Sunday, April 4, 2010

Bee Swarm on Palm Frond- Santa Barbara

This was a huge swarm which was in my buddies yard.  He had multiple hives, one of which swarmed... and was unavailable to come get his own bees.  I gladly helped out.  This was the biggest swarm of the season for me.  Notice the gentleman on the other side of the fence.  He helped hold the box while I used big loppers to cut the frond free and place it in a box.  This was at least 3x the size of the normal copy paper box that I use to catch swarms.  I placed this swarm in a Top Bar Hive and in less than a month more than 20 bars had drawn comb... unfortunately some of it was crossed and I had to make some adjustments... (please forgive the terrible photo quality - I usually snap these with my cell phone, not a real camera).