The unexpected Swarm

So I wish I would have taken better pictures but I came home to find something I really hadn't expected.  My poor peach tree leaning over from the weight of a crap ton of bee's.  This picture doesn't do it justice but when you have this many bee's escaping a camera isn't the first thing that comes to mind.

Both of those boxes were crammed full of bee's and the wall there were the ones debating on going inside.  This was also shot after I had done my best attempt at catching a swarm of bee's.  I laid out a blanket because I didn't really have a sheet to spare, i put an empty super under the basket ball size chunk of bee's then gave the tree 2 good shakes and plop, most of the bee's landed in the box.

The first attempt went very poorly I rushed too much didn't get things laid out right and when I gave the tree a good shake the queen didn't come down. So within 15 minutes all the bee's were back in the tree...  The second attempt was much more relaxed and my shake of the tree a bit more forceful.

Now after what seemed like a successful swarm catch, I went in the house and figured I'd wait and check on them at sunset because it was 100+ that day and my bee suit was not something I wanted to spend a lot of time in.  Even though I got a really nice ultra breeze suit its still rather warm to be wearing when its 100.  My brother showed up about 2 hours later and we opted to go swimming. After about 30 minutes in the pool there was an unmistakable buzz in the air and this giant cloud of bee's came floating overhead.  Now any rational person would have probably just ducked down in the pool and said that's neat but no I go darting in the house to grab my car keys throw a cardboard box in the trunk and start following the cloud.... It took them all of 10 minutes to disappear into the corn field which was really disappointing to me, that I was going to loose that many bee's.  While I know its good to help nature repopulate this is my first year and I wanted no escapees.  So I drove around the block for a bit only to give up and head home.  Much to my surprise as I pulled into the drive way the cloud was coming out of the corn field and landing on some poison sumac across the road from me.

Now here is where I probably made another newbie mistake, I gave them about an hour to finish landing it was roughly 5pm which had I done my home work I would have known that they weren't going to go anywhere else that night. The smart thing to have done would have been to wait until the last few rays of daylight and try re-catching them then.  It would have been a lot cooler and I probably would have had more success as they would have been in a tighter ball.

I after the majority of them had stopped flying I setup my catching equipment again with a slight adjustment 1 hive body and no frames.


Here's me cutting down the plant they landed on.

And here I realize crap... they landed on two plants so I'll shake one then the other.

Here's after I've shaken the second plant and realize there still another chunk on a small bush.

 Here's after all the bushes have been shaken, and the bee's are refusing to use the door they just want to hang out on the outside.

So I thought I had caught the swarm a second time and that they'd stick around.  We watched them for a couple hours and they seemed to be content.  I finally decided it was time to head to bed but I was still worried they'd take off again and I really didn't want to loose that many bee's.

Fast forward to the next morning and I had a softball size swarm hanging from my car.... bee's just don't care what you want they do whatever they feel like.  I got those little buggers hived in one of my cardboard/plastic nuc's.  With this being a smaller swarm I wasn't sure if this was an afterswarm or if the ones I had caught had decided to split up.

I didn't want to go digging around in the swarm box because I didn't want anyone to abscond because I was interfering too much.

So I decided to let things alone go order more equipment since I had nothing left no honey supers or anything.  Being my first year I thought 2 deeps and 8 mediums would suffice for 2 hives, boy was I wrong.