I do this every year so decided to include it in my beekeeping tips on YouTube and to share it here:
Linda's Bees
This is the tale that began in 2006 in my first year of beekeeping in Atlanta, GA. ...there's still so much to learn.
Welcome - Explore my Blog
I began this blog to chronicle my beekeeping experiences. I have read lots of beekeeping books, but nothing takes the place of either hands-on experience with an experienced beekeeper or good pictures of the process. I want people to have a clearer picture of what to expect in their beekeeping so I post pictures and write about my beekeeping saga here.Master Beekeeper Enjoy with me as I learn and grow as a beekeeper.
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Sunday, March 24, 2024
Thursday, March 21, 2024
Swarm Lure Attracts HUGE Swarm
Yesterday I came home from the mountains around 4 PM. I was sitting in my den when I felt bored and thought I'll do this same work out on my deck. I stepped outside into a whirling mass of bees. A swarm was moving into my top bar hive.
Last week, I was sure a swarm had already moved in because there were so many bees flying in and out of the hive. I had actually thought whatever moved in was a secondary swarm because I had not seen any pollen coming into the hive, which would mean there was a laying queen. I even thought they were there overnight, but clearly I was wrong.
The bees I had been seeing were just hundreds of scout bees, responding to my old equipment and the swarm lure I had rubbed on the upper edge of the entry and on some top bars inside.
The swirling bees yesterday were part of the enormous swarm that had been investigating the hive for a couple of weeks. I taped the whole hour and fifteen minutes that it took for the thousands of bees to move into the hive, but I've shortened it to about ten minutes for you to see how amazing it was.
Monday, March 18, 2024
Beekeeping Tips for Spring: Making and Using Swarm Lure
We appear to have begun an enthusiastic and intense swarm season in Atlanta. In most of the country, this month or in the next couple of months, swarm season will begin.
I've been posting some videos on my YouTube channel that might be helpful in getting ready for spring.
One of the best ways to get free bees is to bait an old hive with swarm lure. Every year hives are driven to swarm because it is the evolutionary push for the beehive as an organism to split into two hives. Previous to swarming (when the old queen will leave with about half the hive - taking 75% bees under two weeks old) scout bees look for a new home.
It's just like when humans move. When I moved during the pandemic, I looked at lots of houses that were for sale before I found the house I moved into in 2021. Bees are just the same. They send out scouts to find the right sized place for the swarm to move into and start a new life.
Every year, old equipment in my yard is scouted by bees looking for a new home. And almost 100% of the years, bees move into the old equipment. Truly these are free bees. I didn't lift a finger to help. Just provided the empty space.
I have a large top bar hive that was in my daughter's yard, empty of bees. They swarmed several times last year and failed to make a new queen and dwindled away. I moved it into my yard into a great sunny place and as soon as any semblance of warm weather began in Atlanta, the scouts began to visit. Last Tuesday (March 12) a swarm moved into the top bar with no effort from me.
If you want to up the chances of a swarm moving into old equipment, then bait your hive with swarm lure. Here is a video I posted on YouTube last week of how to do just that - make your own very effective swarm lure.
Saturday, January 20, 2024
Metro Atlanta Beekeepers Short Course is a Week from Today
If you live in the Metro Atlanta area and have wanted to become a beekeeper, the best short course you can possibly imagine is happening next Saturday, the 27th at Peachtree Road Methodist Church in Buckhead. Registration is still open. Just click here.
Wednesday, November 29, 2023
Rosalyn Carter and the Bees
As Rosalyn Carter's memorial service was held in Atlanta yesterday, I was reminded of how I was lucky enough to meet her through beekeeping. My friend Curt Barrett and I were volunteering for the butterfly festival at the Carter Center in Atlanta, representing the Metro Atlanta Beekeepers.
Mrs. Carter was there to attend the festival and to dedicate a butterfly trail. As part of the festivities, she participated in the inspection of a beehive. I helped her with her gloves, always too big for women's hands in those days (2016).
Monday, March 13, 2023
Secondary Swarm Saturday, March 11, 2023
I'm sure it's not a national holiday, but it was a day of celebration for me that both started and ended with secondary swarms.
I was still in my pjs when I got a call from a beekeeper who belongs to my local club, Metro Atlanta Beekeepers. She has two hives and no extra equipment and her hive had swarmed. She asked if I would like the swarm. I was THRILLED to go and get it; threw on my clothes and was out the door. Like most beekeepers at this time of year, my swarm collection gear is always in my car so I can literally jump in and head out, as long as I have put on my own clothes!
She had made a split from her largest hive and there was good evidence that it had swarmed as well. Then a few days later she sees this little teardrop of bees in the tree above her hives:
Thursday, March 02, 2023
A Very Bee Week So Far
It's only Wednesday, but I've been very bee-sy. On Saturday I discovered my community garden hives were both gone...the first died before winter and the second was without a queen (who had been there two weeks ago) and was in terrible shape. I didn't open the hive two weeks ago - just lifted up the top and took off the feeder. The bees were flying in with pollen and I felt pretty sure that we were coming out of winter fine. Then I did an inspection on Sunday and found them broodless and queenless with a tiny diminishing population.
These are teaching hives and the MABA philosophy is that our swarm hotline will supply swarm calls to the teaching hives first until we have two hives for teaching. I called the swarm commander, Dave, and he called me so quickly the very next day, on Sunday, with a swarm ten minutes from my house. I got it in the early afternoon.
I installed that swarm at the community garden with a queen excluder to keep the bees there. Swarms have often left that garden after being hived - maybe they don't like the GA Power electrical lines - so now I routinely put a queen "includer" between the bottom of the bottom box and the entrance, keeping the queen (and unfortunately the drones) in the hive until I remove it.
Monday I was called for another swarm, literally six minutes from my house. It was on a mailbox and much more difficult to collect. I was there for over an hour, coaxing the bees onto frames of old comb. When most of the bees were in the nuc box, I left the box propped slightly open and went home to get the queen excluder (which I have forgotten - I always forget something!).
I took those bees to the community garden and installed them in a second hive and put a queen "includer" on that hive.
Yesterday, Tuesday, in my own yard, I did a walkaway split with my one and only hive in my yard. It was boiling over with bees and I was afraid they were already making swarm plans. It was an old hive that I had neglected when I moved into this house in 2021 and the brood boxes were full of cross comb. The original hive died and before I could clean it out, a swarm moved in while I watched! So this new occupant is dealing with crossed comb and I can't inspect the brood boxes. So a walkaway split is the ideal way to manage this. I could see looking between the frames that there was brood and hopefully eggs in both boxes. Because I am not sure about this, I am trying an experiment.
I used a double screened board and did the even split but kept the boxes stacked on each other with the double screened board between what is now two hives. If one of the halves does not have a queen in three weeks, I'll recombine them.
The red arrow (above) points to the Snelgrove or double screened board between the two colonies. The center of the board has a movable entrance, open on the upper side to allow bees from the upper colony to have an entrance.
Then I drove over to the community garden (20 minutes there and 20 minutes back) and removed the queen includer from each of the hives. There were still bees at the queenless hive - appearing to protect the entrances so I know they weren't robbers - but what are they doing there?
I hadn't been back at home five minutes when my phone rang. It was the beekeeping teacher at SPARK where there is a hive of bees. They had had an "incident" in which a teacher was stung. I haven't been in that hive this year, so I got back in the car and drove 20 minutes to the school. There I found a healthy hive, boiling over with bees with not a queen cell in sight. There were, however, plenty of eggs in the brood frames.
So to change the atmosphere over there, Whitney (the new beekeeping teacher) and I made an even split into the second empty hive on the school rooftop. The bees will be calmer, will be distracted by the need for one half of the split to make a queen, and they are not likely to swarm.
Needless to say, when I drove home 20 minutes in the Atlanta 5:00 traffic, I was bee-exhausted and truly tired from four solid days of Bee-Ing!
A Swarm on a Mailbox - Never an Easy Collection
On Monday, I was called to collect a swarm from a mailbox in a neighborhood near mine. It's never easy to collect a swarm from an unmoving landing spot. Some difficult ones I've had in the past included a swarm on a I-beam; a swarm on a chain link fence; and a swarm on a bench. I don't ever like being violent with bees but a gentle shake into a collection box is much easier than trying to seduce the bees away from the solid item they've chosen to land on.
This mailbox, while quite accessible, was a challenge. I took a nuc box filled with drawn comb frames to use to gather the bees. I haven't done this before and it wasn't easy but as time passed (a lot of time - I was there over an hour!) I got better at sort of scooting the drawn frame up under the bees, sliding from the bottom up. In the very end, I had to brush the last of the bees into a scoop but that probably amounted to only about three hundred or so bees.
Then when I arrived at the community garden to install the hive, I used a method I saw on a Cotswold, England beekeeper's YouTube channel. It was a miracle to watch the bees march into the hive. They looked like a school of fish made of bees as they flowed into the entrance.