Honeybee Swarm Update

We lost the swarm. This is a picture of what you DO NOT WANT TO SEE. We put the swarm in this box at about 9:00 a.m. Isabella and I took this picture of the box that afternoon at about 3:00 p.m. we thought they were just hot, but they were hot, botthered and about to leave when I took this picture (we didn’t know that at the time)!

This day of catching our first swarm had huge highs and lows. I’m guessing we might have had better luck if we had done the following: had a better swarm catching box and put them immediately in our bee yard in a full hive or in a temporary box that’s similar and in the shade (we live in Texas).

Here’s the story…

We decided to wait until that evening to move the box.  So the remaining bees in the air left on the mail box could find  there way to the box and were done flying for the day. Andrew came home early with wood and supplys to make a temporary top bar box that the bees would take better to. He realized that if they stayed in the our original box, they would build the comb the wrong way… streight on the sides. Our full size top bar boxes have slanted sides… it’d be a problem later when we move them over. Andrew’s amazing, in 1 hour he built an exact smaller version of our top bar hives, same dimentions that the bars could fit in. He even put in a follower board and a place for the feeder. See below picture.

That evening we went out and closed the opening to the cardboard box, still thinking the bees were in there. We carefully drove it to our bee yard… and carefully opened up the box, slowly and cautiously… and then… no queen and barley any bees 🙁 it was a sad moment.

We learned a ton and now we’re ready for another swarm to come our way! 🙂 Maybe this time they’ll just take to our swarm box instead of arriving under our mail box!