Queen Bees on Queen Street

For the 4th time in a month, we have been called to a bee swarm on Queen Street. Our first call was this successful capture. Since then we have been called twice to see if we could capture bees which were getting into the eaves of 2 storey houses (we can't). Those houses were located directly across the street from the swarm in the tree...but each swarm arrived at least a week apart. That's very odd... Imagine our surprise to get another call from the police about yet another swarm on Queen Street. To our great relief, this one was in a snowball bush and easy to access from the ground. They were nestled against the trunk and not really visibly noticeable; it was the hum which gave them away! Here's a close up of the swarm:

Hubby placed the home owner's stepladder underneath the branch, and I held the nuc box (containing frames of honey) as he shook the branch of bees into it. We left the nuc there for the cloud of bees to settle into.

It didn't take them very long to decide this looked like a good place to set up housekeeping.

The swarm was a bit smaller than the previous one, but still a nice lot of bees.

We left the bees alone for an hour or so and when we came back, they were ready to pack up.

Can you find the queen? This one is striped (not all are).

Here she is:

The nuc was left overnight, and in the morning hubby transferred them into a regular big box for them to begin to grow their colony. The old adage tells us that "a swarm in July isn't worth a fly" meaning that these bees will spend the rest of the season building up their strength in numbers, and not make any honey in our short season. However, with luck they should be ready and strong for next year.We hope that's it for Queen Street swarms!