Just Not My Day Again

I went out to check my hives around noon today and saw a swarm about 20 foot from my hives at the West Apiary only about four foot off the ground. I knew it had been over 21 days since I looked for swarm cells in two of those hives but I really felt they had plenty of expansion room. Of course not having room isn't the only reason they swarm often times they do it just because they want to and there ain't much your gonna do to stop them.

The sad part about this swarm is not 2 minutes after I drove up there and saw them while I was putting on my gear to capture them they all took flight and headed off to the Northeast.

Bye bye Swarm number two for the year.

I have never had such bad luck and timing with swarms like I have been having this year and the swarms seem to be completely ignoring my traps for the most part as well. Either there is another super secret beekeeper placing traps around my area or maybe the Winter was so hard on the feral colonies that there is an abundance of vacant real estate available.

As I said I have seen two swarms with my own eyes that I have lost and my Step Dad claims he saw one by the garden hives the other day while I was at work but when I got home four hours later it was already gone.

This brings up the second peculiarity about this swarm season. The swarms are not hanging out very long at all. All the other years if I saw a swarm they would hang out for two or more days while looking for a home giving me plenty of time to capture them. Not this year though. These swarms have disappeared in a matter of hours.

I guess overall I can't complain too much I have grown my hives by five new colonies this year and have managed to capture three swarms but I was really hoping to get at least seven new hives this season. I may order a couple of queens next week and do a few splits if the swarm activity doesn't pick up.

Just been the most unluckiest year for swarms personally I have seen in over five years of catching em and not even a single swarm call this year either that is also unusual. Some thing has changed the normal process around here but it's anyone's guess what it is.

To make matters worse I got back out in the garden and started attacking the last overgrown trellis only to have a good sized rain storm come bearing down on me out of the blue. At least I got it over halfway done :)

Keep Prepping Everyone.... I am sure tomorrow will be abetter day :)