This is a big prime swarm. A friend who lives up the road a couple of miles called and asked if I could come get it. I was happy to.

Holy cow! I've never seen anything like that!

That is a beautiful thing to see!

How did you get them to follow you home?

Do you keep bees normally? I have thought about going and looking for a swarm, but then what would I put them in for a home?!? Did they stay home for you? toad

Fantastic pictures. When I was keeping bees, I caught a swarm quite by accident. I'd been cleaning a couple of old hives and left them set beside the driveway. One afternoon, along came a swarm and just moved right into one of the hives. In flight, a swarm is a sight to behold. I've never had the opportunity to see one like this. Thanks for sharing the pics.

James, I wish I knew a bee-keeper in Orange County, California. We woke up one morning to a bee hive this size in our front yard. Since we are within walking distance of Disneyland and had company coming over, along with tourists walking withink 10' of our property, we had to exterminate them quickly. After an hour of trying to find someone to remove them, we finally had to call an exterminator. It was very, very sad; probably a million bees destroyed. Any way of finding a local bee keeper in our area? I tried the bee keeping web site and they did not have a list.

Yes, I normally keep bees, so I have the equipment.

Basically, this is how you catch a swarm. Fill a spray bottle with sugar syrup, half sugar, half water. Spray the cluster with the syrup. This calms them down and makes them sticky so they won't or maybe can't fly. They will be busy licking themselves clean and filling their stomachs. Bees in a swarm don't have a home to protect and usually are not agressive. Bees with a full stomach are usually not agressive. So you have these two things in your favor.

If the cluster is on a tree limb reachable from the ground and small enough to be shaken good, the rest is easy. Take a 5 gallon bucket and hold it under the cluster, and give the limb a good shake. Most of the bees will end up in the bucket. Set it down on the ground. If the queen bee is also in the bucket the remaining bees will soon fly to the bucket. I like to have a screen mounted on a frame that I can cover the bucket with. Now just take them and put them in your truck and go home. In this case I prepared a hive and dumped the bees in the hive, then left and came back the next day at sunset and picked up the hive and went home.



How to find a local beekeeper? Good question. You can look in the yellow pages for honey or beekeeper. You could ask your extension office. They may be able to tell you who the bee inspector is. The inspector would know all the registered beekeepers. He may also know if there is a bee club in the area.

A swarm the size of this one has about 20-30 thousand bees in it.

Need equipment?

Here is one good outlet:

https://secure.netgrab.com/kelleystore/asp/home.asp

Awesome!!!

I have a beautiful catalpa tree that is blooming right now, sure would 'bee' nice if I had some of those honey bees! It is usually full of bees, but not this year
I did find a bumble bee though!





Robin

James, When my dad had bees he had a observation part of a hive in the house under glass with a tube going outside. The first picture you posted looked almost like looking at that hive in the house, except the bees aren't moving. It must be an old habit I kept looking over the picture for the queen!

My plum tree to day was a buzz with honey bees, so happy to see and hear them.

Here is one I saw on a tree at the fairgrounds where I used to live. Pretty cool shape they were in.

Those concerned about bees may wish to look at this, http://www.correntewire.com/organic_bees_not_dying

This is really amazing. I am going to show my lack of bee knowledge here, but I don't have much familiarity beyond the hive concept. What causes them to swarm?

Swarming is how the bees multiply. Yes a lot of bees can be raised in one hive, but to actually get an increase, you have to start a new colony.

In the spring the bees build up and raise lots of brood. When conditions in the hive get crowded because of all the new bees, the bees start queen cells to raise new queens. When these are about ready to emerge as queens, the old queen will leave the hive with half or more of the bees and go in a swarm to find a new place to set up housekeeping.

Usually the first queen to hatch will go kill all the other queens still in the cells. Sometimes though several new queens may hatch and it is common for a virgin queen to lead off another swarm.

In the end only one queen will survive in the original colony. She will go out on mating flights before starting to lay eggs.

The bees that fly out often cluster on something like a tree limb and from there send out scouts to look for a likely spot to call home. They may stay in the cluster for a few minutes or several days.