laurence edwardsOwner at Black Mountain Honey

Catching Swarms #bees #swarm 🐝

17 Jun 2025 · 0 min

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0:27

In this brief first‑person narration, the beekeeper discovers a swarm on the side of an existing hive. He captures the swarm in a plastic bucket, locates and cages the queen for safety, opens a nucleus (nuc) hive and transfers the queen into it. He then attempts to move the swarm bees into the nuc by scraping and shaking them, but the bees resist. To resolve this, he straps the side of the nuc to the side of the main beehive, allowing the swarm to integrate successfully. The clip serves as a concise, experiential how‑to on swarm capture, queen handling, and nuc attachment for integration.

I found a swarm on the side of my beehive, so I tapped them into this plastic bucket and then set about finding that queen. I picked her up, put her into a cage, keeping her safe, opened up a nuc, and then I placed the queen inside, scraped the bees back in, shook them into the box, tried to get them all to go in. They did not want to play ball, so I strapped the side of the nuc to the side of the beehive. That worked a treat.