Today Harold checked out our 3 hives. They are doing exceptionally well, and he needed to put on another honey super. However, he had no sooner finished putting on a super and walking away after checking everything out, when one of the hives swarmed! A huge swarm went into one of the trees behind the bee yard. Harold could see where they landed, and he went to get his tractor loader to get a ladder up there and bring the hive back down and haul them off someplace else in another box. But as he went to get the tractor an amazing thing happened!! The swarm went back into the SAME hive box! It's like they swarmed, and then came back home! Within minutes! This never happens. Bees just don't do that. Harold said a quick prayer when they swarmed (that he would be able to get the swarm into a box with no problems, to haul them off to the Miller farm, where we take all our swarms), and within minutes they all came back to the original hive. Perhaps the Lord heard Harold's prayer and brought all our bees back to where they should be instead of swarming. I tell you, this truly never happens - that bees will swarm and come back to the same box! We have never witnessed any such thing in all our 9 years of beekeeping. Here are some photos of this morning's episode:
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| Harold checks out one of our hives. For a thorough checkup, he used the bee smoker this morning and suited up. |
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| Lifting up a frame of bees and honey from the top super. |
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| The frames look really good. The bees are filling them up with honey. |
Shortly after inspection the bees swarmed, and then came back. Here is what THAT looked like:
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| The front of the hive was just covered with bees trying to get back in. |
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| The bees were everywhere, waiting to get back into the hive. |
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| Another view of the bees trying to get back into the hive they just swarmed out of. |
They are all back home now and all is just like it originally was. I wanted to get a photo of the swarm in the tree, but they weren't there long enough for me to get a good shot of them. Sometimes a beekeeper just can't figure out bees! But thanks be to God for bringing the bees back, and without us having to do anything! We witnessed a very rare thing indeed!
1 comment:
Guess it certainly gives you guys something to reflect back on. Strange indeed, but you couldn't prove it by me.
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