Bees @ the appt?

That was the question posed to the management staff at our apartment complex today. I sat down the with the lead manager lady and the sales representative to tell them my tale of swarms and to explain about our honey bee hobby. I was hoping that they would be receptive to the idea and luckily for us...they were! Well kind-of. They don't want it to be forever and of course they reserved the right to tell me to get rid of them at the drop of a hat but I think being up front about them really helped my cause.

As a backup plan I called my Mentor and asked if I had to move the hives, if I could put them at his apiary. He thought it was a good idea and also mentioned to me that now would be a good time to do a blanket treatment for mites. I didn't see any mites on any of the bees, but honestly I haven't really looked that close. It probably is a good idea but he wants me to use a menthol strip and I'm not too sure how much of a chemical that is considered. I was hoping to go the all-natural route, I heard you can sprinkle powdered sugar on them instead of the strips so I'll have to check at the beemaster forums to find out if I can do that on a newly captured swarm.

It was windy/cold today so there wasn't that much action this afternoon but both Thing 1 and Thing 2 had a few flyers out! Thing 1 has the feeder in it and I'm planning on making one for Thing 2 tomorrow. I'll take picks of that for the next posting. I had to break apart some twigs and put them in the bowl so that the bees wouldn't drown when they went for their drink.

The pix in this post are from my very first swarm call. I went there on my lunch break at work and procured a small Styrofoam box from the warehouse. When I got there the swarm had dissipated and all that remain were a few stragglers. I cut the branch they were on - 10 feet up near the roof of this house - and put it in the box. I know the queen wasn't on it but I figured that I'd put them in there and call it a "swarm trap" seeing if they might return and set up shop. It'll be 5 days tomorrow so I'll put a call in and see what happened to it.