Bee Update

Joe came over with one of his bee hive boxes after I contacted him about the swarm yesterday.  They had gone from the two groups on the forsythia bush to one large group on the ground, which is the opposite of the direction I assumed they were heading.

Joe placed the box next to the swarm and put in it a little dish of sugary water from the hummingbird feeders.  We waited.  They paid it no attention.  While we watched, some of the scouts returned with their reports, doing their little bee dance.

After another while of waiting in vain for them to want to go inside the box, we sprayed some sugar water on the ground between the swarm and the box, and even a little on the swarm itself.  They still didn't care.  

Finally, Joe picked up a twig and poked around gently in the swarm until he located the queen.  He scooped her up with a few workers hanging on to her and the twig and quickly stuck them into the box.  They still didn't seem to care.  In fact, when we looked in the box, the few that had gone along for the ride had gone away and left the queen alone!  

Something drastic had to be done.  Joe scooped up a shovel full of bees and brushed them into the box. Then they paid attention.  In fact, they got quite perturbed.  But then, in a few seconds, the others still outside began an orderly march into the box.

A little more than two-thirds of the group were inside within a few minutes, but the remainder stayed out in their clump, and by nightfall, I suppose they'd all gone indoors, because this morning, there were none left on the ground.

Joe said he was puzzled because this really isn't a good time of the year for bees to be swarming.  They'll need to be able to forage enough food to get the colony through the winter, and it's getting late in the year for flowering plants.  I'm hoping and assuming the bees know what they're doing and will make it.  At least I know they know more about what they're doing than I do.  About what they're doing, I mean.  And perhaps more about what they're doing than I know about what I'm doing, too.

Joe returned this evening and packed up the hive to go back to his place.  He's going to rob another colony he has that has enough honey to spare to give this group a supplement that will hopefully keep them in good shape for the winter if foraging for the remainder of the year doesn't provide enough to feed them.

Good luck bees!

UPDATE:  Joe says the bees left the hive after a couple of days.  I hope they found their way to a good place to start their new colony.