It’s been an exciting few weeks with bee activity.

The past few days we have been watching a few scout bees go in and out of the swarm trap in the front yard. We keep looking at night to see if anyone has moved in but were disappointed. This afternoon we were outside and heard a hum that is indescribable — loud but not angry. The sky was black with bees. I placed my Mac outside of the hive box and recorded the swarm moving in. As more and more bees were arriving the weight of the trap caused it to fall not once but twice until it finally rested on the ground.

We moved the swarm from the trap into a hive tonight. Only 4 stings amongst the three of us.

When we opened the trap to move the bees into a deep, we were amazed at how many bees were there. The trap was more than half full when we started moving them in there they easily filled the 10 frame deep box. We added a second deep to contain the overflow of bees and topped it off with a hive top feeder full of sugar water.

We did this at night and had some problems with the bees crawling on us and finding their way inside the bee veils (all the little holes are taped).

We still have a few things to learn about transferring swarms from the traps into hives. We’ll have to watch @Kirkobeeo do this one day.

Here’s the clip from the swarm’s arrival.

The swarm is growing accustomed to the hive today. We’re feeding them with a hive top feeder.

Today there is a lot of bee activity around where the swarm trap was yesterday. This is probably from the bees that didn’t arrive yesterday, but we’re not sure. We’ve put out the swarm trap again and they’re collecting inside it as well as sucking down the honey that’s been placed there.

Can swarms arrive over two days?

Tonight we’ll move the swarm trap to the hive and reunite them. We’re guessing that we’ll simply open the swarm trap and leave it on the hive. The trap has a couple thousand more in it and we’d rather not repeat last nights excitement.