We had a fun day with the bees last week. Bill, in his never-ending bug kill, found a swarm laying on the ground in the raspberries. It looked like a writhing log. Luckily we had one last super box with frames in it. So, it was moved into the garden and the log was shook into the box. We added a makeshift top and bottom giving us time to find and paint up new parts for a new hive. We’re sure this was a swarm from one of our original hives that left after they had over populated their domain. The old queen takes off with a majority of her harem looking for a new home so we provided one. Then we moved it to the back of the pack shed so as to not confuse the 2 old hives. Good news. Now we have 3 hives and lots of activity in all three. And oh, yes, the swarm doesn’t leave until they make a new queen to remain behind. Pretty smart on their part.
