I got lucky today!

[beenthere]

Check for a hole in your pocket..   Happened to me..  

[thecfarm]

I have a set of keys that I use outside when I am in the woods. Has a house key and a truck key.
I have lost these about 3-4 times, but I always seem to find them on the ground.

[JD Guy]

Check for a hole in your pocket..  Happened to me.. 

Checked that right away. No hole😁

[SawyerTed]

I went out on the deck this morning to let the dog out.   Sitting in my deck chair I heard a buzzing I wasn't accustomed to hearing.  

A short walk revealed a swarm of honey bees had gathered on a shrub in the backyard.   I quickly dug out some hive components from my old hives.   

I shook the limb the bees had gathered on and the bees fell into a cardboard box.  Bees don't sting when they are swarming as long as no bees are hurt or killed in transferring them to the hive.  

I dumped them into the hive.  A little sugar water and some honey kept the bees in the hive.  

I got lucky and caught a swarm of bees!

Yes that's two supers not a hive box (taller box).  These had frames with wax comb from my previous beekeeping.  They were what I could get to.  I'll dig out a proper hive box for them later this week.  

[TroyC]

Hope you got the queen!

[Old Greenhorn]

Now THAT is truly lucky! Nice work!

[SawyerTed]

I'm pretty sure I did!  There were almost no bees left on the limb.  The hive stayed open like in the photo for about 4 hours.  Usually the queen will find her way into the hive in that time if she didn't get transferred.  The shrub in the edge of the photo is where the swarm gathered.  So she only had a few feet to find the hive.

Just looking down into the hive before I put the lid on, the cluster of workers who attend the queen were working like she was present.  Although I did not see her. 

The drones were starting their typical pollen and nectar trips by mid afternoon.  Their little bodies were caked with pollen! 

Tomorrow will tell if they plan to stay.

[customsawyer]

ST, the drones don't do any collecting. Those will be workers, which are all female. You will have workers that are on guard duty, nursery (brood) duty, collection, house cleaning, and some that are just busy being fans controlling temp and moisture. It's been years since I worked with honey bees, but I always found them fascinating. My parents used to run over 1000 hives in CO., back in the day. I've often thought of getting some here at my place. Amazing critters.

[SawyerTed]

Jake, you are correct.  I was relying on my memory and spoke of drones incorrectly.  Since my original post about catching the swarm I figured I needed to brush up on my beekeeping so I've been reading my old books.   

I previously kept several hives over the course of about ten years.   How a pickup truck (not my own) left the road, crossed my yard and destroyed my hives is a story for another time. It was too expensive to buy new nucs to start over by that time.  When I started a 5 frame nuc (a small hive in a waxed cardboard box) was about $75, now they are $200-300.  
 
Drones are the least common bees in the hive
and  really do one thing, mate with other hive queens.  A hive only has a few hundred drones.  They are the males and expensive to support. 

Workers do everything else in the hive from tending the queen, feeding larvae and drones, heating or cooling the hive, guarding/defending the hive and foraging.   Some functions of the workers are dependent upon their point in their life cycle, that provides for the different functions to be accomplished for hive survival.  A hive may have several thousand workers.  

[Peter Drouin]

Ann and I had a lot of fun when we did that. I still have 4 cases of honey in the house. 
I do have some every day. It's good for you!

[Jeff]

Yesterday was my lucky day. I have a bush knife that I clip on my belt and carry every day. The day before I was out and about all over, didn't use my knife that I could recall, but noted that it had disappeared late in the day. I Don't know when, didn't know where. I was a lot of places but had no reference to even begin to look for it. Things are growing fast now so I knew if it didn't turn up soon, the land would eat it for sure.

Yesterday Cedar and I were walking back up from the pond, and I'm just gawking at everything as I always do, not looking for the knife or thinking about it at all, and low and behold, there it was! Hanging above the ground where a Balsam poplar sucker had stolen it right off my belt!

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