 50's F (low teens C), and partway through the process it became extremely windy and started raining.  (We've been having this weird weather for the past two days, where one minute it's storming and the next it's sunny, and we just mistimed our window a little bit.)  I'm pretty sure we got the queen, since there was a good bit of fanning at the entrance, and I'm really glad we got them down, because it was storming so badly after we went in that I think they would have been blown down from the tree.  I left the hive nearby to hopefully pick up as many stragglers as possible, since many bees were scattered around in the wind when we were knocking them down, but we did manage to get the overwhelming majority of them in the box.           

[Ben Framed]

Congratulations on retrieving the swarm! That is a good thing even though the weather timing was a little off..  At least you have them and the queen all snug! Its good that sister helps! Does she have, or is she interested in having her own hives as well or is yours good enough? Is this the Sister which has the goats?

You may very well be right Reagan about the strength of the sense of smell of bees and bloodhounds.  I read that somewhere but couldn't pinpoint where.  That is why I said "If it's true that honey a bee has the sense of smell that is 500 times stronger than a bloodhound, then a little will go a long way." I will say that even if a bee can only smell scents 100 times better than humans then, I would think it is still safe to say, a little will go a long way.. It smells pretty strong to me, I could not imagine being able to smell it times 100 stronger and sticking my head into cardboard box with it inside!
  

Phillip

[The15thMember]

Its good that sister helps! Does she have, or is she interested in having her own hives as well or is yours good enough? Is this the Sister which has the goats?

Yes, this is Haley, who has the goats, and no, she has no interest in having hives of her own.  She's not scared of bees, but she doesn't have any particular interest in them.  My mom helped too actually, she was mostly just helping to wrangle the tarp in the wind.  She is scared of bees, and she got stung unfortunately.  She doesn't dislike the bees, but she's quick to panic sometimes, and then she ends up getting stung. 

Congratulations on retrieving the swarm! That is a good thing even though the weather timing was a little off..  At least you have them and the queen all snug!

I hope so.  I went out during a break in the weather and there are good number of bees back on the tree, but about half of them seem to still be in the box, so hopefully once it warms up, the bees in the hive will get to really fanning and let the ones on the tree know where to go.  My concern is that the opposite may happen, once it warms up the bees in the box may just go back to the tree, if I'm wrong about the queen.  It's so cold now that I doubt anyone's going to move until tomorrow.  It should be a nice day tomorrow, so we'll really know then if we've got them or not. 

I will say that even if a bee can only smell scents 100 times better than humans then, I would think it is still safe to say, a little will go a long way.. It smells pretty strong to me, I could not imagine being able to smell it times 100 stronger and sticking my head into cardboard box with it inside!
  

 
I know, that stuff is potent!  I keep all my essential oils in a plastic bin, and honestly, the bin smells mostly like lemongrass.  It's certainly one of the most volatile and strong-smelling oils. 

[Ben Framed]

She is scared of bees, and she got stung unfortunately.

Now that is a good mom! Even though she is scared she will still hang in there and take a sting to help her family! Good for Mom!

[The15thMember]

Yeah, she's the best!    She tries to remember to be calm, and she does really think the bees are interesting, but they just get the best of her sometimes. 

[The15thMember]

Well they didn't stick.  Most of them were back on the tree yesterday.  While Haley and I were debating what we wanted to try next, the same hive cast another swarm.  The new swarm seemed kind of confused by the fact that there was a swarm on the tree already, and they hovered around them for a few minutes before landing right next to them.  We decided at that point to just cut to the top of the tree off and see if we could get them that way.  We staked a tarp down on the ground this time, and obviously both swarms got mixed together pretty indiscriminately when they fell down.  We managed to get most of them into a bin, but when I went and dumped the bin into a hive I had set up, a LOT of bees flew right back to the tree and perched just below where we'd made the cut.  I had a robbing screen on the hive, so I just locked in the bees that hadn't flown, and then I went into their mother queen's hive and got a frame of open brood for them.  We were going to try again to get the rest of the bees down, but they didn't settle nicely and seemed kind of agitated and were moving around on the tree a lot, so we decided to break for lunch and reassess the situation later.  Well, after lunch the swarm seemed a lot smaller, and I noticed that the hive they had issued from was fanning like crazy at the entrance, the whole apiary smelled like Nasanov pheromone.  I inspected a couple of hives, and by the time I was done, there was only a grapefruit sized clump of bees left on the tree.  Then this morning, the hive swarmed again, so I guess they just called them back to try again the next day.  I opened up the entrance on the hive that had been locked up and the bees in there didn't run for the hills when I did so, and some started orienting, so maybe there is a queen in there, or at least the brood has made enough of them stick.  We'll see.  I left a bait hive nearby to see if the swarm is interested in it, but I don't have the time to mess around with them anymore today.  Maybe tomorrow if they are still there.     

[Bill Murray]

Member once you get them hived put a frame of open brood in. 99.5% chance they wont leave it.

[cao]

I have noticed that more often than not that when I have a swarm that is really hard to get in a box that there is virgin queen(s) involved.  If it is the primary swarm with the old queen, she seems ready to get in a box and start getting back to doing her queenly duties.  If it is a secondary swarm or a primary swarm with a tag-a-long virgin, it seems that no one seems to know exactly what to do and so they don't just march right into the box.  And if is a secondary swarm with multiple virgins, it is like trying to herd a bunch of cats.

[The15thMember]

And if is a secondary swarm with multiple virgins, it is like trying to herd a bunch of cats.

That is basically what this has felt like, and there is definitely more than one virgin involved here, since there were two swarms, and the queen mother was split into another hive.  They are still on the tree this morning, but they are discussing the bait hive, so at this point, I think I'll just see if they'll decide for themselves and make it easy for me.  Then maybe we'll cut more of the tree off to try and prevent another swarm from landing at the same spot in the future.  My sister was thinking about removing some more branches anyway because she is going to plant some fruit trees nearby and doesn't want them shaded.   

[The15thMember]

Welp, they're gone.  I'm not surprised.  I was busy this morning, but was thinking about maybe taking another crack at getting them down after lunch.  Just before lunch I took a look at them through binoculars and there was a lot of enthusiastic dancing about a location far to the northeast, several miles at least.  When I went back out after lunch, they were gone.  On the bright side, the group that I managed to hive seems to have decided to stay put, since they were doing normal hive work this morning, like fanning and taking out trash.  I'll leave them alone until the weekend probably, and then I'll check and see how many are in there.