Friday afternoon, I had a migraine (ocular, so not really painful, just can't see) so I went in and took a nap. An hour or so later I was awakened by, "Hon, we have a swarm."
me: "Are you sure?"
hubby: "Yes."
me: "The one we got Tuesday?'
hubby: "Nope."
me: "!@#$%"
It can't be easy, can it? Huge swarm, from our own carniolan hive, has wrapped its self around a t-post in tall grass... oh, and there's barbed wire in there too.
I KNEW that carniolans were supposed to build up fast in the spring and they were prone to swarming. I really did know this. We are running 8 frame hives, that one had 3 deep brood boxes - one would think plenty of room - but apparently not. Our last hive check was 13 days previous, we try and go in between 10 and 14 days. Today was the first nice day in that range, and we knew we needed to go in tomorrow, but they beat us to it. Hannah was able to get most of the bees (and we were pretty sure the queen - lots of fanning) into a hive box.
Went out an hour later to check on the box, nope, half the swarm was back on the t-post! More scooping and brushing and the bees were fanning the box again, closed it up and called it good.
Went out the next morning and they were all in the box, hooray!
We needed a few things before we hived the swarm, so Charlie and I headed off to our friendly local bee supplier. About ten minutes later we received a call from Hannah, the bees swarmed again. Sigh, turned the car around, sure enough, the box was empty and the swarm had moved to a tree along our property line but on the neighbor's side. We drove over to the neighbor's but no one was home, so we left a note. Sadly the swarm left before we heard back from out neighbors. Lesson learned; watch those carniolans and make sure they have plenty of space, plus some.
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