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Subject: Orange County, NC Beekeepers

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  • From: Randy Chellis <crandytoo AT aol.com>
  • To: ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [ocba] large swarm caught, have questions
  • Date: Thu, 6 Apr 2017 16:01:26 -0400

Hi all,

I just caught a very large swarm ( I filled a ten frame deep and bees were still over-flowing to the lid)   I installed them in a deep with drawn comb, nectar, pollen, and some capped honey Monday night.  On Tuesday afternoon, I added another deep with ten frames (undrawn) and a top feeder.  the ladies were pleasant and seemed to like their new home (I'll see if they are still there after work tonight)  the next steps are what I need help with! 

    1.  what should I be looking for?
    2.  do I need to do a sugar shake and when?
    3.  how long should I be feeding then for?
    4  how long before the queen starts laying again and will she swell up large (so I can find her)  I'm really not even sure if I have the queen, as I collected this swarm around 9:30 Tuesday night in the rain

this swarm was the size of a basketball and had to shake it to a tarp and then dump it into my hive. I got a call to come back on Wednesday afternoon to get the rest of the swarm as there was a swarm about the size of a softball in the same tree, a few feet away from where I had got the large one.  Would these bees be some that missed my tarp or were in the air at the time I collected them?

when I went to get this smaller sized swarm, it looked as if someone else had cut the branch down and tried taking them and were only about the size of a tennis ball or less, left.  would this have been another swarm or just leftovers and someone else had collected a queenless swarm?

or did I miss the queen and they were trying to keep her warm (my understanding, is the queen is usually in the middle of swarm?  although I have a friend tell me, they thought the queen was at the top of a swarm?

If anyone could help out a beginning swarm catcher try to understand what he is doing, I would be so greatful

thanks, randy chellis



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