The inevitable phone call will come--be they your bees or someone else's--bees menacingly hanging in a tree ready to attack (or so the caller will tell you). Here is your chance as a beekeeper for some wonderful PR. In many cases you will be able to collect and keep the swarm, and also educate those that are watching you about our fascinating bees. The biggest challenge is being ready for swarming season. Just when you think you've got enough equipment to handle any and all catastrophes of the beekeeping year, you will be inundated with calls asking you to please take more bees. It happens. First, we'll discuss what you need to have ready to go capturing swarms, then we'll discuss some scenarios that you might encounter and some ways of dealing with them. Here is a list of essentials that you should have ready and available: Bee suit, hive tool, bee brush, smoker Duct tape, large cardboard box (folded) White cloth sheet about 4' x 6' White plastic dust pan A few drawn combs, with partial honey best 2 brood boxes, solid bottom board, migratory cover Hand saw or limb cutters 8' Step ladder A couple of 1 pound jars of honey and a handful of honey sticks If you plan to also offer to extract established colonies, you will want to add the following items to your readiness kit: Hammer & cat's paw Sharp 6" knife, 2" spackling knife Queen cage 10 empty frames, cotton twine Hinged frames Bee Vac Another article will focus on extricating established colonies out of wall, eaves, and crawl spaces. This time we'll focus on new swarms.

To most callers, any and all winged insects with a stinger are "bees". Be sure to ask some questions of the caller. How many are there? Dozens, hundreds, thousands? If the answer is not "thousands" they probably are not what you want to take home. How high are they off the ground (Add at least 3 feet to callers estimate). And double check that what the see is a big mass of bees, not a paper nest with a few "bees" going in and out. One time, I asked all the right questions, and was pretty sure that the lady had a good sized swarm. In fact, she was rather irritated with me when I kept asking about the shape and size of the cluster and the color of the "bees". She assured me that her husband could tell bees and wasps apart quite well. I was not able to get to the lady's house, so I asked a fellow swarm catcher if he would go rescue this bundle of joy out of her tree. A while later John Pierce called me back, laughing heartily, wondering where I'd like to put my hornets' nest. You just can't ever ask enough questions! First, let us remind ourselves what a swarm of bees is: The natural way for bees to increase in colony numbers is for the colony to raise a new queen. Shortly before she hatches out, the old queen will leave with about half of the original colony in search of a new home. Before they leave, the worker bees will gorge on honey stores in anticipation of having to live off their stores for a few days. This bunch of 20 to 30 thousand bees will settle on a nearby branch and send out scouts in search of a new home. Sometimes this scouting lasts several days, sometimes a couple of hours. When you come upon a swarm, they are usually very docile, unless they are low on food stores. The more recently they have left the hive, the more gentle they will be. The difficulty of capturing a swarm is directly proportional to its height. Ideally, the bees will have clustered on a young tree a few feet above the ground. Don your protective gear and place the white sheet underneath the swarm. Set the hive body up directly underneath the clustering bees with a few drawn frames, and literally shake them into their new home. Many will fly back onto the branch, so you may have to repeat the process a few times. Pay attention to the front entrance and the bees on the top bars. Once they start fanning with their rear ends in the air, they are saying "This is home."

Replace the cover as you are able and shake the remaining bees in front of the hive. Eventually they will start marching in. You will have to wait until evening for the activity to settle down. I usually leave them til dusk before trying to move them. Close off the entrance with screen and secure the hive top with duct tape or staples. Make sure that the bottom board is also stapled to the hive body, and take your treasure home. With more height come greater challenges. If the cluster of bees is more than a few feet above the ground, you may be better off using a ladder and cutting the branch, taking it down and shaking it out on top of the hive body. Sometimes the best you can do is cut the branch and have it drop down onto the hive box. If you have help, you may be able to shake the bees into a cardboard box and then dump them out over top of the newly prepared home. No swarm of bees is worth risking life and limb for. If you cannot safely retrieve the swarm, do not attempt it. If you need help, call another member of the association. Someone will usually be able to assist you. If you are serious about retrieving high swarms, you can fashion a 5 gallon bucket to attach to a painter's extension pole. Reach up with the bucket, give a good shake, and bring the contents of the bucket to their new home. This bee bucket is even available from several retailers and works quite well. Some swarms are not neatly clustered on a small tree limb. I have had mail boxes, tree trunks, and a flat brick wall play host to a swarm and this takes some creative bee herding. Bees have a tendency to move up and move toward light. Let us assume that we have bees on a tree trunk. I would place the sheet on the ground and the bee box adjacent to it, with the entrance facing the sun if possible. Here is where the bee brush and dust pan come in. Gently brush and scoop up bees, depositing them in and on the hive and on the front porch until you see the fanning bees signaling "This is home." Keep using the brush and brush the rest of the bees onto the sheet--they will follow the scent of the fanning bees and march right on in. In the list of equipment you see the smoker, and as yet I have not discussed it. Nine out of ten times, it will not be of any use. Remember that when bees are exposed to smoke, their instinct is to fill themselves with honey. Without combs, they cannot do that, and smoke will be more an irritant than a help. If the bees have been in a location for a while, the queen's pheromones may still linger strongly on a branch and large numbers of bees will continue returning to it rather than the new home. Smoke will help mask that smell. Light puffs of smoke may also be useful when trying to place the lid on a box or in directing bees on the ground toward the hive entrance. Bees hanging in a tree always attract curious bystanders. Here is where we get a chance to educate, inform and have a little fun. Keep observers at a safe distance, tell them why the bees are there, why they are useful, and most importantly explain what you are about to do, so that you don't have a panicked audience when the bees get airborne. A while back, Dave Bearden and I had a fun little swarm capture. As some of you know, Dave works for USDA's Risk Management Agency (Insurance) program. A local bar and restaurant found that the swarm of bees in the parking lot's pine tree needed "Risk Management," so that is who they called. Dave and I met there in mid-afternoon--he in a suit and tie, me in a beesuit, no tie. A few inebriated folks out on the patio watched eagerly until I cut and dropped the branch with the cluster. Alarmed at the thought of stinging insects filling the air, the patrons made a hasty retreat to the inside. Meanwhile, the bees found their new home accommodating and proceeded to march in. With nothing better to do than wait, we joined the observers in the restaurant til dusk. There is nothing quite like the rush of hiving your first swarm. Get prepared, then be ready for that call!