You Won't Believe How Gentle This Swarm Of Bees Is!

Today I'm going to catch a small cast swarm. Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. Today I'm going to catch a very small cast swarm that's about 300 or 400 meters away from where I keep my hives, so chances are this is going to be one of mine. The fact that it's a cast swarm though means that there's going to be no mated queen in there, so I can't identify it as one of my own queens.

But the fact that it's so close, I guess it's probably going to be one of my swarms.

Now, bees, when they're swarming, are incredibly gentle. I've already gone over and had a little bit of a test with this colony here. If you're not confident or you don't know what the bees are like, definitely put your full equipment on.

You don't want any stings in any nasty places.

So all I'm going to do today is I'm just going to cut off a piece of this plant where the bees have decided to have a bit of a stop. I'm going to pop it in a 6-frame nuc. I'm going to take it back to my apiary. And as always with these videos, I'll show you it all the way through. So make sure you stay tuned to the end of the video. I'll show you whether there is a virgin queen in there or a mated queen in there, and I'll give it a couple of weeks.

Hopefully we can get that virgin mated and we get ourselves a little nuc of bees.

So I'm going to use a 6-frame nuc for capturing this swarm today. Really good using nucs for capturing swarms because you've got the ventilated bottom. Just a handy thing that you can keep in the back of the car. What I've got inside it is some drawn-out comb.

That's really helpful when you're coming to catch swarms because the bees are really attracted to it. They know what it smells like. And it's a lot more appealing to them than sitting on someone's shrub.

So when you're doing these manipulations, if you can, it's a lot easier just to cut a bit of the branch off, obviously with the homeowner's permission. They've given me some secateurs, so I'm just going to try and cut the main section of it off and just shake them into this box here. So there you go. Like I said, it's really calm. It's a very, very small cast swarm. Hopefully I'm going to get the queen in there, going to have the virgin queen in there. But if you can cut it off like that, it does really make it so much easier. All I'm going to do now is I'm just going to rest it gently onto the frames and the bees will just travel down onto the frames. Makes it so much easier than shaking them, causing a bit of chaos.

You don't know what's going on, and then you can just do that piece by piece.

There you go, just got another little section of the colony there. Just going to put that on the nuc box as well. They're just going to work their way down because they don't want to be on someone's hedge.

They want to be in a nice secure nuc with some frames that smell of bees.

You're just going to continue down. This method works so well if, if you can cut them off. If you shake them, you might get the queen in, and a lot of times you really don't have an option other than to shake them. But if you don't shake them, then you can work with them a lot easier, and the bees tend to be a lot calmer that way as well. So then this is the final cut here. You're not going to be able to cut every single little branch on the tree. What I'm going to do though is I'm going to let this one go down into the nuc, let them all work down. I'll shake off the final few and I'm going to put the nuc back into the position there to let all of the stragglers go in. And if you've got the queen, whether she's mated or a virgin in that box, she will drag every single last bee in if you give her enough time. So if you listen in on the bees now, you can hear this real humming and it's a bit of a roar. And what that means, it's a really, really positive sign, is that there's a queen in that box now. She's worked her way down onto the frames, and all of those other bees are fanning her pheromone out into the air, and all of the other bees are trying to work their way back down into that nuc box. So I'm just going to let it run for 10 or 15 minutes. I reckon that we're going to catch probably 98, 99% of the bees in this box. And then what we'll do once we've got the majority of the bees back in the box So we'll put a roof on it and then we're going to put that box back where the original swarm landed, because they do leave pheromone on that hedge or wherever they've landed. And that's why you tend to get swarms in repeat places throughout the year, because that pheromone sits there. But just looking down onto this box here now, you can see lots of activity. You can hear really, really good sound. So it means there's a very, very high chance that the queen's already in there and we're going to catch most of those bees. So once you get the swarm to this position, it's kind of a matter of how much time you've got left. If there's people around, I would just suggest leaving the bees for as long as you possibly can. They will work their way in there. If you're in a bit of a rush, you've got things to do, or you've got more swarms to go and collect, at this point it's safe to give them a little bit of a shake.

And I would recommend putting a bee suit on at this point because you don't know the temperament of these bees.

I've had a couple of stings to the fingers here, but it is expected with swarms. Especially this one. I think this swarm's probably been here a little bit longer than I originally anticipated. When I started cutting those branches away, a lot of the bees at the back and underneath were very wet, which indicates to me that they've been there for probably a little while longer than I originally thought, which means that their honey stomachs aren't going to be completely full, which means that they're a little bit more likely to sting you as well. So these are gentle bees, there's no problem with this. I have taken a couple of stings to the fingers though. And like I say, it's only when you start removing swarms that you do realize what's gone on. And I think just the indication of a few wet bees underneath the bottom of the swarm, they've probably been out in a shower earlier today or yesterday evening, which means that they're not an entirely fresh swarm. So I've got some other stuff to go and do this afternoon, and I also know how much people like watching me get stung. So I'm going to shake these bees in. Hopefully I won't take any stings, but I'm just going to take up the shrubs on this box here one by one. Shake them off. I'm going to put the lid on, and then I'm going to put it back to the original location because that's kind of where the bees know as home on a very temporary basis. They seem to be still congregating around there. They will just work out where that box is though, so you don't need to put it back up there.

It's kind of entirely up to you.

So I'm going to shake these bees off now, get the roof on, see if we can get all of the bees in. And that was really good. This has worked so well. Always carry secateurs when you're going out to catch swarms. I didn't carry any here today, the lady kindly lent me some, but it is a really good tip because trying to shake them off on a shrub like that or trying to shake them off on a tree can be really difficult, and especially if you're in a public place as well, it can be quite disruptive to the bees but also to the public. So being able to cut them off and just rest them on the box and let them go back down, really, really handy. Just double-check there's no bees left on there. If there's any left on, just shake them off. Definitely don't want to leave the queen on there, that will cause a real issue. Just going to put this off to the side now, right out of the way, because it will keep a little bit of pheromone where they've been clustering around it. So a few bees left on this branch here, just going to give them a really quick solid tap, good shake, get them all off, get them in the box. And again, just check the piece of shrub, make sure there's no bees left in it. If there is, a couple more shakes, just get them off. So then at this point, it's really easy to see what's going on. Got all of those shrubs out of the way. The bees are fanning that pheromone.

They're going to get every last bee down inside into that nuc box, and then we'll take them away, give them a new home.

As you can see with this little swarm though, still probably covering 2 or 3 frames of bees. And if you can get that queen mated, or there is a mated queen in there—

and I'm certain there's going to be a virgin in here because that is a very, very small swarm—

the weather's good, she'll probably get mated in maybe 3 or 4 days. And then they're going to start building that colony back up again. You could easily get that to a full-size colony to overwinter because it's only beginning of June at the moment. Plenty of time for a colony like that to expand. What I would say though, in terms of a swarm catching kit, obviously a nuc box is really, really good. Preferably a used nuc box actually, because you've got that smell of bees already in it. Ventilated floor on that nuc box as well. Bees can overheat really, really quickly. Pair of secateurs. Very helpful indeed. But black bee combs, or any drawn combs, is the golden ticket when it comes to swarm catching because the bees just love it. Like, that is what they're looking for, and that is why they tend to go into bait hives as well, because they can smell the fact that it's good for bees. When you're going out catching swarms, that is definitely my number one tip—

get some drawn comb.

So that's it for this portion of the video. I'm not going to move it back to the shrub because The majority of the bees have actually come down here now. There are very, very few bees back on that shrub, and I might confuse the bees a little bit more. So all I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna take the roof and I'm just gonna put that on the colony, but I'm gonna leave it a slant open just so the bees have got really, really easy access onto the frames and they haven't gotta work out how to use an entrance just yet. Hopefully we'll get all of the bees in here. I'm gonna close the colony up. I'm gonna take it back to one of my apiaries. I'll give them a few days. I'm not going to touch them for a few days. I'm going to take them to a quarantine apiary. That's really important. I suspect these probably are my bees and that they've thrown out a cast swarm, but you can't be too careful when it comes with bees. There is a real risk of disease here, so take them to a quarantine apiary. Give them preferably a couple of cycles of brood to show up any foul brood. At least one cycle of brood though, so you're talking an absolute minimum of 4 weeks here because you're going to give her roughly a week to mate. And then you've got your 3-week brood cycle. Check out that brood before you start introducing it to any of your apiaries or any of your equipment. So I'll let the bees cluster up, I'll take them to the quarantine apiary, and then we'll get inside and we'll see what we've got.

So the bees are now safely at their isolation apiary, which is my back garden. We're going to leave them here for 4 weeks. We'll take a look inside them and see how they're getting on. So it definitely wasn't one of my colonies. You can see the queen there, middle of the frame. It's actually a mated queen, very dark, very nice looking queen. So just goes to show I was completely wrong. I thought it was a small cast swarm with a virgin, and it just turned out to be a very small normal swarm with a mated queen. So you can see that queen there, she is mated. So there you go, hopefully you can see some eggs there. This is only a couple of days after I caught this swarm, so the fact that there's eggs so soon after Indicates to me almost certainly this is a mated queen. Obviously, we won't be 100% sure until they cap that over and confirm that it's worker brood and not drone brood. But really nice colony of bees here, very gentle, just handling them with no gloves, no veil or anything. Really nice gentle bees. So I'll give it a couple of weeks. I want to see what that brood's like before I start doing anything with this colony, just to check that they are completely Completely disease-free. So this is what the little swarm is looking like after about a week, maybe 8 or 9 days now. Putting in some really nice new wax, which is good to see. There's still a really nice flow on here, nowhere near as much as it's been over the past few weeks, but there's definitely something coming in, as you can tell by all that wax on the top there. Just going to pull out a couple of frames, see if we can find that queen. I think we're going to see some eggs in here now after about 8 or 9 days. So there we go, no capped brood yet, but as you can see, loads of eggs laying it up really, really nicely. Obviously, until that brood is capped over, you can't really tell whether that's going to be worker brood or not, so it could be drone brood.

But by the looks of it, looks like it was a mated queen. She's laying up really nice.

Come back in a few days and see once all of those eggs have turned into larvae and then they've been capped over, be able to take a look at that brood and confirm they're It's healthy looking brood.

So fast forward another week or so and I'll give you another update on the little swarm.

Right, so I'm on my garage roof that I'm using as a quarantine apiary.

Going to move this one off in a couple of weeks, but I just wanted to get a full cycle of brood in with this swarm that I've caught before I go and take it into any of my apiaries. And you may notice I'm not actually wearing any beekeeping attire at the moment because this swarm is like the gentlest swarm I've ever dealt with.

It's great.

So I'm going to do this inspection today without any gloves, Without avail. I've done it a couple of times on this colony already, and they are really super, super gentle bees. So we're going to go through today, going to look for some eggs. Hopefully we're going to see some capped brood today as well. Once we've looked at that capped brood, we can confirm that there is no disease within the colony. I'm still going to leave it here. I'll leave it here to fill that brood box. There's no need for me to take it anywhere else. Really nice gentle colony, so it will stay here for another 2 or 3 weeks. We'll finish the video off here today. I'll show you the queen, she was definitely mated, show you some brood in all stages, show you some capped brood, and I'll show you how gentle this colony of bees is as well. So the weather's been just perfect here in North Wales. The flows have stopped, but they continue to build wax, especially when you've got a really small colony like this. They seem to go into a mode where they just know they need to expand as quick as they possibly can. So it's over kind of like, what, 3, 3 and a bit frames now.

Maybe 1, 1.5 frames of brood.

As soon as that first round of brood has emerged and the queen's laid up the next batch, this is going to be a full 6-frame nuc. They really do go very, very quickly. Little swarms this time of year, especially if there's a mated queen in there. So they didn't lose any time waiting for the queen to go out and mate. Straight out, laying the eggs, brood in all stages. 3 weeks later and the first round of bees is emerging.

So there you go, that's the first frame of brood.

It's such a treat for me being able to deal with bees that don't just fly up and try and sting you all the time. So it's a small colony, I get that, and they're probably not that fussed about coming and stinging me because they're so small and they're just focused on expanding. But yeah, it is really nice to deal with a colony that's not that interested in me at all, and it'd be really interesting to see what they're like once they're over, say, 10 or 12 brood frames and there's a lot of bees in the colony. Definitely keep an eye on this one though, because it's a feral swarm. It wasn't marked, so it could have come from someone's hives, but it might just be a naturally occurring colony of bees. They've got a really, really nice temperament as well, so definitely something I'm interested to see how they get on over the next few months. You can see though, really nice and gentle, not flighty at all, just not interested in me there. I can go in, I can move them a little bit with my hand. And you can see that brood there, capped brood, looks really nice and healthy. No disease there present at all, but we will wait 2 or 3 weeks just to get another round of brood through because it might show up at a later date. But these bees look really nice and healthy. I'll wait until they fill the box though to take them to another apiary.

So there's my queen, really nice big dark queen.

She looked exactly like this as soon as we got this swarm here. Definitely mated on arrival, which is strange because it was such a small swarm. I've got this one down as a small cast swarm in my Adobe Premiere account. Definitely wasn't a cast swarm. It was, it was a swarm with a mated queen laying very healthy brood. Really nice gentle bees. Like, you just look at that frame there. They're sitting there. I'm sitting here with no veil on, nothing on. Messing around with them. Really nice behavior towards that queen there. You can just see her getting all of that attention from all of those bees.

So there you go, that's the video complete. The swarm is now over 3 frames of bees, got 1 frame of capped brood, 1 frame of brood in all stages.

They've got a frame of stores as well, and they started drawing out that 4th frame. It's about 3 weeks since I caught that swarm. These guys here, they will just fill that box, I reckon, in another Week, maybe 2 weeks, and this will be full of bees as soon as that first round of brood has emerged.

So I hope you enjoyed that video. I hope you found it useful.

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