1st cutout of the year and first swarm catch all at once

**riverrat** · Apr 12th 2009, 07:44 AM

Cant say that I have had this one happen until now. I scheduled my first cutout of the year for aprill 11 there was 2 hives that needed removed from a church. while I was unloading my equipment the bees got active and started acting like they was going to swarm being early for swarm season I thought it was strange. Until they clustered on a branch of a near by tree. This worked out great I ended up with 2 hives out of the 1st hive I need to go back and cutout the 2nd . Just thought I would share this luck with you all.

any how its the first time I have had a hive swarm during a removal.

**Iddee** · Apr 12th 2009, 08:57 AM

How many queen cells did she leave behind. I have made as high as 4 nucs when removing a hive that had just swarmed.

Although I haven't seen a removal swarm when I arrived, I have done many removals because they didn't know they were there until they swarmed. Then they wanted them gone immediately.

**riverrat** · Apr 12th 2009, 09:38 AM

there was several queen cells that was not quite capped one capped queen cell and one that the queen was emerging from I put the emerging queen in a queen cage and left the othe cell alone and put it in the hive I am going to look at one of my strong hives and make a pull a couple of frames and make a mating nuc using the virgin queen

**Tia** · Apr 12th 2009, 03:15 PM

Boy Riverrat! That's what I call a lucky day!

**riverrat** · Apr 15th 2009, 11:20 AM

Darned if I didnt get a swarm call on the 14th just 6 blocks from where I did the cut out. Swarm was about the size of a basketball. It seems to early for swarming in these parts

**Iddee** · Apr 15th 2009, 01:04 PM

Early??? I thought I was about on the same level as you, and it is late for here. We usually start the second week in march. This year it was the last week in March. Even now, all I have seen are from fed hives, no feral swarms yet.