Bees swarmed, caught them, need advice

[dprater]

What a sight this morning. Bees swarmed and landing close by on my muscadines. Put them in a 8 frame medium super with one frame of honey and one frame of pollen and some brood on it from the hive they left. The other frames were partly drown out. I am feeding them and they have stayed for 2 hrs now.

I have the reducer to the largest entrance should I close off the entrance for a short time or leave it as is.

What a exciting morning I've had. Hope they stay!!!

Danny

[Intheswamp]

Yelp, a swarm is indeed a pretty sight...kind of a Catch-22 when it's from your own hive, though. :)  I'm very familiar with that scenario. :-\

I would not block the entrance.  You've got it opened to roughly a 4" opening?  I don't even know if I would reduce it that much.  Sounds like you have things pretty well taken care of...time will tell.  This is my first year and had multiple swarms that I had to deal with.  One swarm swarmed twice...the second time it stayed put.  Time will tell, especially the next day or two.  In my opinion, it's up to the bees now. ;)

ETA:  How are you feeding them?  Baggies, jars, top-feeder, boardman,...??? I don't know how your honey flow is but it's basically a time of dearth down here with very little sources of nectar....beware of robbing...if robbing starts you may indeed need to close it up for a while or if nothing else reduce the entrance down to the smallest notch.

Best wishes,
Ed

[AllenF]

Ya, reduce it down now this time of the year. 

[dprater]

Thanks-
I'm using quart jar feeders. I talked to the person that I got the bees from and she suggested
I close them up for today and move them to 100% shade, then tomorrow afternoon move them back to the place I will be keeping the bees and open them but leave the reducer in.

Thanks for replys and any suggestion will be appreciated. First year just too much fun!!

Here a pic

[Intheswamp]

Putting the hive in the shade while you have them closed up makes sense, but I think with the brood and the other creature comforts that you've given them I think they'll hunker down there.  Bees will be bees, though. :)

Be careful feeding and don't over do it.  I would watch and make sure they don't back-fill the comb and make the hive honeybound.  I'm living proof that it'll make them swarm.  :-\

Best wishes,
Ed

[AliciaH]

IMHO, the basic recipe for keeping a swarm is brood and food, which you have provided.  I can't speak to every situation, but I have found it helpful to reduce the entrance when trying to ground a hive because I am usually feeding them when I am not feeding the rest of the apiary.  

Be careful of moving the hive too much and too fast.  I wouldn't move the hive until it looks like they've accepted their new hive and the queen is laying and providing her own larvae, then I would do it the old fashioned way and slowly move it to where I want it on a permanent basis.  

[GLOCK]

Swarms are great this was my first year that my hives made it thought winter and all 3 swarmed and i think i got them all 5 in total and before this year i never seen a swarm but i sure did have fun .
And just yesterday i had a swarm i hived on may 2ND  swarm i know it was going to swarm because i was in the hive 10 day ago and i seen swarm cells why i don't know they had room and like i said the hive was only 60 day old and i had took 3 frames of brood out over a month 
period  to make a split  and one with a queen cell on it  i took 10 days ago to see if i could raise a queen and today i checked on that nuc and theres a queen so now she needs to start laying bet she does so there was room in the hive . Healthy hive but i was in it a lot over the last 60 days.
But anyways i caught the swarm and it's in it's own hive now. What a great year so far for growth for me i went from 3 hives to`4 splits 6 swarms  3 last year hives and 3 nucs i bought in may totaling 16 hives. Things are booming what a great hobby. :-D

[L Daxon]

You might want to put a queen excluder between the entrance and the bottom of the brood box for a few days to a week.  If the queen can't leave, the rest of the bees won't either.  After a few days they will get used to the place and she will start laying and you can take the excluder off.  With the queen excluder on you don't really need to reduce the entrance, especially in this heat.

[dprater]

Well here is my update. I keep them in the shade and closed up from 8 am Saturday till 8 pm Sunday. About 1 hr before dark I moved them to there permanent spot (If they stay  :))  next to the hive they left from but turned it 90* and also put a branch in front of the entrance.
Here is something else I did and hope it was a good move. I took two more frames with honey and some brood out of the old hive and put it in another medium supper. So I have two 8 frame mediums with new foundation except for a total of 4 frames of brood and honey.

A few bees came out slowly and flew around close to the hive, some made circles 20 ft high and came back to the hive. By this time its pretty dark.

Should I keep feeding them of just wait and check in a few days?        Thanks Danny

[Intheswamp]

<snip> What a great year so far for growth for me i went from 3 hives to`4 splits 6 swarms  3 last year hives and 3 nucs i bought in may totaling 16 hives. Things are booming what a great hobby. :-D

Sounds like you're getting quiet a yard going!  Out of curiosity, how is your honey crop looking?

Best wishes,
Ed

[Intheswamp]

<snip>

A few bees came out slowly and flew around close to the hive, some made circles 20 ft high and came back to the hive. By this time its pretty dark.

Should I keep feeding them of just wait and check in a few days?        Thanks Danny

Oooh, bees in the dark...eerie!!!!  I was mowing the grass the other night and was cutting around the hives.  I use a red hiking headlight when I do that.  I made two rounds around "hive row" when I looked at one of the hives had emptied out and completely covered the three medium supers making up the hive.  About that time I found a bee crawling on my leg.  Not being able to see except by the dim red light I did the manly things and hightailed it out of there!!!!!!  :-D

I would feed them a quart and then give them a couple of days of no feed and see how the comb situation looks.  You have a limited amount of comb area for the queen to lay in and you don't want them filling it with sugar water.  There again, you want them building comb and they need the feeding to encourage that.  Kinda of that ol' Catch-22...danged if you do and danged if you don't!!!  Just keep an eye on them...if they use the sugar syrup to build a good bit of new comb then keep the syrup on them as they'll be providing enough laying territory for the queen...if they're quickly filling it up with syrup then hold the feed off for a while.  When they've got a good bit of the next to the outer frames switch those frames with the outer frames so they will be drawn out...then add another super.

Ed (a rank newbee so remember the grain of salt!)