Swarm Catching.

We visited the Peebles club’s apiary today; we don’t have one ourselves and, seeing the responsibility that it places on a single person’s shoulders, we’re rather glad that we don’t.
 
A group of us were trying to find the queen in one colony when one of the number muttered that he didn’t know where she could have got to (ending a sentence with a preposition was a cardinal sin when I was at school – almost as bad as going outdoors after taking a bath and while your pores open) and J replied quietly that she was just behind us in a Christmas tree. He then grabbed a polystyrene bee box and climbed the tree with it. The swarm was about three metres up the tree and, only having spindly branches, provided him with only very precarious perches while he vigorously gave the tree a good shaking to dislodge the bees.
 
Some of them went into the box but most of them missed and took to the air; it was quite exciting for a few minutes, particularly for the purists who don’t believe in using protective gloves. However, of the 20,000 bees, there is only one who matters and it was obvious that she was safely in the box as a group of bees settled at the entrance, exposed their Nassenhof glands (which secrete attractant pheromones), and started fanning their wings to call all their friends to the new home. I’ve seen J pull off this trick many times, it fits in with his bee keeping philosophy; he believes not in controlling swarming, but letting it happen and then dealing with it. He has the skills to know which of his colonies is going to swarm when, and is there waiting when it emerges; he also has posts set up where he expects it to want to settle, though often it will go straight into one of the bait hives he has set up for the purpose. Like all bee keepers, he thinks that his method is the right one and, perhaps he has a point; he is certainly one of the best bee keepers that I know.