Swarming?

After this horrible winter we were down to one hive. Three swarms have flirted with us, but only one has decided to stay. They unexpectedly moved into an empty hive, so we're back up to two. Anyone have any luck with luring or retrieving a wild swarm?

Once again we made it through the winter with one surviving hive until last week when they swarmed. Fortunately, the bee whisperer thinks he's caught a wild swarm. Probably the same ungrateful ones who ran away from home.

Late in the year, but we just had a hive take off. Also, our wild bees captured earlier this year have a very nasty attitude as best beloved beekeeper just found out. The purchased bees are gentle and well-mannered. They don't seem to appreciate all our good intentions.

Best beloved beekeeper was ready to give up in despair since all our bees died over the winter again. I told him I saw some activity in one of the hives. He said it was robber bees from elsewhere cleaning out the hive. They were pretty persistent for a number of weeks and low and behold they were a swarm who decided to move in. We’ve added more supers and they are busy indeed.

Volunteers and squatters. That is such good news! They must have heard good things about the landlord.

Colonies tend to swarm if they old queen is weak and they have multiple new queens. If you find a wild swarm, the best way to encourage it to stay is to get the queen trapped in between queen excluders in a hive so she sticks around. Then the rest of the colony will want to stay to protect her.