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If the swarm is accessible, use a swarm catcher (or even a large, clean bucket).  Put the basket of the swarm catcher around the swarm, then shake the branch it is hanging from so that the swarm falls into it.  As quickly as possible, place a wet towel over the top of the basket to prevent the swarm from escaping.

 Next, prepare a hive for the swarm.  Give them a few frames of drawn out comb along with a frame or two of honey and pollen.  If possible, give them a frame with eggs as well.  Be sure that none of these frames have bees from a different hive on them.  Place a queen between the bottom board and the brood chamber you have prepared, then put an empty brood chamber on top.

With a second queen excluder ready, dump the swarm (as gently as possible) into the upper brood chamber, then place the queen excluder on top, followed by the inner and outer covers.

If the queen is in the hive, she cannot get out, since she is prevented from doing so by the queen excluder above and below her.  The rest of the swarm will eventually find her and follow her into the hive.  If she isn’t in the hive, she will soon return to the original swarm location.  The rest of the swarm will find her and re-form around her.  Either way, it doesn’t become apparent for several minutes. In the moments after capturing a swarm and placing it in the new hive, the bees that were not captured will be flying everywhere.  It is difficult to tell whether the queen has been captured or not.  

How can you know right away? 

Here’s how I do it: my preferred swarm catcher is made up of two sets of mesh.  (Actually, it’s not mine.  My friend Glenn made it, and it’s the best swarm catcher ever.)  The inner mesh is half-inch galvanizedhardware cloth; it maintains the shape of the basket.  The outer mesh is made of standard metal screen; it prevents the bees from escaping.

Even though it’s the best swarm catcher in the world, it has one tiny drawback: some of the bees get trapped between the two meshes.  This isn’t really much of a problem.  It only takes a few minutes for the bees to get out on their own after most of the swarm has been dumped into the new hive.  Lately, I’ve been taking advantage of this by tapping the basket on the ground in front of the hive.  The few hundred remaining bees fall out on the ground in a pile.  If the queen is indeed in the hive (and she nearly ALWAYS is), these bees will instantly turn toward the hive and start walking toward it.  If they don’t do this and instead take to the air, the queen is not in the hive.

It’s that easy.

In Part 2 of this post, I have a video of this process.  The video shows the pile of bees immediately after they have been dumped on the ground.  They quickly point themselves toward the hive and begin walking to it.

Because of bandwidth concerns, the video in Part 2 is password-protected and is only available to registered users.  New users: email me and I’ll send you the password.  Be sure to include your user name.

Occasionally, however, I find a queen cell in an extremely vigorous, healthy hive that produces well and has survived multiple winters.  In these cases, I like to put the frame with the queen cell in a nuc to allow her to hatch, thus propagating a line that thrives in Eastern Connecticut.  It’s not exactly a scientific process, but it seems to work well for me.  Also, it’s an inexpensive way to increase the bee yard.

During the last week of May, I started three 3-frame nucs with queen cells.  Each nuc contained a frame with a queen cell, a full frame of eggs and a full frame of honey and pollen.  Each frame was covered with bees.

The nucs were quiet for a few days, with little or no activity.  On Saturday, June 2nd, one of the nucs became extremely active.  Bees streamed out of the nuc, flying off and and hovering in front of the entrance.  After a few minutes of this, the queen emerged.  She walked around the entrance for about two minutes then took to the air, hovering a few inches in front of the nuc.  I was afraid that this was the beginning of a swarm, but she landed a few seconds later and returned to the hive.  In a matter of seconds the bees outside of the nuc followed her inside and everything was quiet.  It was as if nothing had even happened.

I have never seen this before and was fortunate to have my camera with me.  I was able to get a few shots of the new queen, shown below.

Here, the queen’s abdomen is visible in the lower right corner of the photo.  Her head is blocked by a worker.

A queen emerging from the nuc, all photos ;© Stonewall Apiary, LLC

The queen is facing away from the camera in the lower left portion of the photo below.

A queen emerging from the nuc, all photos and text © Stonewall Apiary, LLC

Finally, the best shot.  The queen is in the lower left part of the photo below.  She is preparing to take flight, so her wings are beating quickly and appear only as a blur above her.

A queen emerging from the nuc, all photos and text © Stonewall Apiary, LLC