My First Swarm

 Lucinda Nimer from our church ward calls, "Do you want a swarm of bees?"

"Uh....sure. Where are they?"

I was not really prepared to catch a swarm of bees but the challenge

was too appealing to resist.

I used a cardboard box that Troy tapped all the of the edges for me.

We drove close to an hour to Stone, ID where a cluster of bees

had settled in a small lilac bush.

This is a high swarm time of year for bees as I found out last year when 

I lost most of my bees and queen to swarming.

The hive starts to grow and gets crowded and it's a natural process of

increasing their numbers.

It wasn't so terrifying as I thought it would be, but wasn't very easy getting 

the cluster out of the bush and the most important thing was to get the

queen (which I have no idea if I did).

I placed the bees into 2 honey supers till I could purchase a hive deeps set for them. 

The following day Troy and I drove to Jones Bees in SLC.

Poor things, I didn't really know what the heck I was doing, I trashed them 

pretty good and still don't know if there is a queen.

I will check them here soon to see what is going on inside the hive and 

hopefully, fingers crossed, there are eggs (sign of a queen) if not, then I

have some researching to do.

 Fifi and Pumpkin

In this photo are my north and south hives that I purchased and set up last

month and directly behind the south (your left) hive is my swarm hive.

The other stack are hive parts to add to the hives as they grow and produce honey.