Capturing A Swarm Of Bees

Huge thanks to my friends at Utah Sweet Savings that posted there was a swarm of bees in a tree at the Hale Center Theater about a month ago. To be honest, we've never caught a swarm before but have always wanted to, I guess? Bees are expensive and to catch a swarm, that's like hitting the jackpot! We hurried and got a few things together and almost didnt go because there were other people who wanted the bees but I said, lets just go and if someone beats us, we can watch them capture the bees. 

Somehow we made it in time and borrowed a little chair ladder from the theater which was so nice of them. I had a paintbrush in my car which Tony used to brush the bees into one of my storage boxes we had emptied out. 

It was all fun and games until a bee started chasing me. I ran screaming around the parking lot as fast as I could. I had no idea why it decided it wanted to get me, I was about 10 feet back or so getting pictures of Tony and suddenly a bee came at me and I started running as fast as I could. It was terrifying! I took my hat off and tried to swat at it. I ran towards the car but the windows were down so it would get me there. Even though it was a bit over a month ago I still get anxiety thinking about that night. We drove by the Hale Center Theater on Friday evening and I got all kinds of anxious thinking about that bee after me. Geez. The bee finally stung me on my neck, it was so gross. Tony pulled the stinger out and it swelled up a little maybe but not much, thank goodness. 

Tony was still working on getting all the bees into the box when one crawled up the sleeve of his bee suit because his gloves were not long enough. It couldn't get out and it stung him on the wrist. Yikes. It was such an emotional evening! I was really freaked out to have all the bees ride in the car with us but Tony put the lid on the container and wrapped it in a blanket that was in my car and we hoped for the best.

Our other hive (top bar hive) is at our friends house just a couple blocks away and he let us use one of his square box hives to put these new bees in.  There were some bees on the yellow blanket that didnt make it into the box I guess. We unwrapped everything very carefully and even though by this point it was probably 9:30 or 10pm at night, it was determined we should get the bees in to their new home asap instead of waiting. 

These are the boxes the bees are going in to. I was going to take a picture of the box full of bees as Tony was about to dump them in but as I was about to take the picture, a bee flew towards my phone and hit me on the thumb. I dropped my phone and ran. So much for that picture!

So now...a month and a half later I guess, the bees are doing well! They did not fly away, thank goodness. The portion of the box we did not put frames in, the bees started building comb there which is not so good but after talking with our friend, decided to leave the comb alone for now.