6/22/2023

Yesterday afternoon we rechecked the swarm trap in Callaway County and found it to be empty. Kind of disappointing, but that’s how it works. We were in contact with the family in Howard County off and on all week who confirmed bee activity at that trap.

Last night, I had an American Legion meeting and would be in Columbia anyway, so we decided to collect the trap.

We got there just before dark and waited a bit until checking the trap. There was a lot of bee activity even that late in the evening. No pictures – too busy working.

We loaded the trap into the car after taping over the closed entrances and headed home. Finally got home around 2230 (10:30 pm) and rolled the trap to the hive using out new cart from Harbor Freight.

This morning, at the crack of dawn, we moved the swarm into the Flower Hive.

The trap was loaded with bees. Probably 10 of more pounds of bees, comb, brood and honey. It was amazing to see the work of a year of planning come together.

Opening the hive.

First look at the frames and bees.

The pictures are both and back of the frames. It was crazy to think that the bees drew all this comb in less than two weeks.

On this group, we started seeing “wonky” comb. Wonky comb is comb that doesn’t conform to the frames. It is usually caused by the hive, or in this case the trap, not being level. It was too hard to try to level the trap. On the other hand, we did not expect this much comb.

The rest of the frame pictures.

Getting the bees left in the trap.

Wonky comb can cause pieces of the comb to break off. We did place the pieces back in the best we could.

The stragglers

When the stragglers realized the Queen was in the hive, they marched right on in.

After the bees were in their hive, we observed for a bit and saw some of the foragers do their orientation flight and then go on to find pollen and nectar.

Last modified: