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  • From: Michael Baucom <mbaucom AT outlook.com>
  • To: Orange County Bees <ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [ocba] What To Do With A "Swarm" Of Straggler Bees
  • Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2017 16:01:02 +0000

Thanks to you and Walter for your thoughts and ideas.  Definitely very helpful feedback, and good to remember that my stragglers won't be around much longer anyway.


Everyone have a great weekend.


-Michael




From: Randall Austin <ra41717 AT gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, June 15, 2017 5:38 PM
To: Michael Baucom
Cc: John Rintoul; Orange County Beekeepers Association
Subject: Re: [ocba] What To Do With A "Swarm" Of Straggler Bees
 

Michael,

If it were me, I would just dump those stragglers in front of one of my other hives and leave it at that. They should drift into a new home.

For next time... I've found that removing all remnants of the old stand from the area usually prevents the old foragers from congregating in the old spot. As well as being a landmark, the old stand has all sorts of nice bee smells that are inviting. Get rid of that and the leftover foragers will go into Search Mode and eventually find a new hive... or not. But they won't be all pitiful in a clump.

As far as the possibilities you mentioned -- keep in mind that the straggler bees are all foragers so they are in the last week or two of their lives. They probably wouldn't make a good starter set for a new colony unless you were going to augment them with several frames of capped, emerging brood from another colony.

All that is just my two cents.... Hobby beekeeping is all about experimenting and having fun so whatever you end up doing, make a point of enjoying it.

Randall


On 6/15/2017 3:09 PM, John Rintoul wrote:
The listserv has been wonky lately. Messages have been delayed anywhere from 24 hours to a week. I have contacted Todd Walker who I think is is our listserv admin. 

In the meantime, I’ll pass your message along and we’ll see if I have any better luck.


John 
On Jun 15, 2017, at 2:58 PM, Michael Baucom <mbaucom AT outlook.com> wrote:

Hi John,

Is there any way to find out if the emails I'm sending to the OCBA listserv are getting spammed out?  Or could you possibly forward this to the listserv on my behalf.  I've sent 3 versions of the note below to the group since yesterday morning but none has made it through.  At first I thought the listserv might be down but I've since received posts from other members.  I also checked my subscription settings and everything seems to be fine, so I'm not sure what might be happening.  I've also successfully emailed the listserv in the past so I'm doubly confused about what might be preventing my notes from making it through.

Thanks very much for your help.  I'll see you at the Carrboro cluster meeting later this month.

-Michael



From: Michael Baucom <mbaucom AT outlook.com>
Sent: Thursday, June 15, 2017 1:13 PM
To: Orange County Bees
Subject: What To Do With A "Swarm" Of Straggler Bees
 
I apologize if this ends up coming through multiple times.  I've sent it twice previously - once with a photo in the body of the note, then once with the photo attached; neither made it to the listserv, so I'm resending without any photo at all.

Hi All,

On Monday evening I moved a hive from a house I'm selling to the house I've moved into but I left the homemade stand at the old house knowing I'd come back the next day to pick it up.  As I was leaving I noticed a good number of "straggler" bees (that hadn't made it back into the hive before I loaded it up) still hovering around the stand where the hive used to be, but I wasn't concerned about that and figured it would be a pretty small number left behind since it was nearly dark when I was moving the hive.

Tuesday night when I arrived to retrieve the stand I was surprised to find a small "swarm" of bees hanging from the stand.  I assumed it was all the stragglers that had been left behind (although far more than I expected), or possibly bees that had flown back to the old hive location since I only moved about 1/2 mile away, so I quickly came back with an empty deep hive body and shook them into it.  I then brought the new "colony" to my new house where my other three hives are (including the one I moved the night before).

Now I'm wondering what I should do with this "swarm".

Assuming they're actually leftover bees from the hive I moved on Monday night, should I just recombine them with that hive?

Should I leave them in the current hive body instead and let them form a new colony altogether?  If so, could they possibly raise a queen and successfully prepare for winter this late in the season?

Should I buy a new queen, if available, to help establish a new colony more productively?

Should I possibly combine them with another weak colony I have via the "newspaper divider" method (that Todd described in beekeeping class) to create one larger, stronger colony?

Any suggestions and/or feedback would be much appreciated.

Thanks as always.

-Michael Baucom



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