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Alright if I can balance this camera....
My name is Gene Garate, The Gentle Beekeeper, Midwest Apiaries, here in Reno Nevada
moved from Kansas here at the end of the year and uh this is um
the beginning of May
I just caught my second swarm today and decided uh I'd introduce it uh
on film the best I could ...don't have a good stable film holder
so please don't get to seasick when your watching it, take a Dramamine or what not..um
Just introduced them this mornin and uh... they took to the hive. I'm gonna
show you that..uh.. it's pretty long and i ramble a lot so hope you enjoy it
and uh be sure to subscribe and
visit my website at the gentle beekeeper dot com
Well good morning and welcome to a uh
edition of dumping a swarm. Gonna try to introduce a swarm into this hive
It's just a real small one here I got ten frames...uh...it's probably an "after swarm" may not even
have a queen but we're gonna try introducing it and if she doesn't then I'll join her to another hive later
but um...
got a little entrance board, actually it's just another baseboard that I'm using as a
ramp for 'em
and you can see as gentle incline to it, they like to climb so we'll dump that hive out on
there and uh... just watch 'em go in.
It's a little cool this morning so they're probably going to be a little lethargic which is good but
I'm still going to use a little smoke and uh
got my smoker going over here
it's about ready to
we're about ready to go so
let me get that over here...OK
I went ahead and put an entrance feeder on it, it's got some pretty warm
uh..sugar water in it but,
it'll work if it hasn't all dripped out on the ground
ah this is our swarm it's inside this box; guy boxed it up for me
uh..which is perfect it's got some juniper limbs and stuff in there that they were attached to
he just cut it off and dropped it in this box. Got a smoker, got a brush; everything's uh where it needs to be so
a lot of people use sugar water uh doesn't really matter
uh in my mind
I'll use a little bit of smoke to kind of make sure they are disoriented with there
with there uh pheromones and then we'll dump them out on this box and let 'em do their
thing naturally
alright we'll put the camera down and do it this way.
Gonna remove the branches that they were on, you can see there's still some
on that uh
branch there
they attached to that, that's probably where the
queen or the group left the pheromone for them to uh
attach to so we're just gonna
shake that out over the top as much as we can
brush those off and by the time I get that done there will already be some inside so...
Get that branch out of the way where it's not
tempting them to come back
we still got quite a bit of bees here in this box so
actually dump these ones on top
kind of at the entrance so that
they'll let the other bees know that there's a nice home here for them.
Okay, so now we'll just kind of watch here so you can see how it looks
try not to step on too many of them
and if you'll watch you'll see them start going inside. Kind of see they're moving that direction.
They'll gently just start moving uphill
it's kind of interesting to watch
Clustering on the feeder cause number one it's warm and number two it's got a lot of sugar in it, so...
Alright you can see 'em now, they're really moving, really moving towards the front of the
front of the hive
They like my suit too, cause it's got a lot of smells on it so, knoocking a few off here and there.
they may claim the front and go in through the top
but a lot of them are going right in through the entrance there so...
got "drawn comb" on the inside i think three frames
worth of "drawn comb" and then just a lot of uh
foundation.
It's kind of a general movement, it's
not exactly easy to see but you can see that they're
moving up there slowly.
This one has a lot of drones in it too. See if I can...
was looking at a bunch of them earlier here...drone right...here's a drone....
but that's not.... hard to run the camera and show you at the same time. Drone right here.
Starting to see some white spaces on the board as they're moving into the box
and I'm starting to have some bees come up
through the frames meaning they've come in through the front entrance and now they're
popping in through the top
A lot of them clustered on the front but they'll find their way in.
Once they get the entrance cleared a bit we'll have some that will sit there and fan
and let the others know, "Hey, this is the place." so...just gonna kind of watch
Not even going to try to look for the queen, she'll either be in there or she won't.
Got a lot of them up here on top of this bottle fanning. See how they put their wings up.
classic one right here, you can see where she's got her wings..er.. her rear end in the air and is just fanning away letting the other bees know... (inaudible)...blowing out pheremones
saying, "Hey look we got sugar here." so...
Trouble is I think in one of these swarms you've got so many bees doing that it kind of has to
wait until there's a collective
group saying, "Come this way."
They're moving up and moving in.
Starting to see more white on the board now
So what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna put the camera down here on the front
and uh just set it up to where it can sit for a while and you can
watch them go in.