Swarm #2

[Moonshae]

I got a swarm call before work this morning, and I decided to call in late "I'm having car trouble" to go pick it up. It was on the wall of a building. This time, I thought ahead to bring a bee brush, but it was still difficult...a lot of the bees did not want to go into the box, despite plenty of their sisters fanning at the gap like mad.

When you experts without bee vac gather swarms, what do you tell the people about stragglers? I easily got 4 lb of bees, but there were at least a hundred left. I told them not to worry, they'd go away in a day or so, or they could spray the remaining bees with soapy water. 100 bees is still pretty freaky to non-beeks, but I couldn't get more in the box...if I opened the box to brush the clump in, that many bees flew out.

I think a bee vac is in my plans for next year, if things are going to be like this every year. It would be nice to do a bang up job, instead of a decent one.

[HAB]

Congrats on a job well done.  You can only do so much.  100 Bee out of 1000's is great I think.  We've put out the word but no calls yet. Got high hopes though.