Swarm, swarms, swarms! Looks like the girls are trying to make up for last year. I’ve been out of town at a convention and had to turn down 3 swarm calls last week! I took another call yesterday and bagged another swarm. Unfortunately, I made a minor error that led to them absconding.
Swarms as a rule, have a tendency to sometimes not take to the hive box you put them in and they abscond. You can reduce this risk by:
1. Applying a couple of drops of Lemon Grass oil in the hive before you put them in it.
2. Plug up the hive entrances with grass for a day or two. The grass keeps them in, and if you forget, they can chew their way out. It also forces them to stay in the hive and that decreases the absconding probability by quite a bit.
My mistake was plugging the entrances with paper and not grass. The rain made the paper wet and they got out within 12 hours and absconded. At least I got $50 to pick up the hive, so that covers gas money.
Also rendered a new video on a beekeeping adventure in West Texas. I’ll upload tonight.
Hive count: 7
