Collecting a swarm

I've only been beekeeping for two years and never properly seen a swarm, let alone collected one. But like many beekeepers I've watched a lot of YouTube videos so I was pretty familiar with the process.

My neighbour had had a feral colony in a hole in the large oak tree in his garden for a number of months and we'd been looking at it and discussing it throughout March. It was getting quite active. He asked me whether I thought it could swarm. I said that I thought it was possible but I didn't really know how likely it was.

Then one day in the middle of April my son called me into the garden because my neighbour’s garden was absolutely full of bees. The air was black with bees flying all over the place. I'd never seen anything like it. We watched them for maybe ten minutes and gradually the number of bees in the air decreased. We could see that they were gathering on a tree in the adjoining garden. After about twenty minutes there were no bees in the air and the swarm had completely gathered onto a branch in the tree. 

So I had to bluff a bit to my neighbour and give the impression that I was an expert on collecting swarms! My son and I got our bee suits on and headed into the neighbour’s garden to assess the situation.

We had to do quite a lot of pruning around the tree to remove brambles. After about twenty minutes we had good access to the tree and I was able to hold the box underneath the swarm whilst my son gave the tree a sharp shake. I'm pleased to say that it all worked exactly as I'd seen in the YouTube videos and the bees dropped into the box. I was able to put it on the grass on a sheet and wait for the rest of the bees to join the swarm. 

I was amazed how good natured the bees were. There were a hell of a lot of bees flying around us when we collected it but there was absolutely no aggression. To be honest they weren't bothered about us at all and they were just interested in having a great time together. 

We left it for about four hours and when we came back to it all the bees were in the box and there were no bees on the tree or in the air. Thank you YouTube! 

Later in the evening we carried the box round into our garden and shook the bees into a poly nucleus box and gave them 6 frames of foundation and some food. Since then they have been moved into a full size hive and are developing into a nice strong and good natured colony.

Here are some photos of the collection day.