Thing 1

The story of Thing 1! This was our first successful swarm capture. It was late evening by the time we made it to the swarm site about 45mins from our apartment. The call came from a nice older gentleman named Jack. This one was about 4 feet off the ground and in an easily accessible tree - hooked on 2-3 branches about the thickness of pencils. Setup in our bee suits we made the cuts and eased it over to the swarm box. With one good shake we got the majority of the swarm and more importantly the queen. We observed for another 15-20 minutes as the bees inside the box started to shake their abdomens in the air alerting the rest of the swarm that the queen was inside. After taking many pictures and rolling a few videos we closed up the box and started home.

It took us a good amount of time to get back and the box wasn't properly ventilated so I was a bit concerned. When we got home we rushed them onto our balcony into the hive I had set up earlier. By then it was getting pretty late and although we were very excited to have our first bees we thought it best not to inspect them until the next day.

We sent some pictures to friends, family, and to Jack so that he could have them for memoriam. Everyone is always excited to learn when we show up and I'm more than happy to educate what little I've learned. Thing 1 has been staying pretty much where we dropped them in the hive, not really moving around to much or taking to the air. Located on the left side of our porch it doesn't get as much sun as the right. Yesterday we saw them flying a little bit and with similar weather conditions (half rainy, half sunny, windy) they didn't take to the air much today either.

Being our first swarm we are watching it very closely and compared to our second swarm it seems weaker. Things looked fine though and no stings today (yet!).