Swarms 2002
It's that time of the year again, swarm season. Every bee keeper recognizes that April is the swarm month in Alabama and this year is no exception. Our first swarm was actually in March 25th. a little early, but now with the weather appreciably warming up, swarms are beginning to increase. Here is a recent photo of one we hived today, April 16th, 2002.
Today, as we were leaving this yard after making some nucs for queen rearing, we noticed two small swarms next to each other on this large, overhanging tree limb. We didn't have a 40 foot ladder with us, so we had to get one and come back to hive these swarms. In this photo, Bill is hiving the second one, using a four-frame nuc box. The first one is already in a small four-frame nuc box at the lower right of the photo. We believe both swarms came from the hives way back at the lower right of the photo, the very ones we had been working on earlier.
After we completed hiving these two swarms and put them on the hive stand, we started to leave the area and suddenly found another, larger swarm that had just settled. Luckily, this new swarm, while much larger than the previous two, was only a few feet off the ground and so we just put a hive under it and shook the bees into the hive box. We left it there because it was obviously a new swarm and there were still a lot of bees flying about looking for their home. We will pick it up in day or so and place it on a hive stand somewhere among our apiary sites.