Guess what,
The bees swarmed again today
And of course I only found them incidentally while checking on my garden after a rain.
This was just one cluster and probably like half the size of the one from this spring. Real wild they were swarming, didn't think they did that this time of year, it's usually a late spring / fall thing.
They were probably about 112-15 feet up in the pine tree, we barely had the means to set up another hive box for them, just wooden hives left at this point and they're all pretty old and worn at this point.
We also had to use our tractor to lift the box up to them and then my mom just like scooped them in with her hand. I would have done this part but I'm allergic now and any risk of me getting stung we can remove we try to hah. But they were SUPER chill, even poking them directly they hardly reacted. I ended up poking them later lol.
It was a kinda funny ordeal.
For some reason they clustered on the back of the box by the lid, I was worried the queen was on the outside of the box there. I think that the lid just didn't fit well and there were gaps and that where the pheromones were strongest n what not.
Bees doing lil bee things
Might be hard to see but this was the branch that they were clustered on and we noticed this large part of the branch that just looked chewed up. Wonder if this is normal for clustering bees or if maybe that damaged part of the branch was why they were clustering there. 🤷
This species of honey bee is clearly doing well, two swarms (that we know of lol) this year after previous years of not even having a colony make the winter.