So a couple of interesting things happened when capturing the swarm that I left out of the previous post; I’ll describe them here. Think of them as the “Extra Features” included on CD’s, back when we used CD’s.
First, our first attempt failed. Within an hour or so, the bees had left the hive and went back to the same spot on the neighbor’s tree. I must have missed getting the queen. Beth also suggested, after skimming YouTube videos, that we wait until dusk when they were less active. So we waited a couple of hours and tried again.
This time, in order to make sure the queen came with the other bees, I gave the branch several good strong shakes, ending up with the branch almost completely free of bees. I even took off my veil (the screened-in “hat”) to take a better look. That was a mistake; one of the bees, defending its queen or angry at being jostled, got me. Here’s my face, a day later. The whole left side is swollen, and it’s more comfortable to just keep my eye closed.
My wife says I look like Sloth from the “Goonies” movie. I prefer to think I look like Rocky Balboa. That was a much better movie anyway. There’s a lesson there, always take a moment to be safe. That obviously generalizes to other things as well.
The second item was that we didn’t have a spare hive. So after the bees were in the box, I grabbed my son and we drove over to the local garden and animal center. While there, we meet a very nice couple of beekeepers who had just split their hive and were trying to figure out what to do. We had a nice chat, exchanged some tips amongst us newbies (again sorry not sorry), and left.
The third item is more specifics about our errand. That will have to wait for another post. What’s a movie CD without teasers?