Swarms

Well its been a long time coming. Over a year of researching on the internet, reading books, and watching videos and finally this past week we got our bees! I'm happy that our first two colonies came from swarms rather than having to buy them from mail-order or from another beekeeper. Not only does this save us some startup money; but it also was the way I hoped to start!

Over the next few days I'll post some pictures and maybe some videos of our first two successful swarm captures - I've had four calls for removals this week already! It has been a full day now with the swarms in their new hives on our balcony but were very concerned with getting in trouble with the apartment managers and with our neighbors. So tomorrow I will be making some calls to see if I can temporarily keep them at my mentor's apiary (beeyard) or my girlfriend's parents house. Afterwards I'll ask the apartment managers to see if they would mind their continued presence at their current location.

We've named them "Thing 1" and "Thing 2". Thing 1 is the first one we did which came from a swarm about the size of a volly ball. Thing 2 was much larger, bigger than a Basketball, at least double the bees and was very active today - even tho we just put them in last night!